Hmm . . .

[omorka]

A tangential thought springing from my last couple of IM conversation with memeslayer:

Is the process by which a wolf's great-grandpups have become dogs a good thing or a bad thing? And in what sense (moral, ethical, aesthetic, or otherwise) is it so?

Comments

[memeslayer.livejournal.com]

By "process", do you mean natural selection, domestication, or both? I see them as being neither good nor bad.

Since wolves still exist, it sounds like you're asking whether the existence of dogs is good or bad. Is this correct?

[omorka.livejournal.com]

Not so much the existence of dogs as the fact that creatures who would otherwise be wild become domesticated by our efforts. (There's no "natural" selection involved in this process, although there is artificial selection.)

Is it really artificial?

[quantumduck.livejournal.com]

I read somewhere that dogs an humans domesticated each-other. Wild dogs with good social skills learned that early human dwellings were a great place to find scraps. Wild humans found that having an animal with hunting skills and great senses live with them allowed them to grow their numbers.

If anything like the above is true (and I admit I'm no expert, but it 'feels' right to me), then I think I'd hesitate to describe the evolution of dogs as 'artificial'. Sure, later on we got a little crazy with our selective breeding, but the first dogs were probably not part of a human initiated process of creating a suitable domestic guard.

I guess a big part of your question would be answered by deciding whether the expansion of human colonies across most of the ecossytems on the planet is good or bad. Dogs have played a big part in our conquest of new lands. My view is that dogs are a sad reminder of how pervasive our effects on our environment are.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

Okay, given your clarification, I ask: how does this differ from breeding up modern strawberries from their wild ancestors? (In case you've never seen a wild strawberry plant, the berries are tiny -- like 1/2" at most -- and fairly tasteless.)

[omorka.livejournal.com]

Strawberries in either form are only marginally conscious and nonsentient, at least as individuals. Canines are fully conscious and partially sentient. If there's an ethical difference, then for me it lies in that.

But I'm more interested in other people's reactions. It seems to me there are two obvious, and completely incompatible, intuitive answers to the question, both of which are fully valid for me. I'm trying to figure out which one is more common, and what justifications people use for either one.

[memeslayer.livejournal.com]

*shrug* The dogs usually don't seem to mind...actually, most of them seem to enjoy it.

[zhaph.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I'm not on your friends list. Domestication is a fun topic.

Are you familiar with the Russian fox domestication experiment?
The original idea was to breed foxes that were less aggressive for the fur farms, but there were a host of unintended consequences. I don’t think the foxes ended up even being useable as fur animals due to the secondary features (spots and such) that turn out to be closely associated with domestication. There was a cool article recently in Nature, and also a couple of related articles a while back in Discover.

The cool bit is that they weren't trying to turn the foxes into dogs, just make them docile. But what they ended up with is an animal that is every bit as good, or very nearly, as a dog at reading human social cues.

Not that it really matters...but the foxes are cute as hell.

[zhaph.livejournal.com]

Also, I'll add a vote for the "Dogs are a good thing" team.