Isn't there a grave from Jericho, about 10,000 years old, of a boy and his puppy?

Anatomically modern humans, not Neanderthals. Big difference.

brantgoose: We're out of mammoth but there's still some elephant left.

Didn't Elephant's Gerald just die the other day?

dittybopper: brantgoose: We're out of mammoth but there's still some elephant left.

Didn't Elephant's Gerald just die the other day?

My bad, it was actually the well known Basque terrorist, ETA James.

Genetically, there isn't much difference between dogs and wolves. They're pretty close to being the same thing, physically. But behaviorally, there is a world of difference... and that difference is hard-wired in their brains. Studies have shown, you can raise a wolf pup as a domestic dog from birth, and it will grow up to be... a vicious and uncontrollable beast. Because that's what it is.

The entirety of the difference has been the evolutionary pressures of Fido's symbiotic relationship with humans over the past 30,000 years. It really is that cut and dried.

Poo ed on the rug 18000 years before rugs were invented and then went outside looking for a mailman or car to bark at. Poor doggie. Lucky no elevators yet.

Wow, that was long before ancient cats started to domesticate wild humans.

domesticated the dog

Did it happen before or after the domestication of the gray wolf?

Loki-L: Wow, that was long before ancient cats started to domesticate wild humans.

Win

I made friends with a dog in Minecraft once.

Mr_Fabulous: Genetically, there isn't much difference between dogs and wolves. They're pretty close to being the same thing, physically. But behaviorally, there is a world of difference... and that difference is hard-wired in their brains. Studies have shown, you can raise a wolf pup as a domestic dog from birth, and it will grow up to be... a vicious and uncontrollable beast. Because that's what it is.

The entirety of the difference has been the evolutionary pressures of Fido's symbiotic relationship with humans over the past 30,000 years. It really is that cut and dried.

It is quite an evolutionary advantage for the dogs. Humans are good to have in your pack. We'll straight up invent gunpowder to keep the meat coming in.

Gaseous Anomaly: Mr_Fabulous: Genetically, there isn't much difference between dogs and wolves. They're pretty close to being the same thing, physically. But behaviorally, there is a world of difference... and that difference is hard-wired in their brains. Studies have shown, you can raise a wolf pup as a domestic dog from birth, and it will grow up to be... a vicious and uncontrollable beast. Because that's what it is.

The entirety of the difference has been the evolutionary pressures of Fido's symbiotic relationship with humans over the past 30,000 years. It really is that cut and dried.

It is quite an evolutionary advantage for the dogs. Humans are good to have in your pack. We'll straight up invent gunpowder to keep the meat coming in.

Thank god for this thread. I've been in that other one trying miserably to convince morans that dogs ought to be held in higher esteem than say, cows, for the simple reason of our mutually beneficial co-evolution. They came back at me with "but cows benefit from their relationship from humans, too.. they ain't extinct!". . farking. . . dumbasses. .

I read the other day that some fella figures we've been going around with wolves for closer to 100,000 years... amazing, really.
ah.. here's the link if anyone's interested: Link (new window)

gunther_bumpass: Thank god for this thread. I've been in that other one trying miserably to convince morans that dogs ought to be held in higher esteem than say, cows, for the simple reason of our mutually beneficial co-evolution. They came back at me with "but cows benefit from their relationship from humans, too.. they ain't extinct!". . farking. . . dumbasses. .

I read the other day that some fella figures we've been going around with wolves for closer to 100,000 years... amazing, really.
ah.. here's the link if anyone's interested: Link (new window)

Ehhh I'm going to have to agree with the "morans". If you want to talk about which species has benefited most from its co-evolution with humans you pretty much have to choose cows. If the point of a species is to procreate and spread across the earth, then cows started in a small area in the Middle East and have spread across the world, now numbering over a billion.

Dogs help us hunt in the past, and now mostly just give us something to pet when we come home from work. Cows basically feed most of the nations on the earth and are one of the driving forces behind the expansion of civilization as we know it.

That doesn't mean I don't think all relationships between animals and humans are amazing, dogs included. But don't underestimate the historic importance of those dumbass cows!

Barry McCackiner: Ehhh I'm going to have to agree with the "morans". If you want to talk about which species has benefited most from its co-evolution with humans you pretty much have to choose cows. If the point of a species is to procreate and spread across the earth, then cows started in a small area in the Middle East and have spread across the world, now numbering over a billion.

Dogs help us hunt in the past, and now mostly just give us something to pet when we come home from work. Cows basically feed most of the nations on the earth and are one of the driving forces behind the expansion of civilization as we know it.

That doesn't mean I don't think all relationships between animals and humans are amazing, dogs included. But don't underestimate the historic importance of those dumbass cows!

Hard to say one did better than the other. Both are pretty much set for the foreseeable future. Kind of goes for any animal or plant we decide to domesticate for our benefit.

Chickens won't die out any time soon. Neither will corn or tobacco or sheep or lab rats or canadians or camels or . . .

Mr_Fabulous: Genetically, there isn't much difference between dogs and wolves. They're pretty close to being the same thing, physically. But behaviorally, there is a world of difference... and that difference is hard-wired in their brains. Studies have shown, you can raise a wolf pup as a domestic dog from birth, and it will grow up to be... a vicious and uncontrollable beast. Because that's what it is.

The entirety of the difference has been the evolutionary pressures of Fido's symbiotic relationship with humans over the past 30,000 years. It really is that cut and dried.

I'd probably change the "vicious beast" to more of "very people-shy critter with a very small set of people truly accepted as a pack" (I've actually been on small ethology studies of human-habituated wolf packs--if anything, purebred human-habituated wolves are actually quite a bit more reserved than dogs) but otherwise, agreed.

And pretty much it boils down to two essential factors, at that (yes, we're starting to figure out some of the genetics involved in domestication):

a) Domesticated dogs (versus wolves) tend to have a lot of neotenous personality traits--that is, in simple language, dogs tend to retain a lot of personality traits that are sort of "puppy personality traits" compared to non-domesticated wolves. This has even been linked genetically to some of the differences in appearances between "primitive breeds" of dogs and gray wolves (floppy ears, spotted coats, differences in eye colour, etc.)--turns out these tend to be linked to gene sets related to dopamine production.

b) Domesticated dogs (versus wolves) tend to be better at "human ethology"--that is, reading our body language and social signals--and have even adopted their own ethology (animal psychology/sociology) to be more readable to us.

As a minor aside, domestication actually does NOT take that long in practice, and you tend to get "domesticated animal traits" like lowered/floppy ears and spotted coats VERY quickly if you breed even wild animals for tractability. The "Russian dog-fox experiment" (wherein Russian silver foxes were domesticated--originally for fur farms; it didn't work so well in practice as their foxes started getting a lot of "doggy" traits like spotted coats) showed this can happen in as few as five or six generations; Norway rats have been domesticated at least twice independently (once in China, once among British "ratters") and also had the hooded trait and "Dumbo" trait (the rat equivalent to lop bunnies or floppy ears in dogs) show up very rapidly when bred for tractability (Dumbo rats are still known as being especially friendly for fancy rats).

Complicating matters even more--it's entirely possible that particularly social wolves and hominids (us and Neandertals) "co-domesticated" each other; one theory about canine domestication is similar to how felines self-domesticated in that they started hanging around human midden heaps and were found attractive by hunters. (In other words, there well could have been some self-selection going on already, and by the time humans got around to actually raising puppies from the friendly wolves there were already genes for tractability and sociability in the gene pool, so to speak. If the local hominids got the idea to breed the friendly puppies together, it probably wouldn't have taken too many generations to turn a wolf into a domestic dog.)

And yes, I did note that felines self-domesticated; pretty much they're really the only species we have evidence for (along with, possibly, dogs) where they pretty explicitly chose to hang around us. (It's now thought that felines likely self-domesticated around the time that humans were developing agriculture in the Middle East; closest genetic wild relatives to domestic cats are populations of African wildcats near Israel and Syria, rather than in Egypt. It's entirely possible that kitties chose to be with us around the time that the old Sumerian civilisation started getting going fairly well, in fact.)

watson.t.hamster: Barry McCackiner: Ehhh I'm going to have to agree with the "morans". If you want to talk about which species has benefited most from its co-evolution with humans you pretty much have to choose cows. If the point of a species is to procreate and spread across the earth, then cows started in a small area in the Middle East and have spread across the world, now numbering over a billion.

Dogs help us hunt in the past, and now mostly just give us something to pet when we come home from work. Cows basically feed most of the nations on the earth and are one of the driving forces behind the expansion of civilization as we know it.

That doesn't mean I don't think all relationships between animals and humans are amazing, dogs included. But don't underestimate the historic importance of those dumbass cows!

Hard to say one did better than the other. Both are pretty much set for the foreseeable future. Kind of goes for any animal or plant we decide to domesticate for our benefit.

Chickens won't die out any time soon. Neither will corn or tobacco or sheep or lab rats or canadians or camels or . . .

I'd agree on chickens and camels, at least--both of those are actually surprisingly close to their wild ancestors (probably closer even than housecats or domesticated Norway rats).

Domesticated Norway rats tend to be outcompeted in the wild by their wild ancestors, which is pretty impressive if you realise that the main strains of domesticated Norway rats used in labs have a history of domestication of about 150 years (domesticated rats are pretty neat in a way as there's evidence they've been repeatedly domesticated)--that said, in controlled studies (where they've not had interference from wild Norway rats) they've eventually figured out how to be proper "sewer rats" again. Then again, with lab strains of domesticated rats, domestication is fairly recent...

Propogation of feral corn would be highly dependent on a) pollination and b) finding critters who can eat corn off of the cob and process it through their guts--particularly true in the case of field corn. I'd actually argue that corn is one of the less likely plants to survive in a feral state in post-human society...

(Believe it or not, corn is probably the most modified of domestic crops--enough that scientists have actually had some issues determining WHAT plant is the likely genetic ancestor of corn; it's taken quite a bit of anthropological, evolutionary and genetic studies to actually determine the likely ancestor is teosinte...which doesn't look a hell of a lot like corn on the cob. Mesoamericans, and later Southwestern and Eastern First Nations, did a lot of selective breeding over the 8000 years or so that the plant's been domesticated...And even to process it to eat it, most "heritage" varieties and field-corn varieties required nixtamalisation--basically soaking corn kernels in lye to get the corn husks off and some of the proteins denatured enough to be digestible and not give you pellagra in trying to live off corn and beans as primary staples. Corn, even more so than cows, are dependent on humans to a deep degree.)

Great Porn Dragon:

It doesn't matter if they can also survive in the wild. Having humans take care of them is part of their survival strategy.

Darwin didn't say evolution was all about successfully passing on your genes *But you have to do it without help.

Wild wolves are pretty tough, and face extinction. Domesticated chickens are dumb and frail, and won't go extinct as long as humans are around.

There isn't one path to success. Latching on to humans is one of many but it does seem to be one of the better ones.

So as long as H. sapiens survives so will all our slave-animals. Looking at their stats against their wild cousins when they'll never meet let alone compete with them is pointless.