What are the characteristics of the "Anna Karenina Principle" in "Guns, Germs, and Steel" Chapter 9?

The Anna Karenina Principle, which Diamond uses to explain the success of certain societies as opposed to others by suggesting that Tolstoy's first line of his great novel which tries to explain why some relationships work and others fail also applies to the process of domesticating animals. Just like relationships fail for many different reasons, certain societies failed to domesticate the animals in their geographic regions for different reasons.  He is also trying to say that relationships that succeed have a lot of common factors that contribute to their success.

There are many contributing factors which make a family, or a marriage happy, if one of those key components fails, the whole thing falls apart or loses its ability to be considered happy.

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." (Diamond)

Diamond is trying to make a point that there are no single factors that contribute to failure.

"The Anna Karenina principle explains a feature of animal domestication that had heavy consequences for human history, namely that so many seemingly suitable wild mammal species, such as zebras and peccaries have never been domesticated"

Diamond tries to explain how some species of mammals were not domesticated because they were not a good fit with man.  For example, according to the Anna Karenia principle, which says that if one of the basic factors of a good relationship fails, the marriage or the relationship will not succeed, applying this to the domestication of animals goes like this: if the animals in an environment were not a good fit for domestication than the society could not access this resource in the same way that the successful Eurasians did because they had animals in their geographic region that were easy to domesticate.

For example, just like happy marriages that have certain factors for success, domesticating animals also have to fit into certain categories in order to succeed in becoming domestic and therefore assisting man in his survival.

1. Diet - It matters what they eat and how much, if the animal eats too much than it isn't worth the effort to domesticate

2. Growth Rate - to be worth keeping or domesticating, animals must grow quickly

3. Problems of Captive Breeding- the animals must be able to successfully breed in captivity, have live births

4. Disposition - if the animal is nasty or capable of killing humans and are really dangerous, that disqualifies them for domestication

5. Tendency to panic - some species of large animal tend to get nervous and run, this is counter productive to domestication

6. Social Structure - if the animal lives in groups then it tends to be more easily domesticated, rather than animals who live alone and prowl

In Guns, Germs, and Steel, what is the "Anna Karenina principle"?

Anna Karenina, a novel by nineteenth-century Russian author Leo Tolstoy, begins with the statement:

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Jared Diamond, in the ninth chapter of Guns, Germs, and Steel, applies this statement to the domestication of animals. 

Just as happy families are all similar in that they share many of the same characteristics, such as mutual love and respect, so too animals which can be domesticated share several characteristics in common. 

First, domestic animals should have some sort of herd or social structure and be able to tolerate other members of their species in close proximity. Next, they need to have relatively placid dispositions and not be prone to panic or stampeding. They should be able to forage on a wide range of foods (rather than being limited to a very narrow habitat or type of food) and thrive, producing milk, eggs, or meat on readily available foodstuffs. They should breed readily in captivity. They should also not be prone to attacking humans. 

The answer to this can be found at the beginning of Chapter 9.  The Anna Karenina principle holds that all happy families are alike while all unhappy families are unhappy in different ways.  What this means, is that everything has to go right for a family to be happy while there are many different things that can go wrong and make the family unhappy.

Diamond applies this principle to explain why so few animals are domesticated.  There are many things that have to go right before an animal can be domesticated.  But if any one of these things goes wrong, the animal will not be domesticable.

The answer to this can be found in Chapter 9 of the book.  There, Diamond is trying to explain why so many places in the world did not have large domesticated animals.  This is important to his theory because some people would claim that people like the Australian Aborigines did not domesticate animals because they were too backwards.  Diamond disagrees with that sort of assessment and wants to say that geographic luck led to most of the inequality in human history.

The term “Anna Karenina principle” refers to the book Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy.  The first sentence of that book is “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is different in its own way.”  This relates to animals because it means that there are many things that must be true about an animal in order for it to be undomesticable.  That means that there are many different ways that an animal can be “bad” for domestication, but all domesticable animals are similar because they have all of the necessary traits.

Diamond says (beginning on p. 169 in the paperback edition of the book) that animals must have the right diet, growth rate, ability to breed in captivity, temperament, calmness, and social structure in order to be domesticated.  An animal can have all but one of these and be useless for domestication.  Therefore, “unhappy” animals can be unhappy in different ways but all “happy” (domesticable) animals have to be very similar.

This supports Diamond’s theory because it means that the ability to domesticate animals comes about by luck.  You have to be lucky enough to have one or more of the few animals that fulfills all the criteria living near you in order to domesticate them.  People like the Aborigines did not have that luck.

What is the importance of the Anna Karenina principle in Guns, Germs, and Steel?

The Anna Karenina principle states that there are lots of different ways that an animal can be no good for domestication.  It comes from a line that says happy families are all alike but miserable ones are all miserable in their own ways.

The reason that this is important is that it explains why people in some places were not able to domesticate any large animals.  Diamond points out that there are many reasons why animals might not be good to domesticate.  For example, they might take too long to grow big enough to use.  Or they might be too vicious to tame.  Other problems might occur as well.

Because there are so many different ways that an animal can be unsuitable for domestication, most of them are unsuitable.  This means that places like Africa can have lots of animals, but none might be suitable to domesticate.  This (rather than any theories about the characteristics of the people in those areas) explains why no animals were domesticated there.