Posted on 01/26/2010 2:10:25 PM PST by autumnraine
Domestic dogs have followed their own evolutionary path, twisting Darwin's directive 'survival of the fittest' to their own needs -- and have proved him right in the process, according to a new study by biologists Chris Klingenberg, of The University of Manchester and Abby Drake, of the College of the Holy Cross in the US.
The study, published in The American Naturalist on January 20, 2010, compared the skull shapes of domestic dogs with those of different species across the order Carnivora, to which dogs belong along with cats, bears, weasels, civets and even seals and walruses.
It found that the skull shapes of domestic dogs varied as much as those of the whole order. It also showed that the extremes of diversity were farther apart in domestic dogs than in the rest of the order. This means, for instance, that a Collie has a skull shape that is more different from that of a Pekingese than the skull shape of the cat is from that of a walrus.
Dr Drake explains: "We usually think of evolution as a slow and gradual process, but the incredible amount of diversity in domestic dogs has originated through selective breeding in just the last few hundred years, and particularly after the modern purebred dog breeds were established in the last 150 years."
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
The difference is how the selection is done. If the fittest survive to breed, whatever fittest might mean at any given time and place, then it's evolution. If the ”less desirable” are culled or sterilized, while the “more desirable”; are allowed and encouraged to breed, it's selective breeding.
If the less fit and undesirable are allowed, encouraged, and subsidized to breed, it's liberalism.
Fittest for what? And determined how. They are the fittest for producing lots of milk and providing lots of breast meat respectively.
in this case it is actually intelligent selection as the dogs were already designed
“If the less fit and undesirable are allowed, encouraged, and subsidized to breed, it’s liberalism. “
liberalism punishes the successful more than it rewards the unsuccessful.
Darwin and his contemporaries developed the idea that species themselves were the result of evolutionary change.
So technically, so long as the dogs are all the same species (i.e. can interbreed), Darwin isn't proved right.
Or at least that's what I was able to get from educational television.
It is kind of cool, though, that two dogs can be as diffferent in appearance as dogs and creatures of other species.
selective breading is done by someone designing the outcome of the dogs.
"Fittest" is a bad word choice: what's really meant by the concept is 'survival of the fitted: the critter that's best fitted to its environment survives best. Domestic turkeys are ideally fitted to the environment of a turkey-meat industry.
So, what you are saying is that the way God did his intelligent design is by working according to the laws of evolution. Do you "really" want to go there??
Well, actually, Darwinian theory says that each instance of gene selection and mutation IS blind chance. But then “survival of the fittest” intervenes and selects those changes and mutations that are favorable, and the unfavorable ones die off.
—Bean
“’To my mind, that’s a HUGE difference, so much so that you’re really not studying the same thing at all. It’s the difference between a Blind Watchmaker and Intelligent Design.’
“So, what you are saying is that the way God did his intelligent design is by working according to the laws of evolution. Do you ‘really’ want to go there??”
No, that’s not what I’m saying at all, and I don’t know how anyone could draw that conclusion from what I said. Humans don’t breed dogs “by working according to the laws of evolution”. Selective breeding is, in fact, anti-evolutionary.
“Natural selection is selective breeding”
Yes, in that nature is doing the selecting. But when we talk about breeding, we’re talking about an artificial process. It’s humans rather than nature deciding what genes get passed on to the next generation. There are similarities between the two processes, but they’re really not the same thing. And if nothing else, breeding was not what Darwin was on about, and therefore the results of dog breeding wouldn’t prove his points either way.
Sure they do. Selective breeding does two things, it isolates a specific phenotype by not allowing breeding with other phenotypes, and the breeder chooses a set of characteristics that will survive, often by killing or neutering those individuals that don't have the desired characteristics. Evolution isolates a specific phenotype by geography (isolated ecosystems) and "chooses" a set of characteristics that will survive best under a certain set of conditions ("survival of the fittest"). The underlying mechanisms are precisely the same in both cases---isolation and selection, which is precisely what "evolution" is. The fact that one is done by a human agent and the other by "impersonal nature" is irrelevant.
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Breeding merely accelerates and/or exaggerates randomness ("diversity") in the genome.Domestic dogs have followed their own evolutionary path, twisting Darwin's directive 'survival of the fittest' to their own needs -- and have proved him right in the process, according to a new study by biologists Chris Klingenberg, of The University of Manchester and Abby Drake, of the College of the Holy Cross in the US. The study, published in The American Naturalist on January 20, 2010, compared the skull shapes of domestic dogs with those of different species across the order Carnivora, to which dogs belong along with cats, bears, weasels, civets and even seals and walruses. It found that the skull shapes of domestic dogs varied as much as those of the whole order. It also showed that the extremes of diversity were farther apart in domestic dogs than in the rest of the order.IOW, selective breeding brought out lots of diversity in shape and so on, which basically negates the idea that it was driven by a search for cuteness. :') |
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