### ch03p103 theory of why domestic cattle are smaller > Young cattle grow quickly. You do'n't gain much more meat by keeping a mature animal alive, so you cull more animals before or just after they research maturity — and the proportion of juvenile bones in the middnes around your settlement goes up. On its own this doesn't explain the size reduction from wild to domesticated cattle and over time, since they've only been evaluating the sizes of adult cows, but maybe it's because juvenile cows are the only ones giving birth, and juvenile cows tend to have lower weight babies than mature cows, which grow up into lower weight babies. She doesn't address the idea that they might have been artificially selecting for size by slaughtering once they _reach_ a certain size, sort of like how in the Chesapeake Bay we've inadvertently selected for crabs and fish that stay smaller for longer by having size limits on legal catches. #articleseed/addendum - [[Tamed by Alice Roberts#ch03p103 theory of why domestic cattle are smaller|View in Vault]]