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New Research Sheds Light On the Evolution of Dogs
Hugh Pickens writes writes "The first dogs descended from wolves about 14,000 years ago but according to Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods humans didn't domesticate dogs — dogs sought out humans and domesticated us. Humans have a long history of eradicating wolves, rather than trying to adopt them which raises the question: How was the wolf tolerated by humans long enough to evolve into the domestic dog? 'The short version is that we often think of evolution as being the survival of the fittest, where the strong and the dominant survive and the soft and weak perish. But essentially, far from the survival of the leanest and meanest, the success of dogs comes down to survival of the friendliest.' Most likely, it was wolves that approached us, not the other way around, probably while they were scavenging around garbage dumps on the edge of human settlements. The wolves that were bold but aggressive would have been killed by humans, and so only the ones that were bold and friendly would have been tolerated. In a few generations, these friendly wolves became distinctive from their more aggressive relatives with splotchy coats, floppy ears, wagging tails. But the changes did not just affect their looks but their psychology. Protodogs evolved the ability to read human gestures. 'As dog owners, we take for granted that we can point to a ball or toy and our dog will bound off to get it,' write Hare and Woods. 'But the ability of dogs to read human gestures is remarkable. Even our closest relatives — chimpanzees and bonobos — can't read our gestures as readily as dogs can. 'With this new ability, these protodogs were worth knowing. People who had dogs during a hunt would likely have had an advantage over those who didn't. Finally when times were tough, dogs could have served as an emergency food supply and once humans realized the usefulness of keeping dogs as emergency food, it was not a huge jump to realize plants could be used in a similar way.' This is the secret to the genius of dogs: It's when dogs join forces with us that they become special," conclude Hare and Woods. 'Dogs may even have been the catalyst for our civilization.'"
> Even our closest relatives â" chimpanzees and bonobos â" can't
> read our gestures as readily as dogs can.
You can (quite seriously) include many humans in that as well. And on the other side of that coin, it's no surprise that many people relate to dogs a lot better than they do to other people.
I'd think it takes two.
And from what I see humans have applied selection pressure on the dogs more than the other way around.
On a related note:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox
Evolution is not driven by a species' "desire" to do things.
It's clear from the information in the summary that humans domesticated dogs via unnatural selection (we killed off the ones we didn't like), yet the first sentence implies the authors reached the opposite conclusion.
Species do not make up their minds to evolve into X. It just happens. Don't try to make up reasons why the species wanted it that way.
Hare and Woods researching dogs, there's a joke in there somewhere
Here today, gone tomorrow
I thought it was presumed by anyone that humans didn't go out, capture wolves and then selectively breed them for friendliness.
Isn't what the summary says exactly what people have always said?
There is no 'unnatural selection'. If we killed off the one we didn't like then we were just one more evolutionary pressure just like meteor strike or sudden climate change would be.
I never allow my dog to lick my "utensils". He's quite capable of licking his own, thank you very much.
Stop anthropomorphizing evolition. It hates that!
If it hates it so much why did it evolve us to do it?
If there's a domesticated species taking advantage of humans my money's definitely on cats rather than dogs.
"we often think of evolution as being the survival of the fittest, where the strong and the dominant survive and the soft and weak perish"
I like to give the example of birds. Which one is the most successful bird ? The most numerous on the planet. I'll give you a hint: it doesn't fly at all, it doesn't run fast and it's very good to eat. Still it's the most successful in terms of species: the chicken. Because it's good to eat, another specie (us) takes it everywhere and makes sure they reproduce in droves. Evolution works in funny ways...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
"Survival of the fittest" should be read as "survival of the most fit-for-purpose". It has nothing to do with strength, ferocity, sharp teeth, etc.
None of these problems are the dog's fault, they're just not trained or housebroken. My dog doesn't bark, chase, or shit in the house, and when he does outside, I always have bags to pick it up. You need to be annoyed with the masters, not the servants.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
I see nothing wrong in the "old" thory - that humans kept some wolves that eventually evolved into dogs.
Sure, humans have always been eager to eradicate competing/dangerous animals. But in doing so, they would come upon puppies now and then. And surely, some humans would find them cute. Then as now! It is then likely that someone tried to keep some puppies - if the times were good and there were food enough anyway. They could always kill them later, if they turned hostile.
Bringing up young animals one finds in nature (possibly after killing/chasing off parent animals) is something humans attempt now and then. It is an interesting hobby. And it succeeds for several species. Taming birds is almost trivial - just be there (instead of the mother bird) when the eggs hatch. But birds is not that useful, beyond keeping them for food and more eggs.
A tame wolf is valuable as soon as it grows up however. Even if it is a much rougher animal to handle than a modern dog. Any wolf expects to be in a pack - and will help its pack to survive. Using a wolf for hunting is doable - but it is tricky. Much more important is that the wolf will fight for you. When a wolf consider the local human village to be its pack, it will help fight off troublesome animals (even wild wolves). And it will help fight invading humans from other villages too. Puppies get useful within a year.
So if you're bothered by invaders, you can add wolves to your army. Likewise if you're into conquest. Selective breeding can improve the animals a lot. But even the first generation, taken from a mother wolf, will be useful in stone-age warfare. Training can make them more useful, but even a wolf that merely grew up with you, will take your side in any fight. Which is also why some people today keep a large dog for protection.
There are wild dogs. And the wikipedia acticle also speaks about coyote as forefather. Why then always use the wolves is a mystery.
Natural (adj) - in accordance with human nature
Natural (adj) - illegitimate; born out of wedlock
Natural (adj) - not artificially dyed or coloured
Are you claiming that humans are inherently opposed to dogs, that dogs must be married before having puppies, and that all dogs have dyed hair? Or are you perhaps picking a single unrelated definition and suggesting that it is universally exhaustive?
I have owned several dogs in my life and they learn sounds as well. I can have 4 items in a group and point and say "bone" and she will get the bon and not the ball.
At one time I had my collie able to find the "red ball" among the blue, red, and yellow ones... Dogs are colorblind, BTW.
Yes dogs understand gestures, if you ever had a duck hunting dog you know that is how you communicate with them before you shoot, but they understand far more than gestures. They understand them as good as they understand our noises, and it's not just because humans make the same motion all the time. Quadrapeligics cant point but the dog understands by training a different cue.
And that is the point. Dogs we train. Of all the animals we have only dogs get training and take to training easily. And you can do the same with cats.
Sadly most humans are far, far too stupid to know how to train dogs. You only resort to negative reinforcement as a last resort for changing bad behavior.... Most people start at the negative reinforcement.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Other cases are parasites and pests, where being too strong and too dominant might be killing of the own host prematurely and thus diminishing your chance to spread to other hosts in time. Many diseases were killing off people very soon, when they came first into a new population, but within time, grew more and more weak, like the Syphilis.
For species which rely on cooperation and forming of close-knit groups, being strong and dominant might just mean that there is no group for you to fit in. Then you are the literal "lone wolf", prone to an early death and no chance to reproduce. For some lone wolfs, accepting a human group as ersatz wolfpack might be just have been the right way to survive.
This theory assumes that at some point, bold friendly dogs walked up to humans in an attempt to be friendly.
What about the packs of wolves that humans slaughtered when hunting for food and found a litter of puppies the now dead dogs were protecting?
I think this scenario would most likely be the first source domesticated animals, over a fully grown wolf who decides to become friendly.
Humans are filthy and obnoxious animals. They have little place in our modern society. I'm sick of being preached at, chased, and
having human garbage everywhere I go, including INSIDE of houses. Humans were fine on the farm. In our compact, urban society, humans are just giants sources of stress. I have enough stress in my life without your personal stress-maker making stress for me TOO.
The Bible says that humans are unclean and bad.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Anonymous Coward: noun
Idiot who thinks that making up definitions helps him win arguments.
Being prolific means little. Producing offspring is a waste of energy if it doesn't get to survive long enough to reproduce.
Producing three kids that will live for 50 years works about as well as producing a hundred thousand which will almost all die. All that matters is that your species is resilient enough to survive bad times, and able to expand their numbers in good times.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
It is no surprise that dogs were the first domestic animals, they were more effective hunters than individual humans and humans could give dogs sources of food that they couldn't access on their own (notably bone marrow from cooked bones, though also various processed grains). We not only had the dog before we had the horse, the cow, the cat, any bird or any non-canine mammal, we had the dog before we had what some would consider to be civilization. Hence by extending the hunting ability of the human, the dog could be credited with helping to domesticate the human.
Also worth noting that some of the very earliest grave sites from humans had dogs buried along side the humans; the dogs were that important to the earliest humans.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Puuuleeeese. It's like " No Child Left Behind " testing. Some one with a PhD designs a test to fetch a ball, and proves dogs are smarter than cats.
I just was woken up to give the kitties their morning treats, then I changed their litter box, filled their water dish, was was still given the "look " because I prolly didn't do one of these things quickly enough. Then, I geld the door open for quite a while while one of the kitties sniffed and considered if going outside would be better than staying inside.
Dogs smarter? Only someone that isn't familiar with cats would even think this.
Dogs have owners.
Cats have staff.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
not really, stop thinking of us humans as special and start thinking of us as just another species within nature and you'll see that us killing off badgers or saving pandas is no different than any other external force on those species.
Evolution = "shit happens, live with it" (those who can't, die off).
Even when the vet takes them away, he'll still lick them.
yet oddly enough, a strong argument can be made that the only reason you exist today to make such a bold statement is because of religion.
Keep in mind, most rules of sanitation we enjoy today can trace their roots back to religious practices, such as not participating in canablilsm (think of how many african cultures did this if you think it's just common sense), burying or burning the dead, not eating preditory animals, proper methods to butcher animals, etc. All these find their way back to religious practices.
Or how about laying out ground rules for living within a society, like not banging your neighbors wife, and not stealing, yup, all that stuff is just stupid if you want to live peacefully in a society.
People get too caught up in the supernatural portion of religion, and forget that the bulk of it is actually sound advise on how to live your life and get along within society. And yes, I'm aware that it's been used as a catalyst for wars, but come on, damn near everything has been used to start a war. Human kind likes to fight and is usually just looking for an excuse.
That's why passenger pidgeon flocks so large they take hours to pass and dark out the sky as they do so are still a pain in North America and Canada when all you want to do is sunbathe.
Wait no, fat lot of good numbers did them.
City by Clifford Simak ( reviews here) tells an opposite tale. Here are the opening lines.
The book was first published in 1952, and has won some awards. I read it as a kid, and still remember the impact it had on me.
Even if you're right (and remember we have a lot more control over what species go extinct or not), it's still very arguable that we can make 'good' and 'bad' choices, even if it's tricky to decide which. 'Good' would be ridding the world of the mosquito. 'Neutral' would be some other insect, and worse would be a type of animal which has many close and similar cousin species. "Bad" would be, well, I guess cats/dogs, or rare and beautiful species, or ecologically useful species which have no comparison elsewhere.
And yes, we are more special, at least in the sense that we dominate the planet, but also because we have profound intellect, creativity, and musical/art appreciation (and no, I don't believe in creationism or anything).
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
No, they don't. The article you cited indicated that silver foxes could be domesticated to have "dog-like" traits. It does not follow that dogs come from foxes, and the article does not even try to make this claim. The genetics of the matter are quite clear: dogs come from wolves. They are so closely related that there can't even be any question of it.
Finally when times were tough, dogs could have served as an emergency food supply and once humans realized the usefulness of keeping dogs as emergency food, it was not a huge jump to realize plants could be used in a similar way.'
Consider the venus flytrap: an excellent "guard plant" for defending your lair at night... and when you're thirsty, simply throw it in the juicer." (Maybe they'll even determine that once primitive man discovered how useful oxygen could be for fire, it wasn't a huge jump to realize that it could be inhaled as well...)
Mosquitoes have their role in the food chain. Killing off an entire species isn't a particularly good idea since we understand so little about what linkages are necessary.
> If it hates it so much why did it evolve us to do it?
Because it was not very intelligently designed.
Another idiot who can't comprehend that natural can be harmful. Please weigh yourself with natural stones then jump into natural lake from very natural cliff.
The only cultures that still practice cannibalism today do so because of their religious beliefs...
You missed the perfect setup!
In Soviet Russia, you don't domesticate dogs, dogs domesticate you!!
It's even there in the summary!
Millions of voices were crying out for the Lack of Smirnoff and the editors gave us one.
I for one welcome our new canine overlords.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I'm not clear on this one. Why would humans killing off wolves based on certain traits be fundamentally any different than, say, lions killing off gazelle based on certain traits?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Dude, I know a whole pack (pun) of patchouli using vegans who smell worse than Bigfoot's dick.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Wolves are social and very heirarchical. It doesn't seem a very far stretch for a beta wolf to replace one alpha for another. In this regard, Wolves already seemed suited to be domesticated. No "extra adaptations" were required.
IIRC (and possibly specific to North America) the beta also has a strong dominating personality, typically the mate of the alpha. It is common for the alpha to only put pack members of the same sex through the daily submission ritual, while the beta puts the remaining members (those of the same sex as the beta) through the daily ritual. The later's submission is implied through the beta's submission to the alpha. If any wolf is socializing and being submissive towards humans it is probably the omega, the lowest ranking pack members.
Like humans there is a wide range of personalities among wolves. Some intrinsically dominate, some intrinsically submissive. The later would make better partners for humans. The former, even if raised amongst humans as a pup, would most likely end up in the stew pot as it grew older and tried to assert dominance of human members of its "pack".
With Mosquitoes, I'd take my chances.
'Good' would be ridding the world of the mosquito.
No, that would be a terrible idea. A huge number of other species would go extinct because you just chilidishly took away their food supply so you wouldn't have to use deet.
You clearly have no idea what you're talking about.
Replace dog, with a cellphone and you could make a similar case...
Mostly, it was the cellphones that approched humans. Early cellphones that were clunky and not user friendly would likely be discarded by humans, those that were bold and user friendly were likely to be tolerated. In a few generations, those cellphones that were user friendly became distinctive from their clunky counterparts with touch glass, accelerometers, and retina screens. As cell phone owners, we take for granted that our cellphones can understand our gestures and requests, but that's something that even our closest relatives — chimpanzees and bonobos — can't read our gestures as readily as cellphones can. With this new ability, these cellphones were worth owning. People who had cellphones during a trip would likely have had an advantage over those who didn't. Finally when times were tough, cellphones could have served as an emergency money supply (you can fence them) and once humans realized the usefulness of keeping cellphones as emergency money, it was not a huge jump to realize tablets could be used in a similar way. This is the secret to the genius of cellphones: It's when cellphones join forces with us that they become special. Cellphones may even have been the catalyst for our modern civilization.
Therefore: Cellphones sought out humans and domesticated us? Stupid.... or is it stupid? ;^)