I was searching the fora for the last 2 years for posts from me and containing the words "dog" and "evolution." In particular, I was looking for a summary I wrote on a nova program. I get a list containing an apparent link to the message, but when I click on it, I get an SQL error.
Any ideas?
k
Linking to the olde board is one of those things that seems to be strangely browser dependent. I got hte SQL error via IE and firefox, but netscape links to this:
NOVA program about dogs [Re: ]
#145821 - 05/04/05 09:47 AM
My daughter and I watched a show about dog evolution on NOVA last night. It was narrated by John Lithgow. Very interesting stuff. The scientists interviewed scoffed at the idea that humans adopted, then domesticated wolves.
Their reasoning goes like this:
1) Dog training and selective breeding are very difficult. They require a lot of resources and some sophisticated knowledge.
2) While archaeological evidence shows that humans and dogs have cohabited for at least 15,000 years, genetic clock evidence indicates that the dog line goes back about 100,000 years.
3) Dog's brains are smaller than wolves' brains.
From these facts some researchers conclude that dogs became at least partially domesticated BEFORE humans adopted them. They suggest that as early human groups began to throw away garbage, some wolves filled a niche by becoming scavengers. (Scavengers generally have smaller brains than predators.) Those scavengers had an evolutionary advantage over the wilder ones who had to struggle much harder to get their food. Over generations, populations of these animals gradually lost their fear of humans and lived alongside them. That is, they became dogs in this process.
An interesting factoid from the show: the earliest dogs seemed to be playthings for royalty and looked a lot like modern salukis.here's the
link for others to try.
here's the link for others to try.
The link works for me with Firefox 1.5.0.7 under Windows 2000 Pro.
Well, this is curious.
I'm using Firefox 1.5.0.7.
Your link worked fine, though my original search failed with the error cited.
Thanks,
k
Beside the point, I know, but that is interesting about the dogs!
TheFallible, on the program, did they explain why the wolves, who'd hitherto been predators, began to evolve smaller, scavenger's brains? So long as it doesn't affect "fitness" (in the Darwinian sense of the word) evolved attributes are retained even when the environment renders them useless. Presumably then, there was some advantage in having smaller brains. Perhaps there is some kind of connection between obedience and low-intelligence, and the less-intelligent dogs faired better under synanthropic [1] conditions.
[1] I've been waiting my whole life to use that word.