Slashdot Mirror
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.
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?
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.
At one time I had my collie able to find the "red ball" among the blue, red, and yellow ones... Dogs are colorblind, BTW.
No, they are not colorblind. They can see colors, just not as well as we do. Dogs can see two different color 'bands', humans can see three, and certain crustaceans (the mantis shrimp) can see about 11-12 bands. Talk about humans being colorblind. :)
Early color movies only used two color bands, and they look surprisingly good.
c++;
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).
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.
In the old days, the dog-like creatures were classified in three groups: canis (domestic dogs), vulpus (foxes), lupus (wolf). The old line was that dogs and wolves were very different things. The consideration of the wolf as the forefather of the modern dog is a very modern thing, based on DNA analysis. It's now so widely accepted that lupus is now a subspecies of canis, so we have "canis lupus" and "canis familiaris".
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
There's a great article on this which recently showed up in the dog Agility world... They don't see the spectrum the same way, but they can usually differentiate between them if they're primary colours. Fortunately, most dog toys are pretty bright. And I've read that this spectrum isn't universal, either, just like humans have different kinds of colour blindness; dogs tend to show a preference for specific colours, and it's likely that those are "popping" in their personal spectrum.
If your dog was able to find an arbitrary red ball (i.e. one never encountered before), it might have been targeting that particular hue. If your dog was trained to find a specific red ball (esp if it could find it in the dark), it might have just been finding it by scent. And I wouldn't ignore the possibility that the "red" colour dyes typically found in toys might be distinctive enough that "red" actually is a scent. You were using the cue "red ball", but cues are completely arbitrary anyways.
Scent is a crazy powerful thing for a dog. I can pick up a pine cone, wing it into a yard full of pine cones, and my dogs will come back with that specific cone. Just the scent from my hand touching it for a few seconds, plus the disturbed ground where it landed, is enough to differentiate that specific random object.
Log in or piss off.
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...)
it's not a mystery. Dogs ARE wolves. gray wolves specifically.
the gray wolf as a species is one of the most historically successful of all animals, having at one time ranged across the entire planet, on every landmass, not just the cold northern reaches. one of the few single species that has done so besides humans. and also therefore came into constant contact with humans.
the genetic tests have been done and known for years. canines within the same family can crossbreed (hence some coyote hybridization, but the coyote itself could be a descendent of hte gray wolf), but dogs are subspecies of the gray wolf. dogs and wolves are like the races of man in terms of genetics. they are the same species even if the local populations look rather different.
the "wild dogs" you speak of fall into 2 types:
-most are properly called feral dogs; they are descendents of dogs that left human society. Dingos are the ultimate example, and the only one considered by science to be truly "wild" rather than feral. but it still descended from the wolf via domestication that is has since evolved sufficiently to erase
-there are a few species called "dog" that are NOT descended from any breed of dog, and thus not descended from wolves. they are also not related in any way to the domestic dog. they simply got called "dog".
--the Dhole is most closely related to the Jackel family.
--the african cape hunting dog is a distinct canine lineage, seperate from foxes and wolves and jackals. like the Maned Wolf (also a distinct lineage unrelated to any other) it is essentially the only surviving member of its lineage, the rest having gone extinct millions of years ago. 2nd largest canine in the world, nearly the size of the gray wolf.
--Bush dog is another seperate lineage, closest genetic relative is the Maned Wolf, though the link is very slim, given the large difference between the two, and the fact both are their own lineages. they are simply closer tied to each other, than to the rest of canines
--Short-eared dog: a very early offshoot of the fox lineage, splitting off before the actual foxes came to be
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Dude, I know a whole pack (pun) of patchouli using vegans who smell worse than Bigfoot's dick.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.