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This entry is published on Medium. You can find the entry here:
https://medium.com/@alwinian/dogs-in-the-wild-b67e9ac95a2e
A recent encounter with a bobcat while jogging had me thinking about how we must have domesticated our closest friends, dogs.
While we can’t say for certain, deeper thinking about the circumstances can shift the probability in favor of one scenario over another.
Dogs probably were not domesticated at a campfire as you would have seen frequently in movies or in portrayals of ice age ancestors. There would not have been a bridging moment where a human extends out their hand to have a hungry wolf take up a meal as theorized by countless of people and which is accepted as the conventional account of things.
There would have been no smooth transition in the final stages of bringing our species together, but rather a jump.
Here’s why I believe so:
While it is true that the two species (wolves and humans) must have inhabited the same territories and likely pursued the same prey. When a wolf is tossed a piece of meat, it is similar to tossing a meal to a coyote or to a raccoon, bear or to a seagull for that matter. It is giving a wild animal that lives in close proximity to humans food. They live near us, we live near them. We toss them food, they run away to eat dinner.
With repeated interaction, a specific pack or specific animal might have created a bond with a specific human group. That bond happens with all sorts of animals each and every day.
At the end of the day, an animal that is fed would have likely run off to eat the meal, perhaps going back to share that meal with its kin. It may have grown unafraid of humans and may have trailed a group of benevolent humans, but not likely would have crossed the final line into domestication and living with humans through simple feeding.
I would love for the narrative to be redrawn in a similar way that it has been for Columbus’ discovery of the Americas and other such events.
What seems more likely to be true, during the pivotal event that leads to domestication, is that humans came upon a young wolf pup(s) and they were raised with humans. Another piece of empirical evidence that points me in this direction is the fact that nearly half of the world’s dogs today are not pets and once on the street it is very hard to domesticate them.
The critical ingredients I believe in creating an initial bridge between the two species would have been:
I believe all circumstances for which a wolf would come into a human group are on the table, if satisfying those two conditions. While it is true that an orphaned, hungry wolf pup may have approached humans at a campfire and decided on its own to join the human group, most likely, it would have had to be (1) young and (2) isolated.
The first domesticated animal would have needed to find a mate too in order to reproduce, in the wild or with kin in this first generation. Coming upon a litter, may have satisfied this.
It was almost certainly not an adult animal as seen in so many representations of this event. Humans, more likely than not would have found a pup, a litter or known the mother of the pup and raised it, either as a pet or for food etc as we have with other domesticated animals.
Once the dog is raised in the human group, its subsequent progeny are subject to selection pressure by humans, and that is how we get the cute and cuddly dogs we know today.
As a last point, there are cases where the reverse happens, feral children are raised with animals, and it is almost always the case that a child is lost to human society and is raised with another species. It is not by increments but by jumps that a feral child ends up with a pack.
With over 471 million pet dogs and 900 million dogs on the planet, I wanted to share this and rewrite the narrative, as there seems so many speculations and misrepresentations about this event: the domestication of dogs.
The last step was not smooth, but rather a jump.
Alwin:
Just finished reading the the book 4% universe by Richard Panek, and would recommend to anyone interested in a casual history about Dark Matter.
To anyone who is knowledgable the reasoning, behind why dark matter is not just (matter between the seat cushions ie. dust and gas between stars etc), would love to hear more about this.
Personal thoughts on possible causes:
posted this question on Quora:
Hello Astrophysicists, a very specific question for you.
It seems that the Reimannian ‘rubber sheet’ model of spacetime is useful in describing phenomena that we observe. Some examples below.
My question is, what other exotic geometries may arise and are allowed by the fabric.
For eg. I can see a ‘polyp’ or scrunched ball geometry similar to a sock wrapped in a bedsheet during the wash, that would be inaccesible by most other points on the sheet, but still made from the same ‘sheet’.
This would be essentially a untouchable region made from the same fabric of space time.
Is this possible and has this been theorized? Curious to hear more.
Thank you
Queen Elizabeth sends email to US Secretary of defense in 1976 to open the connnection between England and the US for the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment (RSRE)
I think of myself as long lived. Growing up in a computer store, seeing many twists and turns within the technology space – I often bounce around as a tech veteran – then you see this, the Queen of England trying email for the first time in 1976 and realize that those among us are much longer lived.. having seen more.
Her email address was hme2 (no hostname to my knowledge). The system was made redundant for military reasons (assured retaliation in case of attack) and its design is ingenious in serving that task. Something I’d like to write about one day.
Enjoy the pic
Just a brainstorm. If the power is provided from above the center of gravity, then it will be easier to land. Sent to @ElonMusk through twitter. : )
Alwin’s design proposal for a smoother vertical rocket landing.
It was my first time at CES this year (2017) and was thrilled to see so many products and innovative ideas under one roof. I guess under any other year, things may be highly seasonal like fashion, but because we are changing as a society so quickly technologically, it really was a display of the next generation ahead to some extents, not just cyclical.
I have been reading the press – which just covered things according to flash/cool factor – but stepping back one, there seemed to be some inarguable themes as competition between two standards eventually leans a certain way. I’ll focus on VR because it is so much of a personal interest area.
This is forward-looking and may not play out in one-year but believe the long term advantages prove that one way of doing things is much better than the others.
Also cool but unrelated to VR was that so many smart objects were on view. Smart hairbrush, smart toothbrush, smart suitcase etc. It likely will be an option for those who can afford it. The predictions people made years ago will likely J-curve change into tangible change for the societies who are exposed to these new products.
The watchmaker analogy as it is known, made by William Paley states that a complex design, such as an eye, implies a designer….
For whatever reason, this thought popped into my head one day while in the shower*.
The role of ‘feature level’ in discussing how a machine is naturally selected and evolves is critical. The order of ‘features’ can be inferred by deduction and something which I didn’t really get until well.. today.
The Gist:
Eyes, or other specialized organs must of developed very very early on in the morph-history of species with eyes. The proto-species where eyes developed must of used ‘eyes’ in a more general purpose. Think protists, sun-sensitive algae etc, maybe even slugs.. I’m not sure of the biological details, but they are irrelevant to the argument. That these innovations come from something less specialized, something more crude and general in application on early prototypes. You can even take something fully specialized and re-appropriate it, say a dishwasher as a propeller for a motorboat, but the initial will be less specialized than later iterations. The novel part (to me) is that you can deduce the order of innovations.
Certain features cannot exist without the supporting base functionality.
The analogy and explanation is easier to see when looking at a car made with rain tread tires on it. We might look at the wheels of a car and see the treads perfectly made, designed to pump water away from the wheels and infer that this complexity can only arrive by a designer, but it doesn’t really belie the history of the tire (made pneumatic by michelin), the tires and bending wood technology before that, spokes before that, discs and ball and round logs before that. The idea which must of come for all bikes, cars or trains is the wheel which evolved very early on in the ‘protospecies’ / a more primitive preceding model.
The feature ‘richness’ of certain abilities allows us to infer which modification came first and set an order, by logic. That is very cool.
*Footnote: Showers are prodigious places for random ideas. Most people would agree with that. My theory about this is that no other place is as isolating or makes you stand stationary with little else to do for 10-15 minutes a day.
Larry Page was on Charlie Rose this week.
He comments on a bunch of current initiatives.
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12366