Should We Just Call Dog Breeds a Different Species? 497
Jamie found an amusing bit this morning on Scientific American where the author proposes that dog breeds are different species. Now some of you might recoil when you hear this suggestion, but if you read the article to see why he makes this suggestion I suspect you'll crack a smile and appreciate the elegance of the solution.
Dogism (Score:5, Insightful)
You know what's funny? Dogs know dogs. They can be big, small, tall, round, thin, with or without tails, brown, red, white, spotted, yellow, shaggy, short haired, long legged, squat, etc, etc, etc. There is a massive amount of variation on display within the dog family.
But despite it all, dogs know dogs. Upon seeing another, they'll wag their tails or bark for a rotweiller the same as they would for a terrier. They'll all roam about in their little packs, somehow instinctively knowing they they naturally should.
And yet, if I have a man with different skin colour, or even simply different clothing, other men will consider his life worth less than even the smallest dog.
Makes you think.
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And yet, if I have a man with different skin colour, or even simply different clothing, other men will consider his life worth less than even the smallest dog.
Bah, I'd fuck a nice asian girl any day. What's your point?
Re:Dogism (Score:5, Funny)
Wait, don't answer that.
Re:Dogism (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but will you smell her butt?
Wait, don't answer that.
Smell it? I'd lick it!
Re:Dogism (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Dogism (Score:5, Insightful)
Bah, I'd fuck a nice asian girl any day. What's your point?
Some people here would fuck anything that moves. What's your point?
Re:Dogism (Score:5, Funny)
He's looking for a date, apparently.
Re:Dogism (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Dogism (Score:5, Funny)
I used to fuck anything that moved, but then I thought, "Why limit myself?" Movement is overrated.
Re:Dogism (Score:4, Funny)
Movement is overrated.
Ah, a Victorian. How quaint.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Epifanny. The outside of the butt?
Re:Dogism (Score:5, Funny)
Some people here would fuck anything that moves. What's your point?
Actually, I consider mobility to be a deal breaker. It makes it easier for them to get away.
Re:Dogism (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people here would fuck anything that moves. What's your point?
Actually, I consider mobility to be a deal breaker. It makes it easier for them to get away.
All of you are really creepy.
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Nah! they are just desperate for sex...
Re:Dogism (Score:5, Funny)
I do not want to write the obvious answer, I do not want to write the obvious answer, I have to get that mental picture out of my head...
Why, why do you write about fucking asian girls in a thread about dogs, can you tell us? This is /., not SA!
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Sexist.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Dogism (Score:5, Interesting)
Birds are racist. Conure flocks will exclude similar animals whose only real difference is a different-colored head.
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That's not really racism as much as territorial and tribalism. You have to introduce new birds slowly and occupy the time of the more aggressive birds so that they notice the others but don't bother themselves with them for a while. eventually, they will forget about it.
Roosters are the males protecting the flock. That's why they are valuable even if your just raising layers. Your uncles scenario is more about pecking order and a threat to that order then anything racial or species related.
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Several animals, mostly humans have a natural repulsion to different looks. The scientific explanation is it is our avoidance to disease be it mutation or infection. I think younger generations have had enough cultural exposure to the different human races that we don't instinctively think of them as mutations, but someone who has had no exposure when young probably has a strong instinctive response. I wonder why dogs don't?..
Re:Dogism (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder why dogs don't?
My guess would be that dogs are less driven by visual inputs, and more by olfactory/pheremone stimulation. Dog breeds are highly varied in appearance, but since we humans are not driven by our olfactory senses to the same extent we are visually, we didn't bother to select for dog breeds that differed primarily by smell. In my experience, most dogs smell similar enough that I could tell they are a dog with my eyes closed, but not which breed.
Re:Dogism (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact you have it correctly; human brains are physically oriented towards sight while a dog's is oriented towards smell. They also have an organ for the detection of sex pheromones. Their ability to focus is less developed than ours, though they have far superior night vision. They have much less depth perception than humans due to the position of their eyes, but have much a much more directional sense of smell due to the design of their nose.
Not Dogism. Just sexual rejection. (Score:3, Insightful)
The article is an example of the pseudo-science to which Slashdot editors often link. Those who play video games when they could be learning about the world cause themselves to live in ignorance.
The article says, "... the only shot a male Chihuahua has with a female Mastiff involves..."
The male Chihuahua would like to mate with the female Mastiff, but the female won't let him. Only that. The female will show that she recognizes that the Chihuahua
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You seriously think TFA was pseudoscience? I think you completely missed the point of it, then. The speciation of dogs angle was just a humorous mechanism the writer used to mount an attack on intelligent design advocates.
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But try a gedanken experiment here. Lets shoot all the dogs that aren't pure bred Mastiffs or pure bred Chihuahuas, and leave just the two groups, with exactly the genes they have now. Do they become two separate species because they can't naturally interbreed in the wild, or only if they couldn't crossbreed without human intervention, or what? You could imagine variations such as raising two different breeds on different islands for a few generations and letting them naturally diverge more if this makes it
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Lions and Tigers can breed, and they are definitely different species.
Different Family's maybe? A Cat will never breed with a Horse, for example...
Re:Not Dogism. Just sexual rejection. (Score:5, Insightful)
Those are all good examples of the problems with most simple definitions of "species". It's fairly common for intro biology classes (or textbooks) to go into these problems. There are many examples of what are sometimes called a "range species", in which nearby populations can interbreed, but more widely separated populations can't. There are a lot of example along shore lines, for obvious reasons.
Dogs are often used as an example of a slightly different problem: nontransitivity of the "same species relation". Domestics dogs can interbred with both jackals and the common gray wolf and produce fertile offspring, so you might be tempted to classify them all as subspecies of a single species. But if you crossbreed jackals and wolves, the offspring are usually sterile, so they're different species.
The lion/tiger case is an interesting problem. If you google for their hybrids, you'll find that whether or not the offspring are fertile depends on the sex of the parents and the sex of the offspring. The genetics is impressively complex.
Actually, these cases are handled by biologists via a simple caveat: If two populations can be interbred, but in their natural environments they don't do so, they're considered different species. The interesting part of this to biologists is studying the mechanisms that keep the populations apart.
One well-known case is that most North American ducks can interbreed, and the offspring are generally fetrile. So they're really all one species? No, because, although most hybrids are seen in the wild, they are exceedingly rare. The main separation mechanism is female selection. The males tend to approach any female duck during the spring+summer mating season, because they can't tell the females apart much better than we can (except for a few extreme cases like wood ducks). The females reject most of them, but accept the advances of males with the right color markings. Thus, a female mallard really wants to mate with a guy with a yellow beak and green neck (and the right wing bar), and a male without those colors is just too ugly to consider.
The occasional hybrids in the wild are sorta difficult to study, though, and not much is known about how they happen. The most reasonable hypothesis ("guess") is that the female's color-specifying genes are somewhat defective, so she isn't very good at picking the right guy. But it's not easy to test such things, since you can't watch all the millions of wild ducks, and in your lab, they will mate (eventually).
One fun example of problems with overly-simple definitions of "species" was from a bio prof who wrote on the board something like "Two individuals are the same species if they can mate and produce offspring." He asked the class what was wrong with this definition. I looked around, saw a lot of puzzled faces, and when nobody spoke up, I said what I thought was the obvious answer: "By that definition, you and I are different species." He and I were both male, so of course we could mate, but we couldn't produce any offspring at all. He just grinned, and went on with the lecture about other ways the term is defined, and the problems with all the definitions. I think I got a few brownie points for being able to point out the obvious problem with a definition you see all the time.
But it's yet another example of why you have to be rather careful in how you phrase your definitions.
And another "of course" is that the creationist crowd tends to pick their own definitions of "species", using definitions whose problems support their views.
Re:Dogism (Score:4, Interesting)
So he didn't have any problem with little guys, but there was this one little terrier on our morning walk that was very loud and aggressive. Normally my dog takes the attitude that these kind of yappy dogs are just insane and should be avoided. The terrier bit my dog a couple of different days - the second time on the end of the nose; his owner never had him on a leash or attempted to control him and seemed to think this was funny. This was stupid of both the owner and the dog - mine could have almost swallowed this thing in two bites - he could certainly have killed him with one bite. The third time the terrier tried it my dog just put his jaws around him and pushed him onto the ground and gave a gentle squeeze. The guy didn't think it was so funny anymore but his dog stopped being aggressive - guess he was smarter than his owner.
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Only when the population pool is extremely small. I.E. within the same family (inbreeding). From what I understand, remarkably small population pools maintain genetic diversity very well. It's definitely sub-50 members, and I think it is actually in the teens but I'm too lazy to look it up.
Basically, following the "second cousin" rule is about as big a pool as you need to preserve genetic diversity.
I suspect the problem with Cheetahs may be the individual families are too spread out, and they don't interm
Re:Dogism (Score:5, Interesting)
I've no proof whatsoever, but to me it seems to happen in humans. When I think of people I know, the ones with diverse ethnic backgrounds are invariably taller than either of their parents and very often good-looking. Presumably this is because something like height is coded for on many different parts of the genome. And so if your father's small because of recessive gene a, and your mother's small because of recessive gene z, and you get a dominant A from your mother and a dominant Z from your father, then that's two fewer genes putting a ceiling on your height.
Yes, I know this is trivialising an incredibly complicated issue, so hopefully somebody with more of a clue than me can weigh in with the knowledge here.
Re:Dogism (Score:4, Informative)
Dogs and cats do, yes. I don't have any frame of reference outside those species, but I imagine that they would, as well... from what I do know, though, mixed breed dogs/cats typically have stronger immune systems and are less prone to some of the other genetic problems that plague purebreeds.
As a case in point... my dog is a cross... we're not entirely sure what her parentage is, but she bears a striking resemblance to a Harrier Hound. She's not pure, though... she's got some traits from an American Foxhound, and frequently gets mistaken for a Beagle... she's got about the same markings, but is bigger and taller. You can't really tell, though, unless you know the breeds, or you see her standing next to a Beagle (at which point you notice that she's about twice the size of one). All we know for sure, though, is that she's a cross-breed.
The thing is, dogs in that family of breeds have a tendency to develop hip dysplasia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip_dysplasia_(canine) [wikipedia.org] ). In spite of that, my dog has no signs of developing it. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen her get sick.
Likewise, among house cats, there's a pronounced difference in the immune systems of cats who are cross-bred. It's hard to tell among cats, because most of them are cross-bred by now anyway, but pure-bred animals rarely live to the ripe old age of 20... by contrast, the only cat I ever had in my life who didn't live to that age was a tabby, who developped stomach cancer at 14. Even 14, though, is very old for some purebred cats.
So yes. With my limited experience, I'd say that animals do experience "hybrid vigor". And probably for the same reason that plants experience it... they're a new biochemistry, new immune system, and the viruses and harmful bacteria* aren't adapted to it.
* I say harmful bacteria, because as we all know, there's good bacteria, too. I read somewhere, but I can't remember where, that there's actually more bacteria cells than human cells in the average person....
Re:Dogism (Score:5, Insightful)
Different species of parrot will mate. And dogs will mate with wolves or other canids.
I think the author's argument was perfectly reasonable -- I've made the exact same argument myself over on EvCforum years back. Dogs should be considered what is known as a "ring species". The classic example of a ring species is the Larus gulls. The British L. argentatus can breed with the North American L. smithsonianus, which can breed with the east Siberian L. vegae, which can breed with the central Siberian L. vegae birulai, which can breed with the west siberian L. heuglini, which can breed with the Scandinavian L. fuscus. But the birds in Scandinavia can't breed with the birds in Britain.
Ostensibly, ring species are rare, but scientists keep seem to be discovering that more and more species are, in fact, ring species, so I have to question how rare it really is. My Yellow-Headed Amazon parrot is part of a complex that could in some cases be described as a ring species, but is in general more of a taxonomic headache, shaped more like an interconnected mesh rather than a ring.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
You know what's funny? Dogs know dogs. They can be big, small, tall, round, thin, with or without tails, brown, red, white, spotted, yellow, shaggy, short haired, long legged, squat, etc, etc, etc. There is a massive amount of variation on display within the dog family.
But despite it all, dogs know dogs. Upon seeing another, they'll wag their tails or bark for a rotweiller the same as they would for a terrier. They'll all roam about in their little packs, somehow instinctively knowing they they naturally should.
And yet, if I have a man with different skin colour, or even simply different clothing, other men will consider his life worth less than even the smallest dog.
Makes you think.
Is it just too late at night, or does that sound like the start of the Lassie 2012 presidential election campaign? If you won, it'd be very bad news -- four dog years is barely seven months and the next campaign'd be kicking off -- we'd never have any time free of election adverts!
Re:Dogism (Score:4, Interesting)
While I see what you're trying to say, you neglect to point out that dogs have a hierarchy just like any other social group. Yeah, it sucks and humans should be above that but it's there with the dogs you use as an example.
Re:Dogism (Score:5, Interesting)
Social hierarchies in animals are just as dysfunctional as they are in humans. I saw some documentary where one of the younger dominant females kept taking food out of the mouth of one of the subordinates ones. It wasn't that she was particularly hungry because she got priority access to the best food. As far as anyone could tell she was doing because her status let her get away with it.
Re:Dogism (Score:5, Funny)
Sweet, the radios I planted in the wilderness tuned to Rush Limbaugh have succeeded in creating the first wolf-Republican hybrid!
Now if I can just the the ostriches to pay attention to the Joe Biden, Rahm Emmanuel and Obama speeches, my dream of Wild Kingdom: DC edition will be near completion.
Re:Dogism (Score:5, Insightful)
The social hierarchy of dogs is functional and aids in survival in the wild (well, more for wolves). The strongest one leads. With humans, it's all disfunctional social constructs.
You don't think racism aids survival in uncivilized environments? Wow, and you wrong.
Go look at prisons. In the face of clear violence and adversity, a member of a large enough genetic group can get protection and survival just by being a member of that group.
Re:Dogism (Score:4, Interesting)
In any case, these groupings are more than skin deep; it is cultural similarities that tie them together more than the color of their skin, in many cases the culture being a preexisting condition through generations of gang hierarchy that extends from the streets to the prisons and vice-versa. Racial grouping in prisons is much more complex than simply being visually identified as a member of a race, though I'll grant the moot point that color is the most obvious indicator of the index of cultural, historical, and socio-economic similarities.
Re: (Score:2)
One reason probably is that dogs use smell to identify someone. The looks don't matter that much to them.
Re:Dogism (Score:4, Funny)
They look the same in the end
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But despite it all, dogs know dogs. Upon seeing another, they'll wag their tails or bark for a rotweiller the same as they would for a terrier.
Own dogs much?
They fight, too. Even when far away from their homes or if there's no food or anything around to seemingly fight over. They can still break out in nasty, bloody fights. They'll do it just to establish dominance.
If two dogs get along on first meeting it's likely because they've been so thoroughly domesticated and behaviorally trained. Much like a more so
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
other men will consider his life worth less than even the smallest dog.
Well, speaking as a misanthropic dog lover, the lives of other men *are* worth less than the smallest dog. Dogs are so much better at people, it's not even close.
Re:Dogism (Score:5, Interesting)
What's even funnier is that dogs know wolves.
I'm lucky enough to volunteer at a wolf centre in southern England. At this time of year they're moulting like crazy and it's easy to pull of clumps of underfur from them.
The fun starts if you give some to a dog owner and ask them to show it to their dogs.
The last time I did that it made my friend's 4 dogs go nuts - one went very wide-eyed, another tried clambering over the guy to get it and the third begged for some. I've seen other reactions including frenzied barking and fear from other dogs.
So it seems that despite most dogs never getting to see a wolf (at least here in the UK, we shot our last wolf in the late 1700s), they still know full well what one is.
As an aside, dogs are amazingly different from wolves despite being 99.8% the same DNA wise. Only one season a year and permanent puppyhood - domestic dogs don't become adults, we've bred that out of them somehow. Wolves, on the other hand, change noticeably around 3 years of age. Dogs are also much, much better at picking up signals from people - and unlike wolves, they're always eager to please if bought up properly. A wolf'll only do something if it feels like it, or if it'll get something out of it!
And an amusing anecdote to finish - we used to take our wolves out to county shows, as they're socialied and enjoyed meeting people. One morning at the Kent show we let the wolves into their mobile enclosure and they watched intently as some Rottweilers came over, along with their (big-mouthed) owners. The blokes were going on about how their dogs could "have" our wolves easily, yet both dogs cowered away when Duma, one of our soppier wolves with people, casually gazed at them, raised her lip soundlessly, showing impressive fangs. Those Rottweilers knew better than to come any closer, much to the chagrin of their owners!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I saw a great segment on I think Discovery Channel about wolves vs dogs.
First, a piece of meat was tied to a length of rope and placed in a cage. Both the dog and the wolf ( on the outside of the cage, of course) were able to pull the meat out using the length of the rope.
Next, a piece of meat was tied to the rope, but the rope was then tied to the center of the cage, so no matter how hard the rope was pulled the meat would not move.
After a few tugs the dog ran over to the humans and looked to them for hel
Re:Dogism (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tame_Silver_Fox [wikipedia.org]
It is a very interesting project, actually. It only took 19 generations to produce a fox with behavioral traits roughly approximating those of a common domestic dog.
Re:Dogism (Score:5, Insightful)
More often than not, skin color is NOT the factor it once was. It is behavior that really drives the wedges among people. Go to countries outside of the U.S. and you do not see that problem. And even within the U.S., when you meat a black man who wears "common clothes" (a polo/golf shirt and slacks, for example) and the reaction will be a lot different from the same man wearing ghetto-wear or "athletic attire." Why is that? Could it be we associate a particular style of dress and behavior with drugs, gangs, violence and the like?
Take that a few steps in either direction and you will find it holds true most of the time. Ultimately, we are talking about the difference between friendly and unfriendly. Dogs behave quite similarly. Some dogs WILL attack other dogs. They WILL attack or kill each other over food. Even in family units it can be observed that, depending on the individual dog, a sire will kill his puppies if so inclined and given the opportunity. (It was a harsh reality that my brother had to face after his two little white jack russell terriers bred... the daddy dog became extremely aggressive and was constantly attacking the puppies... they got rid of him after he killed one.)
It's nice that you paint this rosy picture of dogs. But it's not completely true or accurate. It's not the whole picture.
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You sure picked the right name. I dunno how many people I know who could engage in a philosophic discussion about the social implications and relative superiority of sniffing each others' butts.
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Is the tequila for the chimp?
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I would think the chimp would need more than just a bottle of tequila...
News for nerds (Score:3, Insightful)
Humorous take fails to be humorous.
And not entirely correct (Score:5, Informative)
When we observe Ring Species we are clearly catching mother nature red-handed in the act of speciation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species [wikipedia.org]
These things are freaky:
A--B--C--D--E--F--G--A
Members of a ring species can interbreed with their immediate neighbors, but not with distant neighbors halfway around the ring. (So in my diagrom, A can interbreed with B and G, but not C, D, E, or F. Sometimes the ring develops a break, and becomes a line:
A--B--C--D--E--F--G
Then to have a speciation event, all you need is another break in the line:
A--B--C
E--F--G
There are ring species comprised of small creatures who only live in a small range of elevation around the side of a mountain, so their habitat literally looks like a small ring. Two well timed avalanches could be enough.
Re:And not entirely correct (Score:5, Insightful)
It gets even better.
You cannot produce viable offspring with a chimpanzee. Neither could your great-great-great-grandparents produce viable offspring with that chimpanzee’s great-great-great-grandparents. But, go back enough generations, and your nth-great-grandparents gave birth to an individual whose far-distant offspring was that chimpanzee. Pick any other two organisms, and the same holds — it’s just that you have to go a little farther back in time to find the last common ancestor between, say, a squid and a butterfly.
We are all members of a single ring species that encompasses all of life on Earth. It’s just that the ring is separated by time, rather than geography or physiology.
And now you know the nutshell definition of the Theory of Evolution.
Cheers,
b&
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Except there is no (solid) evidence of that ever happening. We have a lot of variations within species, but we still haven't found any evidence of that n'th great grandpa that was father to both human and chimp lines.
The point of the article was to make up a classification and apply it to dogs, so that they can suddenly stick that in the face of creationists and say "Nyah! Told you so! Haha loser!!!111eleven". It still doesn't fix the problem.
In fact, it points out a further problem with using fossil reco
Re:And not entirely correct (Score:4, Insightful)
There's no solid evidence that anything happened before we were born either. But you know, sometimes it gets a bit ridiculous to look at things that way.
Cheers.
I always thought the difference (Score:3, Insightful)
between race and species was species can't interbreed and produce viable offspring. So while small dogs and large dogs may be able to be divided, the line gets a lot fuzzier after that. So many years of cross breeding and inbreeding I don't think you can separate them beyond that.
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consider: 'species' A can breed with 'species' B, so are the same species, B can breed with C, so are the same species, so A and C are the same species via B, although A and C may not actually be able to breed. im fairly sure examples exist, but i cant cite any off the top of my head
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This criterion works only with livings which actually interbreed. It won't work for parthenogenetic livings or for livings like bacteria.
And even within sexual species it is problematic. Take dandelion (yes, this yellow flower) for example.
According to your definition of a species there are hundreds of thousands of species within the "dandelion" (taraxacum) genus.
Dandelion comes in three general types: A diploid one (with two sets of chromosoms), a triploid (with three sets of chromosoms) and a tetraploid o
Dogs are not a species (Score:2, Interesting)
Dogs aren't even a separate species from wolves. Further subdividing them is just silly.
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FTFA: Amazingly, right now Chihuahuas are still considered C. lupus familiaris, a subspecies of wolf. And calling a Chihuahua a wolf is like calling someone at the Discovery Institute a scientist.
Dogs aren't even a separate species from wolves. Further subdividing them is just silly.
Yup, completely silly. When I think of a yappy little chihuahua, I think "Osht son, that wolf wants to eet meh!! RUNS!!!!!1111eleven" and definitely don't think about how much I'd like to kick the yappy fucking football >.<"
That was sarcasm btw; just throwing that out there in case someone misses it.
Re:Dogs are not a species (Score:5, Insightful)
Canis lupis is just a remarkably diverse species. Calling chihuahuas and wolves a different species is like calling Gary Coleman and Bao Xishun a different species. That is, completely ridiculous.
Arguing over where the line is between species is pretty dumb anyway. Nature is not divided into nice neat categories like that.
Re:Dogs are not a species (Score:4, Insightful)
The point of the article is that for purely mechanical reasons big dogs can't interbreed with small dogs. From the definition of species - i.e. able to interbreed and produce fertile offspring they are a different species.
But the sperm from one could fertilize the eggs of another. The fact that the mechanics don't work out is like claiming that neutering your pet makes it a new species.
Re:Dogs are not a species (Score:5, Insightful)
Back in the 1800s there was this idea that all living things could be grouped into a neat, consistent classification system [wikipedia.org]. As it turns out, reality isn't tidily organized like a giant clock.
So what we're saying is... (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Creationists claim the science doesn't provide thorough enough proof of evolution
2) Evolutionary biologists should fudge their results to re-define something as being proof
3) ???
4) Profit
Something makes me think this scheme would just give creationists a big stick labelled "evolutionists fudge their results; it's all a load of cobblers" to beat the biologists with.
Re:So what we're saying is... (Score:5, Funny)
1) Creationists claim the science doesn't provide thorough enough proof of evolution
2) Evolutionary biologists should fudge their results to re-define something as being proof
3) ???
4) Profit
Something makes me think this scheme would just give creationists a big stick labelled "evolutionists fudge their results; it's all a load of cobblers" to beat the biologists with.
If a Slashdot reader has evolved to the point where he has no sense of humour whatsoever and is therefore incapable of mating with female humans, does that make said Slashdot reader a new species?
Something to ponder tonight.
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People that don't want to believe in evolution are hopeless anyway. What this does is move the discussion away from the details of biological classification towards facts that are more interesting when discussing evolution.
The fact that we are rather different creatures from mice is notable, but a discussion of evolution doesn't depend on the factors we choose to use to make the distinction, it works just as well to consider organisms and populations that are or are not capable of reproducing without ascrib
Intelligent Design (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sure, and I take that first commandment very serious. I'd hate to have other Gods besides me.
So every time those Jehova's Witnesses come by to talk about God, I'm delighted, I love talking about myself!
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Just remember if you argue that dog breeds are different species, especially the case of the mastiff and chihuahua, or the teacup yorkie and newfoundland, these different species are verifiably the result of intelligent design. Selection was involved, but not natural selection.
Human intelligence evolved naturally through natural selection. It is natural for humans to apply their intelligence, as this gives them survival benefits in the wild.
As well, to say that humans "designed" the evolutionary traits of various breeds of dogs is a bit of a stretch. It's more accurate to say that humans selected the most desirable traits and bred for them. You cross-breed until something unexpected happens, and if it's desirable, you figure out how to repeat the unexpected result, until it br
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how humans can manage to reproduce the results of a natural process withOUT some sort of "intelligence" and some sort of "design"?
Biologists already use his criteria. (Score:5, Informative)
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Bah, I've seen the offspring of a 4 kilo terrier and a 35 kilo labrador.
Sure, the little bugger needed to get on the couch to get his groove on, but he still made it ;-)
Puppies were the same size as dad after only a few weeks, didn't make him any less proud though...
Re:Biologists already use his criteria. (Score:4, Informative)
Defining species based on whether animals can breed is not a perfect definition. Fin and Blue whales have been known to breed, to form hybrid species, for example.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You're 17 degrees of separation out from her? That's sad. I'm at both 0 and 1. Once with her, once with one of her lesbian lovers. Well, it was in the same night, in the same bed.
But, ewww. I hate it when someone says "When you sleep with someone, you're sleeping with everyone they've been with.". I've never slept with Billy Bob Thornton, but he did work the camera that night.
Under some of the suggested logic, would that make me a superior species to you? :) I kn
No, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
So, domestic turkeys aren't a species? (Score:5, Insightful)
How much longer before a chihuahua can't breed with *any* other dog currently listed as the same species? Won't it happen eventually?
Domestic turkeys can't breed without human intervention - but they CAN breed with the help of humans, same as chihuahuas can (and have) been bred with large dogs when given a "helping hand" or "a leg up".
There's no such thing as a "pure-bred dog" - every single so-called "pure breed" is a mutt. The kennel clubs perpetuate the myth of "pure blood lines" because there's $$$ and ego in doing so. It's not like you can't get a phony "pure-bred" registration for a dog - as an experiment, people even registered CATS as "pure-bred dogs." Time magazine published an expose on this a couple of decades ago - your "breeding papers" would be better used to toilet-train the puppy than as any sort of guarantee of anything. And no, nothing has changed in the intervening years ... it's still a crock of horse manure that promotes cruelty to animals, puppy mills, reinforcement of bad genes, etc.
I don't even call them breeds (Score:5, Funny)
Whenever someone tells me they have a dog, I ask them what make it is. Try it, the reaction is brilliant.
Re:I don't even call them breeds (Score:5, Funny)
Whenever someone tells me they have a dog, I ask them what make it is. Try it, the reaction is brilliant.
You must be a scream at parties.
Are Dog Breeds Actually Different Species? (Score:2)
This article as written just so this guy can say, we have seen speciation, look at Dog breeds, and seemingly (in his mind have some sort of retort to Creationists). It wont work.
Digg it! (Score:2)
Terminology of rejection (Score:3, Insightful)
Humans (Score:3, Interesting)
The author mentions that the varying dog breeds would be thought of as separate species if found in the fossil record, and that's probably true. There are paleontologists who argue about whether a certain small T. Rex fossil is a dwarf species or a juvenile. The hairs to be split can be quite thin.
Given that, would the morphological differences between human populations constitute splitting Home Sapiens into separate species? I think not.
The only thing this proposal will do is give the creationist/ID idiots another straw man argument: "scientists change things to justify their point of view!" The truth is, those morons are going to cling to their dogma not matter how much evidence piles up against it. We've seen it before: the Earth is flat; the Sun revolves around the Earth; Earth is 6000 years old; et cetera.
Speciation is such a slow process that we can only see it in the simplest of organisms, such as algae or bacteria. But that's not good enough for them. They apparently want to see two chimps mate and produce a human (which is absurd), and proves that they refuse to understand the subject matter.
Trolls (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps serious scientists should stick with doing science, rather than refuting creationists and others with ideological agendas to push. Cause when you feed the trolls, the word gets around and you draw larger and larger numbers to be fed. Or in other words, one gets the impression that the refuters have an agenda of their own to push. Like the fine article, when one gets around to reading it, leaves behind.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps serious scientists should stick with doing science, rather than refuting creationists and others with ideological agendas to push. Cause when you feed the trolls, the word gets around and you draw larger and larger numbers to be fed.
That's an interesting strategy.
What if the trolls can do other things besides just make noise? What if they can get on your (future?) kids' school board and decide that your kids should be taught intelligent design and/or creationism as science?
Do you think it's a good education? Do you think it's a good way to spend tax money? Do you want your kids' time spent on this?
I think you're getting too used to Internet trolls and have forgotten how real-world trolls can make changes to society that you do not w
Brilliant analogy (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that's a great analogy.
Species are being created all around us. Right now (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course this guy is just poking fun at creationists, but mislabelling dogs as species would really help. For that matter it wouldn't help if they really were separate species.
1) Dog breeds may be a recent thing but nobody say them evolve either - it happended over a time longer than a human lifetime. If you're of a mind to deny these things then "I didn't see it with my own eyes" argument applies just as well here. Maybe God created Chihuahas and Great Danes. I slighty smarter creationist might complain that the selection pressure on most breeds was artificial.
2) Much more to the point, there are genuine species all around us at every conceivable stage of speciation. Heading towards branching, during branching, immediately after branching, long after branching, etc.
The best answer to a creationist who says "if it's true, why don't we see it?" is to ask "what is it you'd expect to see that isn't in fact all around you right now?!!". Anyone expecting to see Tigers bifuracte into furbys and unicorns in their own lifetime isn't worth trying to argue with, but anyone who realizes the timescale of evolution should realize that's not the case. The length of a human lifetime is so ridiculously short compared to the evolutionary timescales that we're essentially looking at snapshot of a movie.
Think of it this way: earth is 4.5 x 10^9 years old. If you had a feature length 2 hr movie of the whole of earth's history shot at 60 frames per second, then the movie would have 432,000 frames, and each frame would still encompass over 10,000 years of history! (4.5 billion / 432,000). And yet these creationists are expecting to see a whole movie playing in their 100 year lifetime...
So, realizing that our brief lifetime has doomed us to only be observing a snapshot of anything happening on an evolutionary timescale, the real question isn't why arn't we seeing it happen (trivial answer: your lifetime is too short, but rather if this is the movie of evolution we're caught in a still frame of, then what would you expect to see in this still frame? The answer of course is that you'd expect to see species caught at every stage of branching/speciation, which is exactly what we do see.
1) Species accumulating genetic change, living in subpolulations, apparently heading for branching: too many to list, but including things like forest/plains elephants, dogs(!), humans (assuming the races don't in the future start interbreeding indiscriminately). Even things like lions/tigers can still interbreed so (whatever arbitrary labels you want to slap on them) are really pre-branch rather than post-branch, even if we understand the amount of interbreeding in the wild to be close to zero (although it does occur).
2) Species that are essentially at the point of branching right now. A classic example might be horses/donkeys, which can still kind of interbreed, but not quite (their offspring, a mule, is sterile). Given that branching is more of a process than event (it's something that happens to populations, not individuals) there are many more less spectacular examples - I'd probably include some of those (technically) pre-brancing examples in this class.
3) Species that are post-branch (can no longer interbreed, but are still genetically very close) : any species withing the same biological genus, familiy, etc. One's that branched more long ago are more genetically different corresponding to biological order, class, etc. For a specific example, how about oursellves and chimps still with 98% shared DNA and only a few million years after having branched from a common ancestor.
So the still frame we're living in sure fits the bill - we see everying around us that we'd expect to see if species are created by branching from each other. OTOH if the creationists are right, and species are created by God then the number of species that exist along every conceivable degree of genetic difference (as opposed to isolated individual creations) is rather embarassing!
Of course these discussions are endl
TFA is far too bold (Score:4, Interesting)
The dirty little secret of biology - and I'm going to get kicked out of the biologist club for this - is that we've got no ****ing clue what a species is. Oh, sure, we go around naming them all the time, but we don't actually know what we're doing yet. One list counts up to 23 different way to recognize species (known as species concepts). Some of these are mutually exclusive! The author seems to like the Reproductive isolation species concept. But under that concept, the mallard on the east coast is a different species from the mallard on the west coast. But when does the mallard cease to be east and west? What about all those ducks in between? While there's no doubt that the east coast and west coast are functionally isolated, the point at which that ceases to be is very hazy.
What about montane species? I'm thinking of Dall sheep, in particular. Geneflow (interbreeding) between sheep of non-ajoining mountain ranges is incredibly low, effectively zero. But I don't know anyone who'd make the argument that they're separate species.
So then maybe the author wants to argue that they're separate morphotypes, and should be species on that account. What about isopods, where they have a greater diversity of form within species. Let's face it, every dog looks vaguely dog-ish. The same can't be said for some isopods, or species of insects!
The truth is what is, and isn't, a species is currently nebulous, fuzzy, and wishy-washy. It may be that species, as an idea, don't exist. That wouldn't surprise me.
Bad science (Score:3, Insightful)
The definitions and frameworks we draw in science should not be based on utility in political struggles outside the scope of science. It is fine to struggle against those who are ignorant of and activist against science, but we should consider that a separate activity from the practice of science.
We don't want the process of science to be even slightly defined as an opposition to some movement - allowing ourselves that would be to weaken what science-as-an-institution is trying to do.
Re:Is that why some Dogs fight, (War of the Worlds (Score:5, Funny)
It Makes sense, there just defending their spices! So Barking is just Alien language, they're communicating their plans for world Domination with each other!
The spice must flow?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Is that why some Dogs fight, (War of the Worlds (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Starting a war (Score:5, Insightful)
Definite proof that cats are better than dogs.
How many cats lead blind people?
Re:Starting a war (Score:5, Funny)
Assuming you're reasonably confident not to be bumping into the ceiling or falling down holes, "how many cats can lead blind people" would be 3. 2 would lead to blind spots, 4 or more would provide redundant overlap.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That's a bad bad idea.
Everyone knows cats are covertly taking over the world. It's just a matter of time before they all get the signal, and the humans are either enslaved or killed.
Sure, use 3 cats to guide a blind person. When the day comes, they'll lead him in front of a bus. When the bus stops because they just hit him, they'll kill all the occupants too. How else do you expect a cat to make a bus stop? :)
Re:Starting a war (Score:5, Insightful)