Infographic illustration depicting the timeline of animal domestication. The semi-circular rings indicate timespan with oldest at the top and most recent at the bottom. It is thought that dogs were the first domesticated animals around 33,000 years ago. Since then, many important animals have been domesticated as livestock (red semi circles), work animals (light brown) and as pets (blue). The rise of animal domestication roughly 9,000 years BCE came at around the same time as humanity shifted from a hunter-gather lifestyle to an agricultural society.