Was Darwin Wrong? [Wild Animal and Human Friendship]

Does he failed to win a Darwin award ?. Try try again!

So as you can see in this video:


A Brave Man Hugs Young Bear Like His Son in the River...

There's a fine line between being brave and being stupid.. In this instance we call him brave. Had the mother bear been in sight, we'd all be calling him stupid.

 

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I have to disagree, I think stupid applies in this case too.

 

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In politics stupidity is not a handicap.
Napoleon Bonaparte


You can't argue with stupidity.
Jermaine Jackson

 

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I recall reading somewhere that the domestication of dogs seems to have involved selecting for animals that retained juvenile traits like Fraggle is talking about to into reproductive adulthood. Paleolithic man probably did that unknowingly, by driving off or killing individuals that challenged the humans and didn't defer to them.

 

I saw a documentary once about how dogs and cats were domesticated. Their wild ancestors gravitated toward human settlements for food, since humans store food and are also quite wasteful. For all concerned, peaceful coexistence was easier than conflict.

What I wonder is: How did anybody decide to ride a horse? Or milk a cow?

 

I'd think that horses start out as a pony and children enjoy trying to do new things. Seeing the pony the kids probably for the fun of it got up onto its back and started the adults thinking of doing the same thing. When people saw how the calf was getting milk from its mother people just copied what they saw to calf do and milking the cow has become an everyday occurrence.

 

Not bears. That would be a very bad idea, for a juvenile bear. The more likely take is that the bear mistook the man for a juvenile bear like themself, a playmate.

Somewhere on the web there's an interview with the guy who trained the bears for this deeply silly movie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bear_(1988_film). His account of how much work it took to get the juvenile to approach the adult bear closely, and the adult to reliably tolerate the presence of the juvenile without injuring or killing it as it would have in the wild, is in the context of the eventual movie comedy gold - the entire scene would make a good movie of its own.

And that may be why bears have never been domesticated, and why domestication is a rare event: most animals lack the particular social structure modules in their adult brains necessary for even the first steps toward domestication by humans.

People hunted horses and cattle with spears and traps and the like for thousands of years; that brings one into very close physical contact regularly. Hunters very often end up capturing young animals after killing the mother. It's a small step from trapping and then killing a nursing mother (and drinking the milk, of course: hunters eat the whole animal, as a rule - eyeballs, brains, bone marrow, contents of the very useful udder, everything) to keeping the mother alive and raising the young at least to eating size. And the teenager proclivity for various stunts and shows of bravado involving caged or otherwise confined animals is no step at all - if you don't want your kids and their friends riding your ostriches, pigs, llamas, cows, big dogs, goats, etc, you have to prevent them.

The riding of horses almost certainly predates the wheel, in the cultures that adopted it, let alone the cart. The earliest evidence we have of horse domestication is tooth wear from holding a bit.

 

I saw an article the other day, in New Scientist or someplace, that speculated it might have been the presence of early wolflike dogs in anatomically-modern human bands that gave our ancestors a decisive advantage over neanderthals. It might not have been direct head-to-head warfare between us that did the neanderthals in (but given the human propensity for war, it can't be ruled out) but rather the fact that humans+dogs are much more effective hunters than humans alone. Our ancestors and their four-legged assistants might have simply out-competed the neanderthals. I guess there's some controversy about whether dogs were domesticated that early, but apparently there's some evidence they were, at least partially.

Yeah, that's the word I was searching for. I think that selecting for neoteny was probably a big part of domestication for predators like wolves. The tail-wagging might have just sort of came along with the package when our ancestors selected for individuals who continued to display juvenile social traits in adulthood.

 

The wild species they first equipped with bits as horses no longer exists.

Donkeys are domesticated from currently extant wild equines never native to the apparent regions of early horse riding (the bit marks in the teeth), and apparently thousands of years later - long after cattle and goats even. So oxen were almost certainly ridden by people (and used as draft animals) before donkeys.

From what I've seen of hunting with dogs, I doubt very much whether the early association with them involved hunting. A useful hunting dog or pack is in most circumstances a luxury - doesn't pay for its keep. They eat meat themselves, they bark and make noise, they run around and scare off animals instead of sitting still for hours at the right place, they leave their scent on and around traps and deadfalls and nets, the warning birds and animals recognize them as predators and sound the alarm, and they are far more useful back at the camp where they belong.

Garbage disposal, home security, and drayage (all over NA the nomadic tribes rigged sleds and travois and packs on their dogs, but did not hunt with them) appear to be the major functions of dogs in stone age cultures - plus an emergency source of food. With occasional exceptions among subsistence hunters, local and rare and specialized (honey foragers for market, say) a hunting dog is a modern luxury item that does not pay for its development, training, and keep.

 

Your analysis is an artifact of the domestication of dogs, which spoiled the attributes of the natural dog. A wolf is a pinnacle hunting dog, that knows how to live off the land. If a human was able to team up with a wolf or wolf pack, hypothetically, it would be to the human advantage to let them stay natural as pinnacle hunters. To be able to bond with the natural wolf one, would need put natural up on the pedestal and not impose any will upon him. Then he is true to himself and a natural asset. But this is not for everyone, with domestication allowing more people to us this tool, but with loss.

I own a Belgian Malinois puppy. This breed has one of the highest energy levels of any dog breed. It also has some of the best natural instincts; it can survive anywhere due to its weather proof coat. It can run all day, swim, jump and climb. They excel at everything, dog, and were designed as a herding dog, but are used for K-9, military, and protection and agility sports competitions. Due their endless energy and work ethic, they can be trained to do anything. They are not the smartest dog, but due to their ability to enjoy practice with their owner, they will put in all the hours need to excel at everything. I am not a trainer, so my dog is not the same as a $100,000 Navy Seal Dog who can free parachute out of planes. He is has become limited by me to be a sweet dog, who hold back his potential as a force of nature.

to make him coexist to my city life, he is losing his full potential.

 

Domestication of dogs allowed humans to gain control over dogs. This did not make dogs better in terms of their own survival. Domestication was more of a tipping point in the hierarchy of nature, as humans moved up the ladder. Not all humans can bring out the best in dogs, with domestication breaking a natural connection in favor of a willful connection. This watered down the dog but made it easier for humans to control the dog.

For example, in the near past, breeders have tried to mate German Shepherds with Wolves, to make the GS even tougher and stronger. The problem is this hybrid is too wild and is not easy to domesticate, even via professional trainers. It is a superior specimen of a dog, scary as hell, being smart and willful, but it will not take orders.

This may have been how dogs/canines were before domestication. One needed to use a different approach, more geared toward respectful coexistence, between two alpha species; build trust. The pre-humans learned to take advantage of the instincts of their wild canine pack mates, while learning how to be tolerated and integrated.

Domestication, was through human selection. The humans would have pick dogs that were smart, useful to their needs but most importantly, easier to control. However, a softer, more compliant dog has more upkeep, since he waits for orders and will not just take the initiative. Too make this new arrangement work, the humans would have needed to be more self sufficient with food, to the point of an excess, so they could feed their ancient friends/dependents, and not put themselves and the dogs into the position of competition/want. The dogs would regress to wild, if always hungry and deprived.

The pre-humans, through symbiotic coexistence, had learned all the skills of the wild dogs, until the student had superseded the master, and old master because his student. Dogs, through domestication, now begin to break from their wild instinct, learning cultural skills, that are useful to humans; war dogs. These new dogs also transcend nature. Many dogs have not only learned to coexist with humans, but some have learned to domesticate their humans; FeeFee is hungry and needs her tummy scratched. The helix of life continues to turn for the human and dog pair.

 

That reminded me of this:
A dog looks at his human and thinks, he gives me shelter, he feeds me and takes care of all of my needs; he must be God.
A cat looks at his human and thinks, he gives me shelter, he feeds me and takes care of all of my needs; I must be God.

 

The size of the prey has nothing to do with the size of the hominid hunter - the most successful hunters of elephants in Africa are and have been pigmies. The ice age mastodons and similar mammals were far too large for the trivial difference between hominids to matter.

Nobody goes swimming after fish in glacial melt rivers, or ever has. River fishing is wade foraging, at most. Where swimming makes a difference - along temperate oceans and islands, peninsulas, etc - the Neandertal's lasted the longest.

They could have used a bow and arrow easily, had they invented them. What they could not do as well was throw overhand - use an axolotl, say. Which may be why they never invented the bow and arrow.

Just published: a study proving (several breeds of dog) that dogs and owners gazing into each other's eyes both experience a significant boost in oxytocin levels in consequence. The amount of the boost in humans correlates with the length of the gaze. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6232/333.full

Apparently, this does not happen between wolves and their human caretakers.

 

The Neanderthals had a larger body size and mass. This size is well suited to cold. People with stamina, especially in the heat, will tend to be leaner and lighter; lower body fat and mass.

When the first pre-humans migrated north, during the last ice age, the larger pre-humans, like the Neanderthals, would have had an advantage in the cold. As the ice receded, the smaller and lighter pre-human, would be better suited, to the new warm. Larger, to maintain advantage, might decide to follow the ice and cold, northward. The problem is it would see the summers getting too short and winters to long for easy survival. The smaller, by being more adapted to the heat, could migrate southward, and would see longer summers and shorter winters, for easier food. There is an overlap in the middle, with the smaller having the environmental advantage as the earth continues to warm.

Relative to dogs, semi-wild canines will not follow the humans too far north, since their instinct for survival, in the context of warming, will sense danger. The lighter pre-humans, who go more south will notice their wild dogs will continue to follow, since food is better and easier. The humans can also begin to gather fruits and roots, allowing the dogs to get more of the meat they both hunt, making domestication easier.