Dogs descend from wolves, this is proven beyond all doubt. Imagine then that from a wolf (you all know how they look like), the entire incredible array of dog breeds and looks has evolved. From the smallest freakish looking chihuahua to the big Tibetan mastiffs. This process happened trough Domestication and Selective breeding. Thats is also why basically all the fruits you eat today taste so sweet and nice, if you would go back far enough in time you would discover our ancestors ate much more sour kind of fruits and smaller ones, their current looks and tastes is the process of long selective breeding. Now, domestication does not need to occur by selective (artificial) breeding. As in direct human intervention. It can happen entirely by itself in Nature if it is of advantage to the survival of Life, this is called Self-domestication. That occurred initially, but the wide range of dog breeds today is a result of our freakish intervention in their evolution trough artificial breeding. Self domestication occurred naturally to those wolves long ago who became attracted to our human settlements, scavenging our trash and thrown away food scrapes, did not survive for long if they were aggressive towards us humans. Those who could tolerate our presence the best, are those who got to pass on their genes, and this only got more and more efficient in evolutionary time. One of the effects of this for the wolves, and in turn the dogs has been something called pedomorphism or Neoteny, which is that they to put it simply never mature beyond adolescence or basically the teenager state. They retain their juvenile state. This can be observed in their playful behavior, their facial structures, and so on. Now are humans domesticated? If we compare us to our ancestors, then definitely. This can be seen especially well in human females, because they tend to have smaller noses and facial structures, less body hair and so on, which clearly shows that human males preferred such features and in turn these features are passed on to males as well. If you want to take a look at what a more un domesticated human female might have looked like in the past, google aboriginal women, who have largely due to isolation on the Australian continent kept their original features well. Humans have mostly self domesticated via culture. Imagine also how women outside of tribal societies in pretty much every civilized society were kept as second class citizens, or the huge array of social classes and caste systems and feudalism we have created trough unnatural cultural means. More links below.
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 14:25:17 +0000
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