• neatchee@piefed.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    112
    ·
    3 months ago

    The correct answer isn’t an option: thousands of years of selective breeding for the specific traits that make us happy

    • Denjin@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      21
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      3 months ago

      Longer than that. The oldest confirmed archaeological evidence of dogs and humans coexisting is 17,500 years old, with potentially other evidence about 33,000 years old.

      We domesticated dogs a long time before we did the same for food animals (about 10,000 years ago).

      Humans domesticated dogs before we had agriculture or stone buildings.

      • neatchee@piefed.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        37
        ·
        3 months ago

        I’m…uh… pretty sure those numbers you provided are neither hundreds nor millions…? They’re thousands?

        I guess I could have said “possibly as many as tens of thousands of years”? 🤷‍♀️

        Either way the point was the selective breeding, not the duration of time it took to achieve

  • betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    33
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    3 months ago

    Dogs are great, they’re our hairy little friends who don’t really know what’s going on but are happy to be included.

  • Honytawk@feddit.nl
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    17
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    3 months ago

    I love dogs. They are great pets.

    But dog people really are the worst.

    • Elting@piefed.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      3 months ago

      I think the vast majority of dog owners don’t really understand their dog. What their dog needs, how to read their body language, how to go about instilling discipline. The problem is that they are not cats, they need you more than a cat and are going to consistently take more work. You don’t really need to understand your cat for it to have well being but the same is not true for a dog.

    • Squirrelsdrivemenuts@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      3 months ago

      In my experience dog people are mostly friendly, love spending time outdoors and are only slightly awkward when saying hello to your dog instead of you. If the worst thing about me (a dog person) is that I sometimes fantasize aloud about my dog’s very human feelings I feel I can live with that.

  • Fleur_@aussie.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    3 months ago

    Thousands of years of selective breeding arguably taking away their free will and ability to choose love and companionship?

          • loonsun@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            10
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            3 months ago

            We analyze a 5-Mb genomic region on chromosome 6 previously found to be under positive selection in domestic dog breeds. Deletion of this region in humans is linked to Williams-Beuren syndrome (WBS), a multisystem congenital disorder characterized by hypersocial behavior. We associate quantitative data on behavioral phenotypes symptomatic of WBS in humans with structural changes in the WBS locus in dogs. We find that hypersociability, a central feature of WBS, is also a core element of domestication that distinguishes dogs from wolves.