Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Some cool Information and insight on how dogs became Men's best friend

I guess I thought that dogs evolved from wolves but somehow I do not know what to expect. They are created by ... man .... intervention. If you are a dog lover you may already know about it, and if you're not, you may not care. But I love dogs and I really do not know most of them. We watched this show earlier this week, I think it was on National Geographic Channel, it's called "Dog is man made. Needless to say I thought it was interesting.
They guesstimate that it started somewhere around 30,000 years ago. Wolves are pack animals and they are predators. But people started to go to the group, wolves will follow them around. They probably started with the purpose of hunting with us (I remember), but they found that they could scavenge from our leftovers. So they started hanging around us more and more.
It is extremely important to us. Wolves have naturally much sharper than the U.S. itself, especially, smell. So if other animals can get close to the camp at night the wolves knew long before us that a predator is near and he would cry and it would wake us up. So it is for our survival benefit to keep around, even at a comfortable distance. So we do not seem to wash our face when we packed up to go to the track, well, our own prey.
Somewhere, sometime, a brave man or woman (or child?), Probably located in an abandoned wolf pups and raised them, and ultimately less attractive to see if others are safe to get around and feed. If they are safe, we kept them as our pets and fed them. If they showed that any threat to the group, especially the children, we take them and kill them. We then started the first ever genetic manipulation, together we mated only friendly wolves.
And the generation after generation, we stayed connected and the wolves the most friendly and hospitable to us, thereby increasing children are likely to have similar properties. We took care of them and they have protected us for our predator alert system. As time went on, we only selectively covered and our new pet friendly eradicated from the not-so-friendly ones. Over time, quite apart from the gene pool in wild wolves and more people-friendly version, the new dog.
At the time, well until the last few hundred years, kept the wolf-like appearance dogs, a type of wolf-dog (there is a scientific name, but I do not know anymore). We are friends. We made them our friends from our selective breeding them. even though it is true that way at that point when we pet and care for a dog, we have the same hormonal release as when we play with children and education, to a lesser extent I'm sure. But still, pretty amazing. And they both hormonal responses to us. So now we are just connected in a practical way, but an emotional way as well.
The one thing I really took away from the show are the responsibility we have in dogs. We have them (like wolves) from their natural habitat and away from their predatory nature, hunting, and made them dependent on us for food and care. We created them. They are no longer able, or intended, in their own survival in the wild. They hunt no longer (if they are to help us find not eat the prey). If left in the wild, they are left to the only way they know to survive, scavenging of human remains and hope to get fed by humans. They can not survive without us. They have a strong instinct survival us. These are the only animals that really are keen on us, we look to the eyes, and cares about us. We owe it to them to take care of it.

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