The ancestral rice-growers of the Burma, Thailand and southern China regions evidently brought a suite of animals with them into Southeast Asia. Some were locals which had hitchhiked unbidden with the rice; others may have been grafted on via links with India. The buffalo was one of these and the dog may have been, but the pig was not — two different taxa of Sus were domesticated within Southeast Asia itself, as were Bali cattle. In the case of both pig and dog, Austronesian strains apparently replaced earlier strains which survive only as localized remnants.

Through the study of domestic and commensal mammals, particularly in the context of their ecological requirements, we can throw light on the spread of early human populations and their subsistence modes. The need now is to trace some of these same movements linguistically, again through the characteristic animals of the rice complex.