Co-Evolution of Dogs and Humans

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Co-Evolution of Dogs and Humans
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What Co-Evolution Means

• Simply means the mutual evolutionary influence
  between species.
• Asks Why did it benefit both humans and dogs to
  form a relationship?

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Dogs from Wolves

• There is little debate that dogs and wolves share
  a common ancestry
• Mitochondrial DNA evidence shows us they
  separated between 100,000 and 135,000 years ago.
  (Vila et. al, 1997)

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Separation of Dogs and Wolves

• Of course we could only associate with wolves who
  would accept as masters.
• So some wolves hunted and lived with us, some
  didnt.
• Simply, this is probably how the species
  separated in to what we now know as wolves and
  domestic dogs.

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Cavemen and Their Pets

• Well if this is true, then dogs were our
  companions up to 135,000 years ago.
• And we werent really us 135,000 years ago.
• Neanderthals and wolves probably initiated the
  contact then.
• Relationship was probably solely based on hunting
  together originally.

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14,000th, the MilkBone anniversary

• We know that dogs were more than just hunting
  partners as far back as 14,000 years ago, from
  evidence of personal decorated burials. This
  would be a lot of trouble for a simple hunting
  companion.
• Why were dogs the choice for our first
  interspecies friendship?

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How we became friends.

• Bryan Sykes
• Said that the first ritual was giving out scraps.
• Wolves appreciate the scraps, and humans grow
  fond of the wolves.
• Sykes gets the idea, but this is too simple.

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How we became friends

• Sykes idea does make sense on some level.
• The problem is believing that wolves were just
  happy to pick up our leftovers
• This does not make sense because wolves arent
  scavengers
• They can hunt.
• Lets look first then at why we chose dogs

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Why Dogs?

• We both have some sense of altruism
• We both have a tendency to help people with no
  guarantee of return, so do dogs and wolves.
• We have similar family setups in the sense that
  siblings and grandparents play a role in
  child-raising, wolves and dogs do the same.

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Why Dogs?

• Dogs got personality. Samuel L. Jackson
• No study has been done here, but most theorists
  agree that dogs, like people, have notable
  within-species individual differences.
• This is something I think we all at least assume
  to be true.
• Hard to say if they learned personality from us,
  or if they always had it, a comparative study
  with wolves would tell us that, but unfortunately
  no such research has been done.

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Why Dogs?

• Humans have sharp hunting tools, and the ability
  to strategize.
• Wolves have sharp teeth, and a keen sense for
  tracking down prey.
• It makes sense for both species to hunt together,
  Sykes understood that.

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Its everything.

• Its the hunting skills.
• Its the similar traits.
• Over time, selection made those traits even more
  compatible.
• But still, why would any breed of wolf or dog
  would accept our scraps, if they were fully
  accomplished and successful hunters?

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Lack of Aggression

• Some werent.
• Individual differences.
• Some wolves werent as violent and aggressive
• Would be glad to help out humans, who could do
  the killing, if they found the prey.
• This may be how we achieved the master status
  over our canine friends. We simply chose weaker
  ones.
• As far as I know this is my personal theory, and
  one argument of my paper I have no scientific
  evidence of it, yet
• For now though, lets just say were friends due
  to personality traits hunting skills and well
  move on.

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DOGS LEARNING FROM US
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Communication Skills in Dogs?

• Communication Studies
• Miklosi, Topal and Csani (2001)
• Replicated 2-way food choice tasks used for
  children.
• Dogs pay attention to us understand cues such as
  pointing, nodding, glancing etc.
• In fact dogs are as good at this as children
  under 2 and non-human primates.

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Human-like social skills

• But how do we know these skills evolved
  specifically in domestic dogs?
• The Comparative Method
• Hare and Tomasello (2005)
• Compared dogs and wolves on 2-way food choice
  tasks.
• Wolves dont care about us they search for food
  independently, and therefore score no better than
  chance in such tests.

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So dogs are learning from us.

• Probably.
• This certainly leaves the possibility that dogs
  social skills evolved as a by-product of
  domestication.
• It makes perfect sense that dogs can pick up our
  cues. (more on that in a moment)

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Rico the Social Dog

• Rico is a 12 year old border collie.
• Rico has a vocabulary of over 200 words.
• Can retrieve objects upon request, and bring them
  to the appropriate family member.
• And it isnt clever hans cues have been
  controlled for.
• He can also learn new words in a single trial and
  still perform above chance
• How???

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Rico the Social Dog

• Capacity for words is about as good as
  language-trained apes, dolphins and parrots.
• This probably isnt language, as we define it.
• It does however show complex cognitive processes,
  which is still very amazing.
• Rico is only one dog, and the research is not as
  extensive as it needs to be, but it is incredible
  nonetheless.

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Rico the Social Dog

• Juliane Kaminski, Josep Call and Julia Fischer
  tell us how.
• Ricos performance can be shown as a set of
  simpler mechanisms.
• ? understanding the principle that objects
  have labels
• ? learning by exclusion
• ? ability to store and actively retrieve these
  labels in reference memory

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Rico the Social Dog

• What that means
• Rico cant understand language, he just has a
  complex mechanistic system for retrieving
  objects.
• What an idiot.
• Actually it is still amazing, and something
  previously not thought to be possible in dogs.
• We will have to wait and see if other dogs can
  accomplish this.

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How did dogs learn all this?

• Since they arent in the wild, we control the
  domesticated dogs chances of meeting mates.
• Dogs who do not behave are often put down and
  given no chance to reproduce
• Theres also that surgery we put them through.
• So they have much to gain by learning our
  mannerisms.

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Artificial Selection

• Darwin ? The idea that certain traits are bred
  for intentionally.
• ? May be unintentional, simply controlled by our
  decisions.
• Basically we control their fitness.
• The better they are at learning tricks, the more
  food we give them, the more likely it is we will
  want to breed them.

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Artificial Selection

• So we train them (though we are unaware of it) to
  memorize movements, and be sensitive to our
  facial cues.
• Is our choice of which dogs breed and which dont
  unfair?
• Is this playing god?
• Maybe, but this isnt an ethics course, so I
  dont really care.

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Moving on How Dogs Help Us
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How Dogs Help Us

• Herding dogs.
• Police dogs.
• Seeing-eye dogs.
• Some dogs still help hunters.
• But what have you done for me lately?
• Most of us dont hunt anymore
• Many dogs these days dont fetch or guard much of
  anything. (my dog is afraid of the heating vent)
• For most of us, they are just a friend.
• We adhere to tradition, they previously helped
  our fitness, dogs certainly dont hurt our
  fitness, so there is no reason to stop
  associating with dogs.

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This dog isnt protecting anyone.

• But hes somebodys buddy.

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How dogs have effected us.

• In order for it to be co-evolution, dogs must
  have had an effect on us.
• If they can learn from us, why cant we learn
  from them?
• Wolfgang Schleidt and Michael Shalter tell us how
  they might have

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Schleidt Shalter

• We get our sense of nobility from dogs.
• They hypothesize that dogs had a sense of
  altruism before we did.
• Its possible, remember that we were Neanderthals
  when we first befriended dogs.
• They said that dogs are not nearly as selfish as
  we are, and they have taught us to be like them.

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Schleidt Shalter

• No statistical basis.
• Correlational research could be done, comparing
  altruism scores between dog-owners with non-dog
  owners, but that wouldnt prove historical truth.
• We really dont know if this is true or not. Its
  certainly possible though.

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Dogs and Autism

• Redefer and Goodman (1989)
• According to them, the low sensory and affective
  arousal levels of autism are challenged by dogs
  which present stimuli to engage many senses.
• In other words, dogs present a vivid visual
  impression, strong clear sounds, a special smell
  and an innovation of touch.

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Dogs and Autism

• Reports showed improved language skills,
  improvement in social interaction, expression of
  emotions and greater confidence with physical
  touch in children with autism.
• A longitudinal study is being carried out
  currently to show long term effects
• Experts in the field seem to agree that this
  really does work, especially with autistic
  children whos condition is more severe.

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How dogs have effected us

• Its possible that dogs have a subtle effect on
  language, social interaction, expression of
  emotions and physical touch with all of us, not
  just autistic children.
• Perhaps autism just amplifies the effects, makes
  the effects noticeable.

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Conclusions

• Humans who could get along with wolves increased
  chances of survival.
• Wolves who could get along with humans increased
  chances of survival.
• So it would only make sense that traits to
  improve co-dependence would be passed on.
• Hence co-evolution.

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Where do we go from here?

• This area of study is very new.
• More work will be done, and we will understand it
  better
• ?How much do dogs actually contribute to our own
  altruism?
• ?How well do dogs really understand what were
  thinking? (theory of mind)

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Where do we go from here?

• ?Finding evidence that selection acted directly
  on dogs social cognition.
• ?Proving the autism hypothesis.
• ?Finally, finding scientific proof that we chose
  a less aggressive brand of wolf to become our
  domestic dog. (my theory)

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Questions?