[Zohaar818]

http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/Artic...t_Enigmas.html

May sound like a strange name for a thread but I assure you it's a serious question and one that should occupy the minds of Creationsist and Evolutionists alike...[check the link.and see what you think..].
The enigma of the dog is on the list of the world's 6 great enigmas, [among many] which still beg proper answers...

"The Origin Of Dogs – [Biogenetic engineering ?]

Now we turn to a mystery that nearly equals the pyramid, though it is a little known conundrum hidden in the mists of remote antiquity. Let us start with a simple question that appears to have an obvious answer: what is a dog? It turns out geneticists in the past decade have shown the answer is not so obvious. In fact, generations of anthropologists, archaeologists and wildlife biologists turned out to be dead wrong when it came to the origins of “man’s best friend”.

Prior to DNA studies conducted in the 1990s, the generally accepted theory posited that dogs branched off from a variety of wild canids, i.e., coyotes, hyenas, jackals, wolves and so on, about 15,000 years ago. The results of the first comprehensive DNA study shocked the scholarly community. The study found that all dog breeds can be traced back to wolves and not other canids. The second part of the finding was even more unexpected – the branching off occurred from 40-150,000 years ago.

Why do these findings pose a problem? We have to answer that question with another question: how were dogs bred from wolves? This is not just difficult to explain, it is impossible. Do not be fooled by the pseudo-explanations put forth by science writers that state our Stone Age ancestors befriended wolves and somehow (the procedure is never articulated) managed to breed the first mutant wolf, the mother of all dogs. Sorry, we like dogs too, but that is what a dog is.

The problems come at the crucial stage of taking a male and female wolf and getting them to produce a subspecies (assuming you could tame and interact with them at all). Let us take this one step further by returning to our original question, what is a dog? A dog is a mutated wolf that only has those characteristics of the wild parent, which humans find companionable and useful. That is an amazing fact.

Think about those statements for a moment. If you are thinking that dogs evolved naturally from wolves, that is not an option. No scientist believes that because the stringent wolf pecking order and breeding rituals would never allow a mutant to survive, at least that is one strong argument against natural evolution.

Now, if our Paleolithic ancestors could have pulled off this feat, and the actual challenges posed by the process are far more taxing, then wolf/dog breeders today certainly should have no problem duplicating it. But like the Great Pyramid, that does not seem to be the case. No breeders have stepped up to the plate claiming they can take two pure wolves and produce a dog sans biogenetic engineering techniques.

The evolution of the domesticated dog from a wild pack animal appears to be a miracle! It should not have happened. This is another unexplained enigma. "

-Zohaar

[Tormod]

It would be nice to see some evidence for this rather strange claim.

That dogs evolved from wolves is rather obvious. There is no such thing as a completely tame dog. Dogs can be very dangerous animals and do kill on occasion.

It is probably impossible to create a tame dog by capturing a wolf and not do anything to it. Keep the breed captivated for a few generations, however, and you end up with tame wolfs. Given enough generations they become dogs. Speciation of dogs is very doable by breeders.

[Turtle]

___I watched a show on dogs & their originins from wolves. They did a part about breeders of foxes (for fur) have found that over generations as the animals became less wild, the pelts changed to having irregular markings so as to make the pelts unsaleable; the more varied the coat, the more docile the fox if I remember correctly.
___As to 40,000 to 150,000, human remains (inclusive of tools, firepits, & other tools) do go back that far. The topic is interesting, but I see nothing requiring strange claims.

[Zohaar818]

Originally Posted by Tormod

It would be nice to see some evidence for this rather strange claim.

That dogs evolved from wolves is rather obvious. There is no such thing as a completely tame dog. Dogs can be very dangerous animals and do kill on occasion.

It is probably impossible to create a tame dog by capturing a wolf and not do anything to it. Keep the breed captivated for a few generations, however, and you end up with tame wolfs. Given enough generations they become dogs. Speciation of dogs is very doable by breeders.

So what you're syaing is that given enough time in human company, wolf DNA will change into dog DNA..si that it...that introducing wolves to dogs and keeping th em captive for a few generations allows them to 'evolve' into dogs.at which point we cross breed or inbreed to get diverse pedigrees?
Are you positing a certain type of extinct wolf more like shepard dogs or malamutes/huskies, than wolves from which dogs descended..or that we bred huskies with wolves to get..what exactly?...a poodle?..a St. Bernard..a spaniel?
What I find most troubling is the use of the phrase..'that dogs evolved from wolves is obvious'....when according to the geneticists and the breeders...it isn't.

If it is all so obvious where is the record of it being done... and by whom? In all the ancient art in which dogs appear they seem to already be diverse and specified and yet we have no culture describing in any way the method used to get dog from wolf...all we have are ready made dogs...

-Zohaar

[Turtle]

___What records do we have from 50 - 100 thousand years ago to consult? Is the domestication of Dogs any different than Cattle or Goats? Where is the Holstein in the wild?
___I admit there is mystery here, but not such as to require extreme explanation. As I pointed out with the fox breeders, the domestication effect on wild animals is observable. Moreover, as humans constitute part of Nature, our selective breeding of animals is Natural selection. New breeds of Dogs still occur & if someone is sharp enough to recognize them, they keep them for breeding.

[Tormod]

Originally Posted by Zohaar818

If it is all so obvious where is the record of it being done... and by whom?

Note that I said you get tame wolves, not tame dogs.

I wrote "they become dogs"...bad phrasing. That is not correct. I meant that they will become indistinguishable from dogs, although not genetically.

The fallacy in your argument is that you assume that dogs descended from wolves. They are genetically very, very close and have the same ancestor - meaning that they evolved in parallell.

For more about wolves and domesticated dogs:
http://canidae.ca/index.html

[nkt]

Originally Posted by Zohaar818

The evolution of the domesticated dog from a wild pack animal appears to be a miracle! It should not have happened. This is another unexplained enigma. "

-Zohaar

Not sure about that. Pack behaviour and impressioning are probably the reason we have dogs that are distinct from wolves. Huskies are very like wolves, dalmations have the stamina of wolves, labradors are utterly loyal to master, as are many of the guard breeds.

I see nothing wrong with the "standard model" explanation. A hunter kills the wolf, scares the rest of the pack away, or a cub or two are abandoned for whatever reason, and the cute little wolf cub goes back for a present for the kids. It is fairly rare for high level predators to be eaten by humans anyway, and only in the hardest of times would anyone decide to eat a small puppy.

So the puppy is given to the kids, and impressions on them, and then, perhaps, a fight starts, either human vs. human or animal vs. human, and the "dog" sides with it's pack master. The tribe notices this, and decides that they might get a few more pups.

After that, selection for traits is just the same as for every other animal species (except humans) who we have never even hesitated to breed for what we want.

Even without modern genetic theory, people have know that a strong mother and father will give, generally, a strong son of whatever species, and a fast mother with a fast father will give a fast son.

I don't see a problem?

[spennithorne]

Originally Posted by Tormod

It would be nice to see some evidence for this rather strange claim.

That dogs evolved from wolves is rather obvious. There is no such thing as a completely tame dog. Dogs can be very dangerous animals and do kill on occasion.

It is probably impossible to create a tame dog by capturing a wolf and not do anything to it. Keep the breed captivated for a few generations, however, and you end up with tame wolfs. Given enough generations they become dogs. Speciation of dogs is very doable by breeders.

I quite agree. Wolf traits like loyalty, defense of the pack, attention and obedience to dominant individuals, sharing of food, care for the young, guardianship of the hiding place of the pups, sleeping together at night for warmth-----all these traits would make wolves attractive to have as protectors and companions for early humans. It is clear that humans and canids have been interacting for a long time----40,000 to 150,000 years is the realm of time that Homo erectus and Neanderthal man were overtaken and during which time CroMagnon man (true Homo sapiens) arose and eventually dominated the earth. It could even be (a hypothesis that has long intrigued me) that it was partly the capacity for domestication of canids that gave power to Homo sapiens over and above their predecessors; and that the capacity for domestication arose as one natural expression (among many others such as more sophisticated tool use, domestication of fire, and cave art) of their (our) sharply increased brain size.

[GAHD]

Yes, there is also the point that symbiotic relationships arise quite naturally in the animal kingdom. Take the clown fish and it's poisonous companion/home by example. Even the bacteria that live in our intestinal tract act as examples of how species can evolve together.

[Boerseun]

Humans, having lost the fine sense of smell we had when the need for binocular vision drove our eyeballs to the front of the skull, shrinking our nasal cavities in the process, need to identify our mates in the hunt. Therefore, humans have the most varied looks in the animal kingdom. Humans are also the animal with the most facial muscles, using them as a very effective communication tool - think smiles, frowns, etc. - which are all universal. The tribes discovered in Papua New Guinea in the 1960's, having never had contact with anybody from the "outside", smiled and frowned as much as anybody on Earth - and was able to communicate in a rudimentary fashion with the researchers, using mostly their expressions.
Interestingly enough, the animal next in line for facial muscle count, is the dog family. They have relatively large brains, can be trained, and can react to commands, be it verbal, or visual (facial expressions). They were therefore useful in the hunt, where the pack leader (human) can command his pack of dogs, in the same hierarchical structure the dogs (ex-wolves) were used to.
In my opinion, it's just interesting that there's few animals able to express emotions facially apart from humans and dogs, and that they happen to have an afinity for each other. Dogs are the only animals apart from humans able to smile, frown, etc.