6 ms·

Mythology could help demystify dog domestication

54 points by Petiver 4y ago

OJFord 4y ago
Betteridge's law of headlines (if it's a question the answer's no) needs an extension for science journalism: if something 'could' do something, it won't. Always seems like 'predicting 17 of the last 3 recessions' - on the off-chance X thing is ever achieved/understood in some way using Y, get your claim in early that 'Y could be key for X'. If it's done via Z instead, no harm.
feintruled 4y ago
Quite a bold claim I think to say that wolves were domesticated for spiritual reasons rather than as hunting companions, the latter being much more a much more intuitive and immediate benefit. It is quite a mystery to wonder how domestication happened at all, though seeing how modern wolves can be made (relatively) tame and biddable if you get them as pups, maybe it just took one person to have the idea. I imagine you would have been quite the badass in early human society with a tamed wolf at your side. So maybe rather than some semi-spooky pan-human thousand year plus directed domestication effort it grew organically with people inter-breeding their captive tamed wolves?
- lynguist 4y ago
  The famous fox domestication experiment that was carried out successfully in Russia over 40 years [1], shows how many generations it takes (40) and what genetic changes occur during domestication. What I also want to add is that some dog breeders in the late 19th century thought that introducing wolf genes into dog breeds would make better dogs. They ended up creating horrible dog breeds (that still exist) that have the shyness, anxiety, and distrust of wolves. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox
  - dfc 4y ago
    Do you know any of the 19th century experimental breeds that still exist?
    - lynguist 4y ago
      Two famous examples: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saarloos_wolfdog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saarloos_wolfdog The goal here was to recreate a fictional original German Aryan dog, untainted by modern degeneracy. The breeder thought to recreate the original heroic character by introducing the wolf into the breed, resulting in unbalanced, untrainable hybrids. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslovakian_Wolfdog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslovakian_Wolfdog This was supposed to be another version of a better German Shepherd, better suited to the mountains. The result was the same as above. The takeaway message is that every dog breed has its purpose, and that its character is inherited. There are dangerous dog breeds just bred to kill dogs or bulls (pit bull terrier). Some dog breeds were created without regard for the dog’s physiology (pug). Others were created without taking into account the temperament.
  - h2odragon 4y ago
    "wolf crossbreeds" are still a thing. Most of the time people have a "part wolf" husky they're breeding from and what they're selling is huskies with slightly more varied coats; but there's still 50% crosbreeds being raised by some folks. Neighbor of mine brings his out to the flea market sometimes for socialization; when he hits the lot every real dog there knows it, and is upset about it. The wolfdog is very polite, and on a chain, the domestic dogs don't like his smell.
  - wingineer 4y ago
    Can you provide a source re:19th century dog breeding with wolf genes? Very curious!
    - lynguist 4y ago
      I answered a sibling comment just now.
  - feintruled 4y ago
    Indeed, I had heard of that fascinating experiment. But I assume they were working from the prior example of domesticating wolves - I was wondering how you would get the idea of doing it with no prior example. From my research (*cough* YouTube *cough*) I can see that even a wild wolf pup can be tamed to a fair degree, and one person trying this experiment - maybe he killed the mother and raised the pup for amusement say - this singular experiment could have kickstarted the whole domestication arc. Seems more likely to me than someone having a long term plan to domesticate, or wolves accidentally slowly domesticating themselves by scavenging food from human settlements. I am no expert in this matter though.
- VoodooJuJu 4y ago
  >a bold claim I think to say that wolves were domesticated for spiritual reasons rather than as hunting companions I wouldn't be too dismissive of this - I'll use another domestication example to highlight why. Given how modern chickens are so useful for cheap and easy-to-raise meat, you'd think that's why they were domesticated, but no. Chickens were domesticated for reasons much less utilitarian - they were domesticated for entertainment! Cockfighting.
  - Octabrain 4y ago
    Interesting. Have you got any sources?
    - ljf 4y ago
      I'd not heard this before, but a quick search gave me https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-the-chicken-conquered-the-world-87583657 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-the-chicken-conqu... I'd need to read more to understand properly, but from a glance it appears interesting and possible.
- dj_mc_merlin 4y ago
  Why not both? It would be useful to have a tame wolf for hunting/protection/status, but what kind of person would seek out to do that in a society that would not have had the previous cultural knowledge of that being "something we do"? The idea of taking an animal and taming it might very well have had spiritual connotations to them given the amount of dog symbolism found in general. It does to an extent nowadays too.
- poulpy123 4y ago
  > Quite a bold claim I think to say that wolves were domesticated for spiritual reasons rather than as hunting companions, the latter being much more a much more intuitive and immediate benefit. And it's much more probable that the dogs got their reputation guiding the souls after they were used to guide living people than before
- naravara 4y ago
  It's anachronistic to draw a hard distinction between "hunting" and "spiritual reasons." Ancient people wouldn't have differentiated ritual and how they did daily things from how they expressed their spirituality. These rituals were one and the same.
codeflo 4y ago
Of course, it would be unjust to judge academic research from a one-line summary that a journalist wrote. But at least on the surface, this is unconvincing: > D’Huy is applying these methods to study how ancient myths can inform what we know about our connection with other animals such as sheep — their mythological link with the sun could have led to domestication. Symbolic, rather than utilitarian, reasons for domestication could explain a lot of data, he says. Why would hunter-gatherers in a resource-constrained environment keep food around and not eat it? I would rather bet that my ancestors had exactly the same mythological connection with their flock of sheep that I have with my freezer.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  It is probably a mistake to discount d'Huy. He is not certain to be right, but if wrong he is certain to be interestingly wrong. Association of dogs with Sirius far enough back to precede populating the Americas is pretty astounding. Apparently the river and ferryman elements associated with dying do, too. The association of sisters with the Pleiades apparently goes back much farther, maybe to before we left Africa.
  - jillesvangurp 4y ago
    Reputation based argumentation is pretty weak though. His reasoning may be sound but it is still highly speculative. Speculating some myself, it's easy to see how a domesticated wolf could be useful for hunting, guard duty, or even offensive use. The nature of wolfs is that they are pack animals so they'd submit to a strong master. Probably, early hunter gatherers, would have encountered and occasionally killed wolfs in the wild. The chances of encountering a wolf with some pubs would have been non zero and it raises the question what a hunter would do with some pups after disposing of the mother. Just speculating here but it seems that that's a story that just writes itself. From there to breeding animals is a small leap.
  - permo-w 4y ago
    what is the evidence for these associations?
INTPenis 4y ago
This seems like overthinking things. I'm just a layman but wild packs of monkeys have been observed to attract street dogs because they litter food all around them. I think that's a much more likely explanation, that human nomadic settlements dropped food around them during surplus times and wolves picked up on this and gradually became domesticated.
- leftbit 4y ago
  It might have started as a symbiosis between wolves and a species of particulary greedy and dumb monkeys which thought it would be a good idea to fleece the wolves for fur parasites. Still humans love to pet dogs, and dogs enjoy it. ;)
hcrean 4y ago
Monkey troops that have not yet entered their stone age are domesticating dogs [https://youtu.be/U2lSZPTa3ho https://youtu.be/U2lSZPTa3ho] It stands to firm reason that this symbiotic living was reached by humans at a similar point in our development.
- tambourine_man 4y ago
  I never knew that. Kind of unsettling to watch.
- fingerlocks 4y ago
  It says the dogs are feral, but it looks like the dog at 2:28 is wearing a collar. I wonder what’s going on there
- BitwiseFool 4y ago
  I'm not sure we can properly say these monkey troops are domesticating dogs. Mainly because dogs, even feral ones, exist as a product of past domestication by humans. They are already much more docile and ready to accept other species inside of their social hierarchy. I have a feeling that if these monkeys were around wolves there would not be any interaction resembling domestication.
msravi 4y ago
In the Mahabharata, the dog is seen as a personification of dharma (a term with a meaning that lies at the intersection of righteousness, duty, and truth). Yudhishtira, known for never straying from the dharmic path, refuses to leave a dog behind (that has been with them on their long journey) and get entrance to heaven - with the connotation that he refuses to leave the path of righteousness even for heaven. There is also a verse in the Mahabharata: dharmo rakṣati rakṣitaḥ - meaning, protect dharma, and dharma will protect you - which is interesting if you apply it to the mutual relationship between a man and his pet. I don't see how this sheds light in demystifying domestication though, apart from that they were regarded as loyal and good companions whose feelings were reciprocated.
- naravara 4y ago
  > Yudhishtira, known for never straying from the dharmic path, refuses to leave a dog behind (that has been with them on their long journey) and get entrance to heaven - with the connotation that he refuses to leave the path of righteousness even for heaven. He also pretty explicitly analogizes the obligation a man has towards his dog as that which the Devas ought to have towards men. The well-being of the dog becomes his duty because it is utterly devoted to him and this obliges him to repay its devotion. In a way you can also read this as Yudhistira is also calling out the Devas, and Indra in particular, for being callous and falling down on holding up their end of the reciprocal bargain.
bilsbie 4y ago
How come raccoons were never domesticated? You’d imagine they hung out near ancient societies.
- ip26 4y ago
  Wolves are social cooperative animals.
  - zach_garwood 4y ago
    I think this is it. Wolves have a similar society to humans, living in multifamily packs with specialization and stratification. Racoon troops are generally just a single, multigenerational family.
  - bilsbie 4y ago
    Counterpoint: cats.
    - scaramanga 4y ago
      Cats form colonies around a matrilineal backbone when conditions permit it.

54 points by Petiver 4y ago

Betteridge's law of headlines (if it's a question the answer's no) needs an extension for science journalism: if something 'could' do something, it won't. Always seems like 'predicting 17 of the last 3 recessions' - on the off-chance X thing is ever achieved/understood in some way using Y, get your claim in early that 'Y could be key for X'. If it's done via Z instead, no harm.

feintruled 4y ago

Quite a bold claim I think to say that wolves were domesticated for spiritual reasons rather than as hunting companions, the latter being much more a much more intuitive and immediate benefit. It is quite a mystery to wonder how domestication happened at all, though seeing how modern wolves can be made (relatively) tame and biddable if you get them as pups, maybe it just took one person to have the idea. I imagine you would have been quite the badass in early human society with a tamed wolf at your side. So maybe rather than some semi-spooky pan-human thousand year plus directed domestication effort it grew organically with people inter-breeding their captive tamed wolves?

lynguist 4y ago
The famous fox domestication experiment that was carried out successfully in Russia over 40 years [1], shows how many generations it takes (40) and what genetic changes occur during domestication. What I also want to add is that some dog breeders in the late 19th century thought that introducing wolf genes into dog breeds would make better dogs. They ended up creating horrible dog breeds (that still exist) that have the shyness, anxiety, and distrust of wolves. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox
- dfc 4y ago
  Do you know any of the 19th century experimental breeds that still exist?
  - lynguist 4y ago
    Two famous examples: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saarloos_wolfdog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saarloos_wolfdog The goal here was to recreate a fictional original German Aryan dog, untainted by modern degeneracy. The breeder thought to recreate the original heroic character by introducing the wolf into the breed, resulting in unbalanced, untrainable hybrids. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslovakian_Wolfdog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslovakian_Wolfdog This was supposed to be another version of a better German Shepherd, better suited to the mountains. The result was the same as above. The takeaway message is that every dog breed has its purpose, and that its character is inherited. There are dangerous dog breeds just bred to kill dogs or bulls (pit bull terrier). Some dog breeds were created without regard for the dog’s physiology (pug). Others were created without taking into account the temperament.
- h2odragon 4y ago
  "wolf crossbreeds" are still a thing. Most of the time people have a "part wolf" husky they're breeding from and what they're selling is huskies with slightly more varied coats; but there's still 50% crosbreeds being raised by some folks. Neighbor of mine brings his out to the flea market sometimes for socialization; when he hits the lot every real dog there knows it, and is upset about it. The wolfdog is very polite, and on a chain, the domestic dogs don't like his smell.
- wingineer 4y ago
  Can you provide a source re:19th century dog breeding with wolf genes? Very curious!
  - lynguist 4y ago
    I answered a sibling comment just now.
- feintruled 4y ago
  Indeed, I had heard of that fascinating experiment. But I assume they were working from the prior example of domesticating wolves - I was wondering how you would get the idea of doing it with no prior example. From my research (*cough* YouTube *cough*) I can see that even a wild wolf pup can be tamed to a fair degree, and one person trying this experiment - maybe he killed the mother and raised the pup for amusement say - this singular experiment could have kickstarted the whole domestication arc. Seems more likely to me than someone having a long term plan to domesticate, or wolves accidentally slowly domesticating themselves by scavenging food from human settlements. I am no expert in this matter though.
VoodooJuJu 4y ago
>a bold claim I think to say that wolves were domesticated for spiritual reasons rather than as hunting companions I wouldn't be too dismissive of this - I'll use another domestication example to highlight why. Given how modern chickens are so useful for cheap and easy-to-raise meat, you'd think that's why they were domesticated, but no. Chickens were domesticated for reasons much less utilitarian - they were domesticated for entertainment! Cockfighting.
- Octabrain 4y ago
  Interesting. Have you got any sources?
  - ljf 4y ago
    I'd not heard this before, but a quick search gave me https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-the-chicken-conquered-the-world-87583657 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-the-chicken-conqu... I'd need to read more to understand properly, but from a glance it appears interesting and possible.
dj_mc_merlin 4y ago
Why not both? It would be useful to have a tame wolf for hunting/protection/status, but what kind of person would seek out to do that in a society that would not have had the previous cultural knowledge of that being "something we do"? The idea of taking an animal and taming it might very well have had spiritual connotations to them given the amount of dog symbolism found in general. It does to an extent nowadays too.
poulpy123 4y ago
> Quite a bold claim I think to say that wolves were domesticated for spiritual reasons rather than as hunting companions, the latter being much more a much more intuitive and immediate benefit. And it's much more probable that the dogs got their reputation guiding the souls after they were used to guide living people than before
naravara 4y ago
It's anachronistic to draw a hard distinction between "hunting" and "spiritual reasons." Ancient people wouldn't have differentiated ritual and how they did daily things from how they expressed their spirituality. These rituals were one and the same.

codeflo 4y ago

Of course, it would be unjust to judge academic research from a one-line summary that a journalist wrote. But at least on the surface, this is unconvincing: > D’Huy is applying these methods to study how ancient myths can inform what we know about our connection with other animals such as sheep — their mythological link with the sun could have led to domestication. Symbolic, rather than utilitarian, reasons for domestication could explain a lot of data, he says. Why would hunter-gatherers in a resource-constrained environment keep food around and not eat it? I would rather bet that my ancestors had exactly the same mythological connection with their flock of sheep that I have with my freezer.

ncmncm 4y ago
It is probably a mistake to discount d'Huy. He is not certain to be right, but if wrong he is certain to be interestingly wrong. Association of dogs with Sirius far enough back to precede populating the Americas is pretty astounding. Apparently the river and ferryman elements associated with dying do, too. The association of sisters with the Pleiades apparently goes back much farther, maybe to before we left Africa.
- jillesvangurp 4y ago
  Reputation based argumentation is pretty weak though. His reasoning may be sound but it is still highly speculative. Speculating some myself, it's easy to see how a domesticated wolf could be useful for hunting, guard duty, or even offensive use. The nature of wolfs is that they are pack animals so they'd submit to a strong master. Probably, early hunter gatherers, would have encountered and occasionally killed wolfs in the wild. The chances of encountering a wolf with some pubs would have been non zero and it raises the question what a hunter would do with some pups after disposing of the mother. Just speculating here but it seems that that's a story that just writes itself. From there to breeding animals is a small leap.
- permo-w 4y ago
  what is the evidence for these associations?

INTPenis 4y ago

This seems like overthinking things. I'm just a layman but wild packs of monkeys have been observed to attract street dogs because they litter food all around them. I think that's a much more likely explanation, that human nomadic settlements dropped food around them during surplus times and wolves picked up on this and gradually became domesticated.

leftbit 4y ago
It might have started as a symbiosis between wolves and a species of particulary greedy and dumb monkeys which thought it would be a good idea to fleece the wolves for fur parasites. Still humans love to pet dogs, and dogs enjoy it. ;)

hcrean 4y ago

Monkey troops that have not yet entered their stone age are domesticating dogs [https://youtu.be/U2lSZPTa3ho https://youtu.be/U2lSZPTa3ho] It stands to firm reason that this symbiotic living was reached by humans at a similar point in our development.

tambourine_man 4y ago
I never knew that. Kind of unsettling to watch.
fingerlocks 4y ago
It says the dogs are feral, but it looks like the dog at 2:28 is wearing a collar. I wonder what’s going on there
BitwiseFool 4y ago
I'm not sure we can properly say these monkey troops are domesticating dogs. Mainly because dogs, even feral ones, exist as a product of past domestication by humans. They are already much more docile and ready to accept other species inside of their social hierarchy. I have a feeling that if these monkeys were around wolves there would not be any interaction resembling domestication.

msravi 4y ago

In the Mahabharata, the dog is seen as a personification of dharma (a term with a meaning that lies at the intersection of righteousness, duty, and truth). Yudhishtira, known for never straying from the dharmic path, refuses to leave a dog behind (that has been with them on their long journey) and get entrance to heaven - with the connotation that he refuses to leave the path of righteousness even for heaven. There is also a verse in the Mahabharata: dharmo rakṣati rakṣitaḥ - meaning, protect dharma, and dharma will protect you - which is interesting if you apply it to the mutual relationship between a man and his pet. I don't see how this sheds light in demystifying domestication though, apart from that they were regarded as loyal and good companions whose feelings were reciprocated.

naravara 4y ago
> Yudhishtira, known for never straying from the dharmic path, refuses to leave a dog behind (that has been with them on their long journey) and get entrance to heaven - with the connotation that he refuses to leave the path of righteousness even for heaven. He also pretty explicitly analogizes the obligation a man has towards his dog as that which the Devas ought to have towards men. The well-being of the dog becomes his duty because it is utterly devoted to him and this obliges him to repay its devotion. In a way you can also read this as Yudhistira is also calling out the Devas, and Indra in particular, for being callous and falling down on holding up their end of the reciprocal bargain.

bilsbie 4y ago

How come raccoons were never domesticated? You’d imagine they hung out near ancient societies.

ip26 4y ago
Wolves are social cooperative animals.
- zach_garwood 4y ago
  I think this is it. Wolves have a similar society to humans, living in multifamily packs with specialization and stratification. Racoon troops are generally just a single, multigenerational family.
- bilsbie 4y ago
  Counterpoint: cats.
  - scaramanga 4y ago
    Cats form colonies around a matrilineal backbone when conditions permit it.