We are family

It’s been noted before in biology that cetaceans (whales and dolphins alike) are closely related to hippopotami and other artiodactyls, especially when it comes to their digestive systems and perhaps other things. That and whales coming from semi-aquatic artiodactyls at least should give an idea of how they got there, with hippopotami being living testaments to how such a transition occurred. Water chevrotains could be one example, though not so close since they’re not that semi-aquatic to the extent the earliest whale ancestor was.

So it should stand that hippos, being the closest living relatives, are also the closest to what happened to whales in the interim. There are no surviving relatives of Indohyus to the present day, so water chevrotains serve as a rather flawed analogy. If because they do hide in water but aren’t even that semi-aquatic for as long as Indohyus was. Well it’s better than nothing, I suppose. Then again water chevrotains are also artiodactyls, so we have a doable but flawed idea of what the earliest whale ancestor was like. Phylogenetically both chevrotains and cetaceans do have a shared ancestor.

But in actually it’s the ancestors of whales that came first, so it’s more like how ancestors of mouse deer/chevrotains came to choose a more terrestrial lifestyle. So they pretty much went their own separate ways, in rather opposite directions so to speak. But it’s kind of interesting that whales would be more closely related to artiodactyls, given prior assumptions about them being descended from non-artiodactyls.

More diverse than that

If black Africans are more genetically diverse, then it should also stand that they can also be more phenotypically diverse. In the case with Europeans, it seems easy since there are more blonds and redheads among them but then again they’re not that genetically diverse especially due to founder effects. Because of that, certain hair colours became this common. But I pretty much suspected that there might be a greater degree of physical diversity among black Africans than one knows.

There is a study that examines the differences between Cameroonians and the Senegalese, especially in terms of somatotype distribution where the former has a greater tendency towards muscularity or mesomorphy, the latter tends towards skinniness or ectomorphy. If Cameroonians are genetically different from the Senegalese, it should stand that they can also be physically different from them as well. There’s another study that came to the same conclusion, but not enough to know which other African demographics tend towards a certain phenotype other than muscle fibre distribution.

What is known is that West Africans tend towards fast twitch muscles, the same fibres that give them immense speed and strength while East Africans are higher on slow twitch muscles (which are good for running marathons with). But it’s pretty silent when it comes to Central Africans, so who knows if they might be intermediate between the two or not. It gets stranger still when you realise the vast majority of Central Africans fall under the Bantu group, which includes Kikuyu and Fang languages.

Similar with East Africans, though I remember a study pointing out that the Bantu people expanded eastwards. Another study verifies this, in another one the Cameroonian Bantus were closer to the Kenyans while the Semi-Bantus were closer to the Nigerians. If East Africans tend towards slow twitch muscles and West Africans towards fast twitch ones, then the Bantu would fall into the former and the Semi-Bantu in the latter. There is a growing body of studies dedicated to African population genetics.

But when there’s a strong emphasis on white European genetics, despite being less genetically diverse than black Africans; it can make it harder to secure funding to do the same thing with Africans. Similar things can be said of phenotypic diversity among Africans, there are certain African populations that tend towards ectomorphy and while it is known in anthropology, there’s unfortunately more attention paid to the diversity in European hair colours than to African somatotype diversity.

Not to mention the odd possibility that disabilities like autism, albinism, ADHD, deafness and the like may’ve also originated from Africans, if all non-Africans descend from Africans. They could all have an African origin, but nobody bothers to uncover their roots even if they may lie there. Africa is a potential landmine when it comes to population genetics, not just in discovering differences between populations but also where certain disabilities come from.

Shame it’s not studied any further, even if these do have their origins in Africa.

The actual face of dog domestication

According to some sources, dog training as we know it actually began in the early 20th century and the 19th century. With some cultures and communities having a rather different way of training dogs, there’s a good chance that the way dogs were domesticated might have less in common with some people’s expectations and more in common with nonwestern cultures. In the sense that whenever a dog gets trained for hunting, it would’ve been socialised to other dogs, deliberately malnourished and even get coated with the prey’s blood and scent per Karen Lupo’s research. In Uganda, well at some point, if somebody were to make a dog guard something they’d just make the dog bark at someone or something.

Coincidentally both of them take place in Africa, so it seems modern dog training may’ve been a Western phenomenon at first. It seems the deliberate dog domestication model doesn’t hold up well, especially when it comes to studies on dogs eating faeces which would’ve been inevitable in prehistory as modern toilets have yet to arrive. Toiletry did exist before, though not in the form we expect it to. Squat toilets are still a thing in some places, just as open defecation is in others. There used to be people whose job is to collect faeces wherever it goes, there’s a chance that prehistoric dogs would’ve ate faeces and they ate it a lot. It seems like whatever romantic ideas some have about dog domestication turn out to be farcically false in light of current research.

That’s not to say dogs aren’t useful, as much as I think dog training back then was rather different. It may not conform to contemporary Western expectations, if the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda are any indication or perhaps were at this point. Not to mention, where there’s smoke there’s fire. Where there’s open defecation, there are dogs feasting on faeces wherever they find those.

An ugly picture

Even if dogs didn’t entirely domesticate themselves, the actual picture of dog domestication would be pretty ugly if we were to base it after actual anthropological, historical and biological data. There was a study on village dogs in Mexico where I recall how some would go so far to kill puppies to curb dog population growth, when it comes to hunting dogs among certain communities these dogs would even be starved or drugged in order to hunt (some Cameroonians do the former with their cats). This isn’t true for all dog owners throughout Asia and Africa, but even then it’s actually not uncommon for dog owners to allow their dogs to roam even though it has bad consequences for wildlife.

Let’s not also forget that there are reports of trappers trapping and using wolves for fur, so this could’ve been the case in prehistory so whatever romantic theory of dog domestication one may have gets thrown out of the window when this gets brought up. There’s ample historical evidence of certain demographics like the Manchurians using dogs for fur, so it too would’ve been the case in prehistory. There’s also another study involving dogs eating faeces, a disgusting but necessary one in light of dog domestication if dogs were first domesticated in prehistory the rub of it’s that people didn’t have any toilets, let alone ones we’d recognise today so there must’ve been a different way to relieve oneself.

So if dog domestication’s ugly, it would’ve been just as gross because there weren’t any toilets in prehistory. Actually throughout history, though toilets did exist they didn’t exist in the form we expect them to be. Even today, you have toilets that don’t appear in the form we expect them to be and some people still defecate in the open.

Some differences

I think I’ve noticed this before, but I get the impression that there’s more awareness of dogs as an invasive species in Brazil, Argentina and Chile than in America. Either that these three have more stray dogs than America does or even if these three have a lot of dog owners and dog lovers, there’s more awareness of the damage they inflict on the environment than America does. Maybe not always the case, but speaking from personal experience even if there are studies on dog predation in America not a lot of Americans see dogs as an invasive species the way they do with cats.

There might be an anti-cat sentiment in Brazil, Chile and Argentina since not a lot of them own cats, but even then despite having a high dog ownership rate a good number of them are aware of the damage dogs inflict on the environment enough to make considerable amount of studies on that. It’s possible that Chile, Brazil and Argentina still have a lot of stray dogs and free-roaming dogs in general, so they’re more aware of their faults than America does. So aware they even see them as an invasive species, despite having even more dog owners than America does.

Okay, I might be speaking from experience where it seems there are more Americans and Australians who mostly or solely cats as an invasive species but don’t say much about dogs whereas relatively more Brazilians, Chileans and Argentinians see dogs as an invasive species as well. I might be biased in here, but either that Brazil, Chile and Argentina have more stray dogs wrecking havoc or that despite having a higher dog ownership rate than Australia and America do more Australians and Americans disproportionately blame cats.

It could be a bit of both, but I have a nagging feeling that even if there’s ever an anti-cat sentiment in Brazil and the Southern Cone in general there are more Brazilian, Chilean and Argentinian studies regarding dogs as an invasive species than America and Australia do. Again, it’s due to my experience going to Lusophone and Hispanophone websites where by going there I get idea of what’s actually going on there that gets missed out in Anglophone websites. True, dog predation on wildlife has been understudied but I actually think dogs might present the best example of the social-ecological mismatch.

While they are a valued asset in conservation, they can also pose threats to it and this is why they are the best example of the social-ecological mismatch. We’re used to seeing them as valuable pets and companions that we can’t see them as anything other than those roles, even though they’re perfectly capable of killing wildlife on their own. One of my former dogs had a habit of killing frogs that my father had to install fences to minimise this. Another dog ate a skink.

I think it is important to take what goes on in nonwestern and global South countries, if because a lot of insight that those in North America and Europe miss out. Well to an extent, but it’s still important to take note of these.

Why the active social domestication model doesn’t work

Considering the controversy surrounding dog domestication, I suspect one of the reasons why the romantic notion of deliberating taming wolves wouldn’t work that well in reality is that if Canada’s fur industry and fur trapping in that country’s that indication wolves would also be skinned and used for fur. In addition to puppies being culled to curb the dog population, wolves would also be trapped and used for fur clothing. In fact some indigenous tribes do this to dogs makes me think the active social domestication model is way too romantic to ever work well in reality, if because the actual picture’s less romantic than we expect.

Not to mention, with some communities some owners would even starve dogs to make them hunt (some Cameroonians do this with their cats) and that owners don’t just make allow their dogs to roam but that dogs do scavenge from time to time regardless if they’re owned or not and they even eat faeces suggests that there’s probably a grain of truth to the Coppingers’ theory of self-domestication. It wouldn’t be entirely self-domesticated, but commensal enough to thrive on a degree of socialisation to humans. If the Baka Pygmies are any indication, if dogs get treated cruelly as they get older the same thing would happen to their wolf ancestors. So the active social domestication model would never work well at all.

Dogs might even be marginalised in semi-sedentary communities, especially if they developed a habit of stealing something. Ironically, this would work better in favour of chicken domestication if because some of the earliest chicken skeletons were left intact with no cut marks and that some people do keep chickens as pets as well as for cockfighting but not food. I guess nobody’s ever going to come up with theories about very tame junglefowl (the chicken’s ancestor) cuddling up to humans in a way humans themselves wouldn’t entirely have around wolves, since as I said before wolves would get skinned and made into fur clothing. The odd fact that rearing chickens for meat came later makes me think they could even be spoilt and pampered in a way prehistoric dogs don’t.

There are no surviving records of what the earliest dogs were actually like, so we’re left with studying free-roaming dogs in the Global South. As for what dog domestication was actually like, it wouldn’t be entirely about self-domestication but it’s never going to be a romantic one in light of puppies being culled, wolves being skinned and dogs getting starved in order to hunt and that dogs do eat faeces.

Charismatic invasive species

As I said before in another post, if biologists urge more parks to ban dogs to curb dog predation that’s because dogs are the third worst invasive nonhuman animal after cats and rats. A new study would point out they’d even be worse than that, if their impact in Europe and Africa are considered. You might argue that pigs and minks are worse than dogs, but the problem is that not only is it appealing to sentiment but also because their negative environmental impact is less than that of dogs.

It’s not that minks are any better than dogs or vice versa, but the fact that there’s not a big fur industry in other countries (especially in the tropics) minimises their impact which makes it a blessing in disguise. It’s not that there aren’t any animals being used for their fur at all, but because fur traps heat well (maybe too well in some cases) that it’s impractical in other countries. The most commonly used natural textiles in the tropics (and subtropical areas) are cotton and silk, which endear better to those climates than fur clothing ever would. Conversely speaking, the fur industry’s present in more temperate or colder climates.

You might say that dogs are more useful than minks are or are domesticated far longer, but so are mice though you won’t see people admitting this even though they’re extensively used in scientific experiments and are commensal longer than minks are. Then again, dogs are proven to render 11 species extinct and endanger 188 more (possibly larger than that should a new study come out). The real problem has to do if that invasive species (such as dogs) turn out to be charismatic, which complicates matters. It’s pretty much the case with horses.

It wouldn’t matter about how bad they are for native vegetation in places like Australia and America, too many people have a strong connection to horses that it clouds and occults whatever attempts at addressing the problem. It’s the same with dogs, especially in light of the fact that they’re the third worst invasive animal. Being the first domesticated animal, dogs might as well have the dishonour of being the first invasive nonhuman animal. Dog predation has been suspected in some reports and studies, it took a few studies to blow it out.

Feelings don’t matter, once hard facts are brought up. The hard reality’s that dogs are an invasive species, damaging to native wildlife such as sea turtles in the Philippines and Mexico, Barbary macaques in Morocco or Ethiopian wolves in Ethiopia. Since the latter two are in Africa, if African dogs turn out to be more closely related to West Asian dogs and if dogs are proven to negative impact wildlife in Africa then they are invasive and introduced.

But it gets complicated by a strong emotional attachment to these animals (dogs and horses), even if they know they do wrong to the environment they’d turn a blind eye due to this sentiment. This is why it took a long time to recognise that dogs are an invasive species, even if it’s been suspected before. This is also the same for horses and why charisma makes it harder for some invasive species to be recognised as they really are. There’s also a discrepancy between the species’s cultural value and the damage they inflict on the environment.

It’s even called social-ecological mismatches for a reason, this rings true for dogs where they’re valued for many things but they also kill so many wild animals and drive some of them extinct. For another matter, the same can be said of horses where although they cause ecological damage but many people (even those who’re aware of invasive species) ignore this. That is the power of the social-ecological mismatch, if something is charismatic they’ll put it on a pedestal even though animals like dogs are proven to be a nuisance to wildlife.

A bad model for dog domestication

As I said before, fox domestication’s not and will never be a good model for dog domestication no matter how hard you try to make it out to be. Not just because some of the genes involved in domestication have more to do with diet, but also a matter of anthropogenic usage. If fox domestication is comparable to dog domestication, how come foxes aren’t used for hunting the same way dogs are? I feel any attempt to compare fox domestication to dogs would result in shooting one’s foot.

To reiterate, dogs actually have more in common with cats and monkeys. The first for pest control and the second because they are trained to retrieve something, the latter’s a stretch but the fact that monkey training schools exist in Thailand should tell you something about dog domestication in a way foxes never will. I could go on saying that dogs also have more in common with pigs, both of them are used for meat and for retrieving truffles. Although foxes also possess a good sense of smell, there’s not a single instance of them being made to sniff for truffles.

Not to mention both pigs and dogs scavenge, there are even studies where dogs do scavenge for faeces. Likewise pigs in China were historically noted to feed on excrement, if because pig toilets were attached to pigsties. A little gross, but in some regards closer to the rather embarrassing fact than any of the other theories on dog domestication. As for dog domestication, there are cases of dogs where they haven’t strayed that far from their ancestors whether dietary (some dogs can’t process starch) or reproductive (some dogs beget puppies once a year).

So it seems when it comes to comparing fox domestication to dog domestication, it’s off not only in terms of anthropogenic usage but also because some dogs haven’t strayed that far from their ancestors in terms of diet, gestation and behaviour (including hunting behaviour, for better or worse). The study stated that those Prince Edward Island foxes are more like a breed in the sense that they’re descended from a select population, especially in light of the larger urban fox population.

I still think it makes more sense to compare dogs to pigs and cats, not just in terms of usage but the fact that all three of them are devastating invasive species. You could argue that foxes are also this as well, except that theirs is more limited to just one place (Australia) whereas dogs are roaming and hunting freely and transmitting diseases anywhere else so their potential for damage is far greater. Foxes are related to dogs but they aren’t used for hunting and pest control, they also trail behind dogs in terms of environmental damage.

(I feel if dogs are the first domesticated animal, in light of their devastating impact on the environmental they’re also the first invasive nonhuman animal.)

That never happened

If dogs are going to be seen as an invasive species that justifies them getting banned in national parks, you might come up with an argument that animals like pigs, mink and rabbits are much worse. The problem is that what makes dogs the number three invasive species and neither pigs nor rabbits is that not only are they more commonly found, but kill far more animals (they rendered 11 extinct and could be worse than that if a new study comes out just in case) whether through predation or through pathogenesis.

By this logic, dogs are worse than minks are even though minks are also invasive. But the thing here’s that there’s no need for a fur industry in many African and Southeast Asian countries, it gets really hot here and since fur traps heat well it would only exacerbate it. Even if animals can and do get hunted for their pelts, I don’t think most Africans and Southeast Asians necessarily wear fur not even as folk costumes. The go-for natural textiles in these places tend to be cotton and barkcloth and silk to a lesser extent, so folk costumes are more likely to be made from those fabrics.

Fur would be really useless here, as it would be in most of Africa. So the fur industry tends to be more of a thing in temperate and colder places like parts of China, Russia and Canada. Not to mention nobody ever imported wild boar into the Philippines, pigs aren’t allowed to stray independent of humans the way dogs get to do and rabbits aren’t popular pets so this minimises their potentially negative impact on the environment here. This would also play out similarly in other tropical countries.

With the exception of rabbits, if pigs and cats (as invasive as dogs are) did come to the Philippines it would have to come from peninsular Southeast Asia and this would’ve predated Westernisation. The same can be said of Africa. If African dogs turn out to be related to Middle Eastern dogs, this shouldn’t be surprising as the first African dog skeleton came from Egypt and in light of their predations on African primates like Barbary macaques emphasise how much of an introduced (and invasive) species they really are.

It’s not flattering, even though there’s growing evidence supporting the idea that dogs are an invasive species. You might say that pigs and rabbits are worse, but there’s not a lot of studies supporting this idea well not yet to the same extent dogs are getting. Not to mention, feral rabbits and the problems they pose to the environment only occur in the Global North. The fullest extent of their status as invasive species mostly occurs in Australia and New Zealand.

Likewise for minks, as a major invasive species, it’s also mostly greater in the Global North. These factors keep them from receiving third worst invasive nonhuman animal status the way dogs got, if I’m not mistaken the places where dogs negatively impact the environment the most are in Asia, Central and South America and the Caribbean. But I think it could be worse if one were to bring up Africa when it comes to canine distemper killing Ethiopian wolves and lions as well as predations on Barbary macaques.

All three species are highly endangered and all three are negatively impacted by dogs, sadly it makes dogs look worse than they already do scientifically speaking that’s if it ever gets considered in a future study. While dogs can do wonders, the fact that they endanger 188 species (and a little more than that in a potential study) puts them at the number three position of worst invasive animal.

The unromantic side of dog domestication

As I realised and read, I’m starting to think the actual case of dog domestication was a much less romantic affair. When I mean by that, it’s not just about dog owners allowing their dogs to roam often but also having female puppies being culled to minimise dog populations (yeah that’s cruel though it’s changing for the better). Dogs would also be culled if they kill livestock, that’s the case in Uganda but that would’ve been true for prehistory. Also dogs would be starved or fed a high-vegetable diet in order to hunt animals, though there are instances of dogs hunting on their own (for the worse).

Okay, culling dogs may not always the case for all dog owners though sometimes it’s for dog meat. Some are probably too kindhearted and merciful to do that, sometimes nature takes its course. Not to mention, owned dogs do scavenge for food. But I still think dog domestication was a lot less romantic than say what some believe, if anecdata and actual studies are to be believed. That’s why it’s a bad idea to disregard studies made by scientists, especially if it involves stray and free-roaming dogs at all, because those findings shed light on what dog domestication may’ve been like.

It probably wasn’t that as straightforward when it comes to dogs roaming freely and hunting on their own, it also wasn’t as sweet when it comes to certain dogs being culled. Based on what I’ve read and these are mainly academic studies, dog domestication wasn’t as straightforward and sweet as others make it out to be.