Interesting Genetic Research Published on Dog Evolution

by cantleave 227 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  cofty

  Adaptation is a term that is often misunderstood. It is a metaphor or shorthand that can seem misleading

  No individual creature adapts to anything. That would be Lamarkianism which was discredited by Darwin 150 years ago but still persists in the thinking of people whoe have not read about evolution.

  Cantleave got it spot on earlier when he referred to adaptation of a group or species but I think it has been missed.

  When there is a change in the environment individuals who carry genes that have effects on their phenotype that make them better suited for survival and reproduction will pass on those genes more successfully than others. Over generations this results in the favourable mutation becoming ubiquitous in the population.

  Sufficient mutations in an isolated population will result in speciation but even that is an arbitrary definition.

  The example in the OP is an excellent one. Even a very inefficient enzyme would have given a wolf a huge advantage in metabolising a new food source. Further mutations in future generations would result in increasing fitness through natural selection.
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  Band on the Run

  Well, science is not my strong suit. PBS, public television in America, recently ran an epsidoe called The Dog: Decoded. It traced the genes and traits in dogs. I learned how we are so obviously an evolutionary pair. They said that the same chemical that nursing mothers release is released when we pet dogs. I susepct to a lesser degree. Brain scans of dogs show that they are more oriented to human faces than to other dogs, We are so connected at so many levels.

  So dogs are a recent species.

  Regardless of how they evolved, I am so glad that they did.
• 

  LisaRose

  From National Geographic, I found it very interesting, and somewhat related

  Labradors may be the most popular breed of dog, but the most populous kind is no breed at all. That distinction goes to the humble village dog scratching out a semiwild living in and around human settlements.

  While a postdoc at Cornell University a few years ago, Adam Boyko became curious about the little-studied village vagrants. Though dogs were first domesticated 20,000 to 15,000 years ago, most breeds go back only a few hundred years. Perhaps village dog DNA might shed light on the long, early history of domestication, when canines were hanging around humans yet not under our domain. But how to get samples?

  As it happened, around the same time Boyko's brother Ryan had married, and he and wife Corin were looking for a cheap honeymoon off the beaten track. The three Boykos decided to merge their two quests. Adam—now at Cornell's College of Veterinary Medicine—­obtained a grant, then enlisted Ryan and Corin to spend their honeymoon traveling around Egypt, Uganda, and Namibia, befriending villagers and local vets. They collected DNA from more than 300 village dogs.

  When the samples were analyzed, most of the village dogs turned out to be as closely related to wolves as they were to fully domesticated dogs. Rather than being mixed-breed mutts that had gone feral in historical times, the village dogs had been eking out an existence on the human fringe for millennia. Their genomes thus reflected a state of early domestication, before artificial selection and inbreeding directed by humans had taken over. "When you are looking at village dogs," Adam Boyko says, "you have something more akin to natural selection, albeit in an environment that's managed by humans."
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  Larsinger58

  OR, as usual, they don't know WTF they are talking about!

  Scientists forget or don't know that God likes to play games. He likes to trip up people who think they are smart. So who knows what things God is hiding in nature that arfe misleading scientists. Like radiocarbon 14 is based on today's current conditions. But who knows what conditions existed before the flood when the water canopy was around the earth, which was solid ice? So so much of this is speculation based on models that they presume always existed or existed as far back as they think. So as convincing and "honest" as some of this seems to the gullible out there, the elect who deal with the reality of holy spirit every day and those anointed prophets like myself who have actually seen the Father in person just dismiss this, though we know others will be deceived by it. But by being deceived, they dismiss the Bible as being true and that costs them later on on Judgment Day. But those people are the very ones who wouldn't want to live under my rule anyway--their egos are too big.
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  prologos

  l-ars-inger 58. good point.! when we know of dogs with humans 10 000 years ago, that is 5000 years before the flood, 4000 years before the garden with the miracolous trees. conditions were different with the cosmic ray generating carbon isotops. question:

  Have you people figured out how an ice canopy would not crack-heat and melt with the tidal effects of moon and sun gravity? Did the ice crack counter- clockwise in the southern hemisphere? did the inuit get the igloo design from the idea of ice in the heavens fable?
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  prologos

  L --singer 58: as you can see there are valuble contributions here for your continuing fables. we are discussing here wolf vs dogs. carnivors vs vegetarian adaptions. saliva enzimes unique to meat-eaters, starch digesters.

  As you well know, under that ice canopy, dogs like lions were vegetarians. so they were perfect hanger-ons for the humans outside the garden of eden 10 000 years ago. Only the receding flood waters washed up those pre-digested carcasses and in rapid adaptation the meat eaters developed the enzimes to take on that feast.

  You are talking about jusgement: off topic! except if you mention that lions, doggies will become vegetarians again ( we hope AFTER they clean up the meat mess ( "shambels" King James version). will there be another quick evolution in enzime reversal?
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  cantleave

  Lars - you really must get a job as a comedian.
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  maisha

  in the aussie outback at my camp, we used to have foxes comng about.

  loved to see them at dusk they would come to gleen left overs and bones from the roo leg,,, or pig spit roast.

  after some time certain ones got very friendly to the point of touching them, others impossible to get near.

  interesting stuff for sure... change affects us all

  the biggest change for the world how to cope with plastics and chemicals in the diet.

  probably the final nail in our human coffin!.
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  maisha

  some of my research her ein africa is chemicals entering the food chain.

  very frightening stuff.

  even to the oceans. loaded with plastics...

  NOBODY is SAFE FROM THIS...
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  cantleave

  Maisha, I would be interested in knowing more about your research. I believe in some oceans, fish are filling up on plankton sized plastic particulates, resulting high morbidity and threatening the sustainability of fish stocks.