[Wild&Free]

Originally Posted by sjemac

By you logic then, nothing is feral and we should retire the word. Those are wild pigeons and wild rats we are dealing with? Feral specifically refers to an animal once domesticated that has gone wild. So they are not wild horses, they are feral since they were once domesticated -- wild is only a part of being feral.

By this logic, it wouldn't be a stretch to call wolves, feral dogs. As they're both of the same species and wolves were domesticated by the natives across the northern hemisphere. How do we know for sure that all wolves at one point were not domesticated and eventually escaped?


Also, by my logic, escaped domesticated animals are feral animals, however their successful offspring and successive generations I cannot consider to be feral as they were never domesticated. Having originated from domesticated stock gives them a distinction. So, at what point does a feral population become a wild population? Or are these horses another century from now still going to be feral?