You've demonstrated a certain special symbiosis between human and
canine populations through history. It seems that just as humans have
gotten into feuds and wars between each other, so have some human and
canine populations fallen out at various levels.
Maybe, when humans are hunters, canine
On 4/16/10, CeJ wrote:
Well, same genus (smile). They can't interbreed, which defines a species.
Actually you could cross a toy dog with a wolf and get viable
offspring.
CB: Yes, you are correct. Evidently, doesn't have to be a toy dog. By
the way, the test of intra-species is
Name highly intelligent social species that organize as groups and
cooperate to protect three successive generations in extended families
and clans (one key aspect being nurturing fathers in addition to
nurturing mothers). Humans and wolves come to mind. But isn't even
more fascinating that these
And here we see the co-evolution of gesturing. Humans have gestures,
wolves have gestures, but wolves do not understand human gestures.
However, dogs do. The example of the dingo is most illuminating:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingo#Social_behavior
Other forms of communication
During
This is an absolutely fascinating page about wolves and other wolf-like canines.
What strikes me most when reading it, is that the sheer utter success
of the wolves and coyotes
in being top-predator in all the places that humans eventually got to.
It also shows me I know very little
about wolves,
Tie these two sets of information together, and we might be able to
theorize some plausible scenarios for Neanderthal extinction. When you
look at Neanderthal vs. Cro Magnon, you have to ask why in particular
Cro Magnon survives and carries on the human line, but Neanderthals go
extinct. One
On 4/14/10, Carrol Cox cb...@ilstu.edu wrote:
I like a speculation by the aughor of The Monkey in the Mirror (I forget
his name just now) as to the origin of language. First, he assumes
(which seems right to me) that the cpacity for language was a spandrel,
not a trait in itself seleced for.
I wrote:However, as the canine research and
speculation gets at: apes are pretty much socially selfish and have no
extended social sense. Moreover, their grasp of meaningful gesture is
less than canines.
This could be a weakness in the argument if it could be shown that
great apes do organize
A couple more things about wolves, coyotes and dingoes. The wolf pack
in the wild tends to be an extended family group, but it is also
important to remember it is across several generations. Second, a new
pack of any of these species is formed between unrelated animals, most
usually a male and
If our predecessors developed full-blown spoken language (from gesture to
speech) while 'domesticating' dogs (from wolves), perhaps we need to
reconsider the possibilties for co-evolution, with one result being
full-blown language for humans. Consider that wolves have a more complex
social
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