Dear Egg Heads, Mensa Affiliaties and Brainiacs,
I recently discovered that in an area of Siberia, wild Silver Foxes had through natural selection or more appropriately through selctive breeding become domesticated in the matter of just three generations. Thier domestication had made them not only tamer but more dog like. Thier is a related artical on Wikipedia if you care to research yourself through this link - Domesticated Silver Fox
My question relates to pet dogs and specifically dangerous dogs. All domesticated dogs are genetically related to wolves and through history they were breed through selective breeding for different purposes. The German Shepard and Rottweiler were breed for thier ability to herd livestock, this makes perfect sense. The Pit Bull Terrier was breed for the purpose of baiting bears a practice I am glad to say is markedly declined since the 19th century. But all these breeds had a purpose and as time has gone on it is a real rarity that dogs are still breed and used for thier original purpose. Many pit bulls exist around the globe but a very small percentage will ever be involved in the baiting of bears.
In Great Britain we have many instances of dangerous dogs exhibiting behavior that would seem quite normal for the animals great grandfather, but completely out of place in the modern world, very often this behaviour can have fatal consquences, often involving small children or other animals. Whenever this does happen the owner protests that thier beloved Rover has never done anything like that before, so one can only assume that the owners and breeders of these dogs are not trying to keep alive this genetic code, in fact it would appear that they are proactively trying to eradicate it. Tagged along side this is the fact that these animals are most often put to death, which by the laws of natural selection will also help to bring about the weakening of the line to which these undesirable traits belong.
So now the question, bearing in mind all the facts above, why do we still have dangerous dogs..? Why haven't they breed all these traits out of themselves through successive generations. Have they not had enough time yet, is this something that will eventually happen in the future.
I need someone with a better understanding of this field to advise me, the reason for this enquiry is not actually to do with dogs at all and before I get lots of replies from dog lovers, let me say now that I love dogs and have a rotti of my own, she is a lovely playful dog although I can see that within her is the ability to protect me with extreme prejudice with what would be frightening results.
My reason for this enquiry is from a more anthropological angle, I am trying to discover why Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking and the like find themselves at the top of the evolutionary ladder, when to my mind someone like The Rock or Hulk Hogan would be better suited. My idea has lots of wide ranging issues that I need to resolve and the dog evolution question will hopefully tick one of these issues off my list.
Thank you for taking the time to read my post, I welcome any time that you care to spend on my subject.
