Slashdot Mirror
Should We Just Call Dog Breeds a Different Species?
Jamie found an amusing bit this morning on Scientific American where the author proposes that dog breeds are different species. Now some of you might recoil when you hear this suggestion, but if you read the article to see why he makes this suggestion I suspect you'll crack a smile and appreciate the elegance of the solution.
You know what's funny? Dogs know dogs. They can be big, small, tall, round, thin, with or without tails, brown, red, white, spotted, yellow, shaggy, short haired, long legged, squat, etc, etc, etc. There is a massive amount of variation on display within the dog family.
But despite it all, dogs know dogs. Upon seeing another, they'll wag their tails or bark for a rotweiller the same as they would for a terrier. They'll all roam about in their little packs, somehow instinctively knowing they they naturally should.
And yet, if I have a man with different skin colour, or even simply different clothing, other men will consider his life worth less than even the smallest dog.
Makes you think.
May the Maths Be with you!
Humorous take fails to be humorous.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
between race and species was species can't interbreed and produce viable offspring. So while small dogs and large dogs may be able to be divided, the line gets a lot fuzzier after that. So many years of cross breeding and inbreeding I don't think you can separate them beyond that.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
1) Creationists claim the science doesn't provide thorough enough proof of evolution
2) Evolutionary biologists should fudge their results to re-define something as being proof
3) ???
4) Profit
Something makes me think this scheme would just give creationists a big stick labelled "evolutionists fudge their results; it's all a load of cobblers" to beat the biologists with.
Just remember if you argue that dog breeds are different species, especially the case of the mastiff and chihuahua, or the teacup yorkie and newfoundland, these different species are verifiably the result of intelligent design. Selection was involved, but not natural selection.
Back in the 1800s there was this idea that all living things could be grouped into a neat, consistent classification system. As it turns out, reality isn't tidily organized like a giant clock.
Canis lupis is just a remarkably diverse species. Calling chihuahuas and wolves a different species is like calling Gary Coleman and Bao Xishun a different species. That is, completely ridiculous.
Arguing over where the line is between species is pretty dumb anyway. Nature is not divided into nice neat categories like that.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Definite proof that cats are better than dogs.
How many cats lead blind people?
How many cats rescue injured people?
Why is it rejecting a socially progressive idea is called "recoiling" while rejecting a socially conservative idea is referred to as a "knee jerk reaction"?
Perhaps serious scientists should stick with doing science, rather than refuting creationists and others with ideological agendas to push. Cause when you feed the trolls, the word gets around and you draw larger and larger numbers to be fed. Or in other words, one gets the impression that the refuters have an agenda of their own to push. Like the fine article, when one gets around to reading it, leaves behind.
It gets even better.
You cannot produce viable offspring with a chimpanzee. Neither could your great-great-great-grandparents produce viable offspring with that chimpanzee’s great-great-great-grandparents. But, go back enough generations, and your nth-great-grandparents gave birth to an individual whose far-distant offspring was that chimpanzee. Pick any other two organisms, and the same holds — it’s just that you have to go a little farther back in time to find the last common ancestor between, say, a squid and a butterfly.
We are all members of a single ring species that encompasses all of life on Earth. It’s just that the ring is separated by time, rather than geography or physiology.
And now you know the nutshell definition of the Theory of Evolution.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
How much longer before a chihuahua can't breed with *any* other dog currently listed as the same species? Won't it happen eventually?
Domestic turkeys can't breed without human intervention - but they CAN breed with the help of humans, same as chihuahuas can (and have) been bred with large dogs when given a "helping hand" or "a leg up".
There's no such thing as a "pure-bred dog" - every single so-called "pure breed" is a mutt. The kennel clubs perpetuate the myth of "pure blood lines" because there's $$$ and ego in doing so. It's not like you can't get a phony "pure-bred" registration for a dog - as an experiment, people even registered CATS as "pure-bred dogs." Time magazine published an expose on this a couple of decades ago - your "breeding papers" would be better used to toilet-train the puppy than as any sort of guarantee of anything. And no, nothing has changed in the intervening years ... it's still a crock of horse manure that promotes cruelty to animals, puppy mills, reinforcement of bad genes, etc.
How many chihuahua's can rescue injured people? How many seeing eye Maltese's are there?
The cats guide the blind dogs. They don't give a damn about people because they're badass and got standards.
I think that's a great analogy.
Atheism is a religion to the same extent that not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Cats COULD help the blind... its just that they don't WANT to.
The point of the article is that for purely mechanical reasons big dogs can't interbreed with small dogs. From the definition of species - i.e. able to interbreed and produce fertile offspring they are a different species.
But the sperm from one could fertilize the eggs of another. The fact that the mechanics don't work out is like claiming that neutering your pet makes it a new species.
Except there is no (solid) evidence of that ever happening. We have a lot of variations within species, but we still haven't found any evidence of that n'th great grandpa that was father to both human and chimp lines.
The point of the article was to make up a classification and apply it to dogs, so that they can suddenly stick that in the face of creationists and say "Nyah! Told you so! Haha loser!!!111eleven". It still doesn't fix the problem.
In fact, it points out a further problem with using fossil records to identify ancestral links: palaentologists would probably classify different breeds of dog as different species, when in fact they are nothing more than minor variations (no matter how different they look, they are genetically minor variations) within the same species. Wolves and dogs would be a major variation, but even they are not as different as lions and tigers.
We actually do have inter-species mating, and they do produce offspring. However any time this occurs, the offspring cannot re-produce. They are mules. This is one good way to tell that horses and donkeys are close, but definitely different species despite their similarities. They can even reproduce naturally, but the offspring is not viable. Mules cannot mate and produce more mules. Same with ligers, probably the coolest cat ever, and despite being bred for their magical properties they are still mules that cannot reproduce.
Lastly, there are cases of chihuauas and mastifs reproducing. Just because it is highly unlikely, and very difficult, doesn't mean it is impossible or that it does not, in fact, happen. A better example would have been some sort of ring species that actually, you know, can't inter-breed except with close relatives. Dogs aint one 'o them, sorry.
Frankly, the author is an idiot. He reminded me of a dumbass in high school who's brain was so fried with pot he'd think his ideas were brilliant, while everybody else just did a face-palm at his dumb comment. He even had the Beevus and Butthead laugh: "Huh huh, huh huh huh, huh huh, huh."
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Bigjeff5 wrote:
It’s quite fascinating, really.
A man who, on Monday, insists that “there is no (solid) evidence” supporting the Theory of Evolution — which is perhaps the scientific theory better supported by evidence than any other — will quite frequently, on Sunday, sing the praises of impossible mythical beings whom nobody’s ever actually encountered outside of “visions,” mystical inner dialogues, and millennia-old textbook examples of superstitious cult fiction. And he will proclaim the lack of evidence for his pantheon the very foundation of his “faith,” and that which makes his position more noble and meritorious than those founded on evidence and logic.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
Excellent comment. To dogs, smell is very important.
The article is an example of the pseudo-science to which Slashdot editors often link. Those who play video games when they could be learning about the world cause themselves to live in ignorance.
The article says, "... the only shot a male Chihuahua has with a female Mastiff involves..."
The male Chihuahua would like to mate with the female Mastiff, but the female won't let him. Only that. The female will show that she recognizes that the Chihuahua is a dog. She just doesn't want to mate with him. They easily recognize that they are the same species. It's only the author who wrote the article to which Slashdot linked, and the Slashdot editor, who don't realize that.
The definitions and frameworks we draw in science should not be based on utility in political struggles outside the scope of science. It is fine to struggle against those who are ignorant of and activist against science, but we should consider that a separate activity from the practice of science.
We don't want the process of science to be even slightly defined as an opposition to some movement - allowing ourselves that would be to weaken what science-as-an-institution is trying to do.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
There's no solid evidence that anything happened before we were born either. But you know, sometimes it gets a bit ridiculous to look at things that way.
Cheers.