Sunday, July 4, 2010

Vid: "Dogs and More Dogs" - Evolution's Canine Creations



Interesting take aways:

Modern dog breeds may have come from: 1) Humans taking lots of wolf puppies.  2)From friendly wolves that would scavenge/beg for scrapes from human encampments.

Dog and wolf DNA might have diverged 100k years ago.  That'd potentially mean that we've had dogs ten times longer than other domesticated animals.  Geez Loueez. 

How did we get so many breeds?  Well, a Russian scientist in the 1960s did an experiment to see how quickly he could tame silver foxes.  Selecting for the least aversive to humans they ended up with a batch of foxes with low adrenaline.  Oddly enough there coats became lighter, too since adrenaline is on the same hormonal pathway as melanin.  Rock the boat and one area and everything else is affected.  Awesome!!!

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please comment! You can comment anonymously! Please send ideas and topics to research and post on!!!