Please stop with the "what if" scenarios

[Lord Baal]

Elephants cant be domesticated?

then whats up with all those war elephants I've been hearing in classical history?

Maybe if you just read what you quoted you won't be asking that question.

THIS!

Too much Diamondism here on the domestication issue. It certainly looks like any species can be domesticated if someone takes the trouble. In recent times we've seen the domestication of all sorts of things: penicillin mold, salmon, ostriches, and truffles to name just a few. The silver fox went from savage little beast to biddable pet in only a dozen years. The elephant is thus far on the same trajectory as the North American bison. From proud symbol of the wild, to endangered species living in managed herds on preserves, to unremarkable farm animal.

Ostriches, emus and fish are not domesticated. They are pastoral animals, kept on ranches and reserves - or whatever they call a fish-farm thingy - like the semi-wild cattle in West Africa. Trust me, I have an uncle who owns a tonne of farmland, including emus. Penicillin and other bacteria aren't domesticated, they're cultured. Though some of them are certainly on the way to domestication, as plants like wheat were initially merely cultured - the origin of the word 'agriculture.'

Genetic suitability is irrelevant - domestication is the process of changing that state.
For all the years men have been breeding dogs, we still don't know the limits of their malleability.

Genetic engineering and selective breeding has certainly enabled a far greater variety of domestication and taming than previously. Bear in mind that those foxes were kept in rather harsh captivity, and we don't know how well the domestication has taken yet. Things could still go wrong.

And btw, we can't say for certain that Hannibal's elephants were not domesticated. Nor even what species they were.

They were the now-extinct North African elephant. The romans supposedly hunted them to extinction for use in gladiatorial games, but I suspect it was a long process, mainly based on the climate and poor food in the region above the Sahara they were trapped in by its rapid formation. Competition from humans for those food sources likely hastened the process.

When you domesticate an animal you ahve to make it obey you, like a horse or a dog.

Tell that to my cat.

Actually, the measure of "domestication" is whether they're willing to do it in the presence of people.