• neatchee@piefed.social
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    26 days ago

    The correct answer isn’t an option: thousands of years of selective breeding for the specific traits that make us happy

    • Denjin@feddit.uk
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      26 days ago

      Longer than that. The oldest confirmed archaeological evidence of dogs and humans coexisting is 17,500 years old, with potentially other evidence about 33,000 years old.

      We domesticated dogs a long time before we did the same for food animals (about 10,000 years ago).

      Humans domesticated dogs before we had agriculture or stone buildings.

      • neatchee@piefed.social
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        26 days ago

        I’m…uh… pretty sure those numbers you provided are neither hundreds nor millions…? They’re thousands?

        I guess I could have said “possibly as many as tens of thousands of years”? 🤷‍♀️

        Either way the point was the selective breeding, not the duration of time it took to achieve

          • loonsun@sh.itjust.works
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            26 days ago

            We analyze a 5-Mb genomic region on chromosome 6 previously found to be under positive selection in domestic dog breeds. Deletion of this region in humans is linked to Williams-Beuren syndrome (WBS), a multisystem congenital disorder characterized by hypersocial behavior. We associate quantitative data on behavioral phenotypes symptomatic of WBS in humans with structural changes in the WBS locus in dogs. We find that hypersociability, a central feature of WBS, is also a core element of domestication that distinguishes dogs from wolves.

    • Elting@piefed.social
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      26 days ago

      I think the vast majority of dog owners don’t really understand their dog. What their dog needs, how to read their body language, how to go about instilling discipline. The problem is that they are not cats, they need you more than a cat and are going to consistently take more work. You don’t really need to understand your cat for it to have well being but the same is not true for a dog.