The Posthuman Dog(aeon.co)
aeon.co
The Posthuman Dog
https://aeon.co/essays/who-could-dogs-become-without-humans-in-their-lives
36 comments
I don't believe this is true. Humans also find other animals, mostly mammals cute too. Eg: cats big and small, rabbits, squirrels, birds. Why? I don't know. Dogs/Wolf's are just one the animals that we find cute.
We find animals, even cartoon animals, cute if they have some of the visual characteristics of human infants: relatively large heads, relatively large eyes (preferably not compound) etc. I think this has more to do with evolution favoring mammals that care for their young offspring than anything contact with dogs has done.
Most mammals find other mammal babies cute. I’ve heard it posed as an adaptive survival tactic encouraging inter-species care of young.
I think it is more likely it's just a side effect of being wired to find our own babies cute. The traits that we key on for that just happen to also be the traits most other mammals key on because we're all descended from a common ancestor that was wired that way.
> adaptive survival tactic
While evolving to trick others into looking after your young is on a relatively straightforward evolutionary trick, evolving to look after others is not a straightforward story.
Child care is incredibly resource intensive and hard work. Evolving an instinct to care for creatures other than your own young is almost entirely negative from an evolutionary point of view, unless there's a big benefit that isn't obvious.
The suggestion higher up the thread is that perhaps that trait lead to humans keeping animals that provided a significant evolutionary advantage. It's an interesting idea, but it doesn't seem terribly likely since other mammals have the same trait but don't keep pets.
While evolving to trick others into looking after your young is on a relatively straightforward evolutionary trick, evolving to look after others is not a straightforward story.
Child care is incredibly resource intensive and hard work. Evolving an instinct to care for creatures other than your own young is almost entirely negative from an evolutionary point of view, unless there's a big benefit that isn't obvious.
The suggestion higher up the thread is that perhaps that trait lead to humans keeping animals that provided a significant evolutionary advantage. It's an interesting idea, but it doesn't seem terribly likely since other mammals have the same trait but don't keep pets.
Maybe they don't keep pets, but there are many documented cases of domesticated and wild animals adopting other species' infants.
That's exactly the point. They have evolved the same behaviour but don't have the hypothesised way of benefitting from that behavior.
>Why? I don't know
Cuteness is pretty well studied, it basically comes down to evolutionary selection towards liking things that resemble human babies in terms of proportions. Mainly about the size of the eyes and heads. You can see it in cartoons where characters are drawn with big eyes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuteness
Cuteness is pretty well studied, it basically comes down to evolutionary selection towards liking things that resemble human babies in terms of proportions. Mainly about the size of the eyes and heads. You can see it in cartoons where characters are drawn with big eyes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuteness
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Unless our evolved traits to find puppies and kittens cute came first and that has transferred to other animals.
While that isn’t impossible, it puts in an extra layer of untestability.
For example, I could also hypothesise we evolved to find cute anything fluffy whose eyes were large relative to its head because that’s what baby pre-humans looked like, and that is why we started petting baby other animals, and the advantages of liking dogs and cats was unrelated.
For example, I could also hypothesise we evolved to find cute anything fluffy whose eyes were large relative to its head because that’s what baby pre-humans looked like, and that is why we started petting baby other animals, and the advantages of liking dogs and cats was unrelated.
I love cats, but I can't see any evolutionary benefit to us from caring for baby cats specifically. It's more likely that our mammalian behavioural traits have influenced dog/cat neoteny.
Cats eat rats. They protect our homes from vermin. They are a valuable animal to have around. Raising them from young means they are attached to you and will guard your home in particular. And the "hero cat" on youtube that saved the little kid from the attacking dog. Raising that cat was definitely worth it for that family.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara_(cat)
"The dog was pulling Jeremy down his driveway when Tara, who the family states was very attached to Jeremy, tackled the dog and chased him away"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara_(cat)
"The dog was pulling Jeremy down his driveway when Tara, who the family states was very attached to Jeremy, tackled the dog and chased him away"
Good point about rats.
The utility of having a cat as babysitter will have to be weighted against the risk of tripping over one, though. Tara is newsworthy because it doesn't happen as often.
The utility of having a cat as babysitter will have to be weighted against the risk of tripping over one, though. Tara is newsworthy because it doesn't happen as often.
Rats also attack and even kill human babies. We don't see it much anymore but a thousand years ago things were far more primative. Having a cat around, maybe literally sleeping beside the baby, could make a big difference
This article sounds very naive. Couldn't be bothered to read further after these silly questions:
> How would you stay warm?
Just like any regular outdoor dog. Find shelter, huddle together, grow winter fur and eventually adapt to the climate. Meanwhile, spend the nights in sleepless shivering fits - but survive. Evolution is brutal, but it works.
> What would you do when it rains?
Get wet! So what?
> What would you eat?
Whatever is available! In any place with a stray dog population, this quickly becomes obvious: Any other animal you can take on (unless it has guns), including other, smaller dogs. Forage for trash or vegetable matter. If humans weren't so crafty and well armed, they'd be yummy too. Stray packs certainly do have a history of nomming the occasional lost human (post-war Croatia for example).
> And most importantly, wouldn’t you be lonely without me?
Hell no. Most of the strays I've seen formed packs or sometimes pairs if they were strong enough to defend their territory.
> How would you stay warm?
Just like any regular outdoor dog. Find shelter, huddle together, grow winter fur and eventually adapt to the climate. Meanwhile, spend the nights in sleepless shivering fits - but survive. Evolution is brutal, but it works.
> What would you do when it rains?
Get wet! So what?
> What would you eat?
Whatever is available! In any place with a stray dog population, this quickly becomes obvious: Any other animal you can take on (unless it has guns), including other, smaller dogs. Forage for trash or vegetable matter. If humans weren't so crafty and well armed, they'd be yummy too. Stray packs certainly do have a history of nomming the occasional lost human (post-war Croatia for example).
> And most importantly, wouldn’t you be lonely without me?
Hell no. Most of the strays I've seen formed packs or sometimes pairs if they were strong enough to defend their territory.
> This article sounds very naive.
I am getting PETA vibes from this article actually. Plus the listing of pain management via acupuncture as a benefit makes me question the author.
I am getting PETA vibes from this article actually. Plus the listing of pain management via acupuncture as a benefit makes me question the author.
To be fair most of the questions were rhetorical, not naive, the answers were a few paragraphs lower.
As for eating it's not so simple. Stray dogs are still depending on humans for food in many ways, either by random people feeding them occasionally, them eating our trash, or hunting prey that human hunters feed so they can shoot it (at least in my country hunters are notorious for feeding wild animals in the winter which causes overpopulation which in the spring and summer they use as an excuse to shoot most of them).
I've had 2 stray dogs adopted - a medium size mongrel that was doing pretty well in the wild (hunting and begging random people for food), and then an irish setter abandoned in the woods and living in the wild for months. She was barely alive when my sister (who is a vet) found her, I've never seen dog that was so starved, despite being a hunting dog supposedly.
As for eating it's not so simple. Stray dogs are still depending on humans for food in many ways, either by random people feeding them occasionally, them eating our trash, or hunting prey that human hunters feed so they can shoot it (at least in my country hunters are notorious for feeding wild animals in the winter which causes overpopulation which in the spring and summer they use as an excuse to shoot most of them).
I've had 2 stray dogs adopted - a medium size mongrel that was doing pretty well in the wild (hunting and begging random people for food), and then an irish setter abandoned in the woods and living in the wild for months. She was barely alive when my sister (who is a vet) found her, I've never seen dog that was so starved, despite being a hunting dog supposedly.
In general, the death rate of wild dogs/abandoned dogs is very high, especially as puppies. Dogs evolved to have a willingness to essentially eat almost anything. They are obsessed with food sources out of necessity of survival. Wild dogs will eat basically anything they think is edible and keep eating it if they find that it is edible. Abandoned dogs are less conditioned to eat just anything, so they are much less able to survive in the wild (that's dependant on age of abandonment, though).
By evolving to also be extremely open to human partnership, they have much longer lives when living with humans because humans are extremely consistent and persistent food sources. Their "loyalty" and "love" is, instinctually, to our supply of food.
By evolving to also be extremely open to human partnership, they have much longer lives when living with humans because humans are extremely consistent and persistent food sources. Their "loyalty" and "love" is, instinctually, to our supply of food.
It reminds me of one of my favorite SF novel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_(novel)
> The fixup[1] novel describes a legend consisting of eight tales that the pastoral, pacifist Dogs recite as they pass down an oral legend of a creature known as Man.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_(novel)
> The fixup[1] novel describes a legend consisting of eight tales that the pastoral, pacifist Dogs recite as they pass down an oral legend of a creature known as Man.
It's one of my faves too, so many wild ideas in that book!
I've seen Simak's writing being characterized as 'pastoral scifi', I think that's accurate and we don't really have a contemporary equivalent to it.
I've seen Simak's writing being characterized as 'pastoral scifi', I think that's accurate and we don't really have a contemporary equivalent to it.
> One of the big surprises for us was that the gains column was significantly longer and more robust than the losses column.
Most of the purported gains are matters of freedom, whereas most of the losses are matters of life and death.
I don't know how dogs themselves would rank freedom against life if asked about it, but even humans often trade quite a lot of freedom for a hint of food and safety. Nobody has a right to tell other people to risk a much, much higher chance of death in pursuit of someone else's ideal of freedom. When you do it to humans, that's called a cult. I wonder why anyone thinks dogs will be okay with it.
Most of the purported gains are matters of freedom, whereas most of the losses are matters of life and death.
I don't know how dogs themselves would rank freedom against life if asked about it, but even humans often trade quite a lot of freedom for a hint of food and safety. Nobody has a right to tell other people to risk a much, much higher chance of death in pursuit of someone else's ideal of freedom. When you do it to humans, that's called a cult. I wonder why anyone thinks dogs will be okay with it.
It's funny, I have been wondering myself this morning about the eventual evolution of dogs before seeing this article.
Well, I didn't see humans disappear. I was just thinking how two intelligent species might co-exist: when dogs will eventually start walking on two legs, start speaking... because of accelerated selection pressure. It's amazing that a grey wolf could be turned in all the different kinds of breeds in such a relatively short time.
Well, I didn't see humans disappear. I was just thinking how two intelligent species might co-exist: when dogs will eventually start walking on two legs, start speaking... because of accelerated selection pressure. It's amazing that a grey wolf could be turned in all the different kinds of breeds in such a relatively short time.
Was just thinking if we managed to land on a planet that had more sophisticated civilizations than us, humans may be adopted essentially as dogs, just the way we adopted them as pets, and after a few thousand years, pets will be all we have ever been.
this sounds like the relationship between some gods and us
Why is it assumed "dogs" are derived from wolves, rather than both derived from a shared ancestor?
If one looks at feral dogs (dingos, so-called American dingos, the middle east strays brought to the west with soldiers) they look very very similar, as if some fixed point of feral qualities is being approximated.
While a Husky and Malamute both clearly resemble a wolf, the vague fixed point of feral dogs that, across the world, look so very similar (vaguely like a yellow lab breed, but not quite), makes me question the wolf origin.
(I say that having invested career on the topic)
If one looks at feral dogs (dingos, so-called American dingos, the middle east strays brought to the west with soldiers) they look very very similar, as if some fixed point of feral qualities is being approximated.
While a Husky and Malamute both clearly resemble a wolf, the vague fixed point of feral dogs that, across the world, look so very similar (vaguely like a yellow lab breed, but not quite), makes me question the wolf origin.
(I say that having invested career on the topic)
Would the standard feral dog color suggest an origin someplace sandy?
good question, but central American / Caribbean is lush vegetation, so another guess might be reflecting sun?
Could be, but[0] suggests native populations were replaced by European varieties.
Dogs were present in pre-Columbian America, presumably brought by early human migrants from Asia. Studies of free-ranging village/street dogs have indicated almost total replacement of these original dogs by European dogs, but the extent to which Arctic, North and South American breeds are descendants of the original population remains to be assessed.
[0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248397726_Pre-Colum...
Dogs were present in pre-Columbian America, presumably brought by early human migrants from Asia. Studies of free-ranging village/street dogs have indicated almost total replacement of these original dogs by European dogs, but the extent to which Arctic, North and South American breeds are descendants of the original population remains to be assessed.
[0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248397726_Pre-Colum...
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This reminds me of After Man: A Zoology of the Future, by Dougal Dixon
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/586677.After_Man
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/586677.After_Man
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cats or any domesticated animal
for that matter
Why do we find puppies cute? Is it because they have evolved to look cute in our eyes? Why then do we find wolf cubs equally cute? They certainly don't care about our opinions. We have done some evolving too. The humans that found wolf cubs cute adopted them. The humans that could best take care of and communicate with wolf cubs gained massive hunting and safety advantages. A spear or shotgun cannot wake you up when a bear gets near your tent. An adopted wolf certainly will.
Just look at any baby interacting with a dog. They know what they are doing. The babies that got along with the adopted wolves were more likely to survive the winter. Parents that allows their babies to play with the adopted wolf were more likely to see those kids thrive, their genes live on. We made wolf into dog, but wolf also made us.