OVER HET GEDRAG VAN LOKGANZEN

Samenvatting

The greylag was domesticated at least 4000 years ago. Even in the 19th century, greylags played a prominent role in supplying meat, feathers and down. The role of domestic grey­lags is furthermore stressed in tales and folk literature. Two other goose species, the Bean goose and white-Font, were bred for several centuries as decoys in goose netting. They were kept on the wing because they had to attract their wild relatives which were on migration. The netters used the strong family tie present in geese. Gan­ders were tied up in Font of the net while members of the family were released and would fly towards their relative. For the loose decoys to be retrieved, they had to be perfectly tame. Tests on-one-day-old descendants of such decoy families demonstrated that tameness can be se­lected for as a hereditary trait.