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This article, like many before it, seem to think that we altered the wolf as some sort of project, a one-way manipulation. We have altered wolf into dog, but m
by sandworm101 5y ago
This article, like many before it, seem to think that we altered the wolf as some sort of project, a one-way manipulation. We have altered wolf into dog, but most of that was very recent. What is missing is how, very long ago and perhaps before modern language, wolf altered us.
Why do we find puppies cute? Is it because they have evolved to look cute in our eyes? Why then do we find wolf cubs equally cute? They certainly don't care about our opinions. We have done some evolving too. The humans that found wolf cubs cute adopted them. The humans that could best take care of and communicate with wolf cubs gained massive hunting and safety advantages. A spear or shotgun cannot wake you up when a bear gets near your tent. An adopted wolf certainly will.
Just look at any baby interacting with a dog. They know what they are doing. The babies that got along with the adopted wolves were more likely to survive the winter. Parents that allows their babies to play with the adopted wolf were more likely to see those kids thrive, their genes live on. We made wolf into dog, but wolf also made us.
- hn_cj 5y agoI don't believe this is true. Humans also find other animals, mostly mammals cute too. Eg: cats big and small, rabbits, squirrels, birds. Why? I don't know. Dogs/Wolf's are just one the animals that we find cute.
- zeckalpha 5y agoMost mammals find other mammal babies cute. I’ve heard it posed as an adaptive survival tactic encouraging inter-species care of young.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y agoI think it is more likely it's just a side effect of being wired to find our own babies cute. The traits that we key on for that just happen to also be the traits most other mammals key on because we're all descended from a common ancestor that was wired that way.
- kybernetikos 5y ago> adaptive survival tactic While evolving to trick others into looking after your young is on a relatively straightforward evolutionary trick, evolving to look after others is not a straightforward story. Child care is incredibly resource intensive and hard work. Evolving an instinct to care for creatures other than your own young is almost entirely negative from an evolutionary point of view, unless there's a big benefit that isn't obvious. The suggestion higher up the thread is that perhaps that trait lead to humans keeping animals that provided a significant evolutionary advantage. It's an interesting idea, but it doesn't seem terribly likely since other mammals have the same trait but don't keep pets.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y agoMaybe they don't keep pets, but there are many documented cases of domesticated and wild animals adopting other species' infants.
- kybernetikos 5y agoThat's exactly the point. They have evolved the same behaviour but don't have the hypothesised way of benefitting from that behavior.
- sandworm101 5y agoUnless our evolved traits to find puppies and kittens cute came first and that has transferred to other animals.
- ben_w 5y agoWhile that isn’t impossible, it puts in an extra layer of untestability. For example, I could also hypothesise we evolved to find cute anything fluffy whose eyes were large relative to its head because that’s what baby pre-humans looked like, and that is why we started petting baby other animals, and the advantages of liking dogs and cats was unrelated.
- janto 5y agoI love cats, but I can't see any evolutionary benefit to us from caring for baby cats specifically. It's more likely that our mammalian behavioural traits have influenced dog/cat neoteny.
- sandworm101 5y agoCats eat rats. They protect our homes from vermin. They are a valuable animal to have around. Raising them from young means they are attached to you and will guard your home in particular. And the "hero cat" on youtube that saved the little kid from the attacking dog. Raising that cat was definitely worth it for that family. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara_(cat) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara_(cat) "The dog was pulling Jeremy down his driveway when Tara, who the family states was very attached to Jeremy, tackled the dog and chased him away"
- janto 5y agoGood point about rats. The utility of having a cat as babysitter will have to be weighted against the risk of tripping over one, though. Tara is newsworthy because it doesn't happen as often.
- sandworm101 5y ago
- PopePompus 5y agoWe find animals, even cartoon animals, cute if they have some of the visual characteristics of human infants: relatively large heads, relatively large eyes (preferably not compound) etc. I think this has more to do with evolution favoring mammals that care for their young offspring than anything contact with dogs has done.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ren_engineer 5y ago>Why? I don't know Cuteness is pretty well studied, it basically comes down to evolutionary selection towards liking things that resemble human babies in terms of proportions. Mainly about the size of the eyes and heads. You can see it in cartoons where characters are drawn with big eyes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuteness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuteness