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.