Competing theories explain how dogs came to be domesticated from wolves. Now, a new study adds further support to the idea that they domesticated themselves.
You’re not wrong that a broader view of domestication as any kind of biological mutualism is more broadly correct and useful in many senses.
But… I’m talking about humans.
Such phenotypic similarities may arise from parallel/convergent evolution [71,72], possibly associated with secondary effects of the domestication process (for example, increased population density or sedentism) [68,69] but arguably do not directly spring from the human/crop, human/livestock, and human/pet mutualisms. Those who have remarked on these similarities need to explore other mechanisms to explain these evolutionary convergences.
As I already mentioned, I disagree on the bolded part.
Look at our food system and see what it is currently doing to us.
Even with the definition that ‘domestication is naturally arising mutualism, not necessarily with an initial intention in mind’… this still fits into it.
We altered our food, it altered us.
If you’re less cynical than me, well, it was unintentional that our changes to food would change us, so its unintentional mutualism.
If you are as cynical as me, well then:
Certain extremely powerful groups and people chose to do things like massively subsidize corn, knowingly fallaciously drum up fats as the main risk to general public health, when they actually knew the real problem was certain kinds of sugars, but they buried that research, and now US citizens eat some kind of HFCS in absurd amounts in all kinds of food.
This fucks our endocrine systems and increases neoteny.
Then its… an intentional mutualism, as directed by an elite and powerdul social group of humans toward the plants and the other humans.
Either way… this did all start with humans domesticating plants, whether initially intentionally aiming at this outcome or not.
You larger idea of domestication is valid, but I’m talking about the constrained case of domestication and its effects as they relate to humans.
I find other kinds of interspecies mutualistic relationships fascinating, but I don’t think expanding the concept of domestication to be less anthropocentric… somehow negates the application of the term to what it expanded from, and does not disclude.
You’re not wrong that a broader view of domestication as any kind of biological mutualism is more broadly correct and useful in many senses.
But… I’m talking about humans.
As I already mentioned, I disagree on the bolded part.
Look at our food system and see what it is currently doing to us.
Even with the definition that ‘domestication is naturally arising mutualism, not necessarily with an initial intention in mind’… this still fits into it.
We altered our food, it altered us.
If you’re less cynical than me, well, it was unintentional that our changes to food would change us, so its unintentional mutualism.
If you are as cynical as me, well then:
Certain extremely powerful groups and people chose to do things like massively subsidize corn, knowingly fallaciously drum up fats as the main risk to general public health, when they actually knew the real problem was certain kinds of sugars, but they buried that research, and now US citizens eat some kind of HFCS in absurd amounts in all kinds of food.
This fucks our endocrine systems and increases neoteny.
Then its… an intentional mutualism, as directed by an elite and powerdul social group of humans toward the plants and the other humans.
Either way… this did all start with humans domesticating plants, whether initially intentionally aiming at this outcome or not.
You larger idea of domestication is valid, but I’m talking about the constrained case of domestication and its effects as they relate to humans.
I find other kinds of interspecies mutualistic relationships fascinating, but I don’t think expanding the concept of domestication to be less anthropocentric… somehow negates the application of the term to what it expanded from, and does not disclude.
(That article was good read though, thanks =D)
Well that’s whete the miscommunication was