Arrested development?

SpiralOut <[email hidden]> wrote or quoted:

Quoted message said:

I would like to find out (a) a rough estimate on the time
of divergence from the respective ancestors of: sheep,
chicken, and cattle. And, most importantly (b) some idea
of the nature and lifestyle of these species before they
were widely domesticated by humans. Where they lived, what
they fed on, what their predators were, how they survived
extinction..

See, my thinking is this, the modern sheep, chicken, and
cattle seem to be contradictory examples to natural
selection. They have no defenses; they can't run fast,
they can't fight predators, they are not suited for a
diverse climate or terrain; I cannot imagine them living
in the wild. Without humans they would seem to be nothing
more than snack food for predators until they were quickly
killed off. Am I totally off base here?

So i'm trying to figure out how a species like this could
come to be, it seems contradictory to natural selection.
How did survival of the fittest lead to such inept
animals? My real question is if this is because of human
interference 'arresting' natural selection (taking
predators out of the mix, feeding, breaking up fights?,
etc.)? Or something more complex.

I'm not even sure if any measurable evolution will take
place in 10,000 years (the estimate on how long ago animal
husbandry began.) So maybe there is no way human
involvement has effected anything.

Look at dogs to see the power humans weild over the form of
their symbiotes.

These are all descended from something believed to look a
lot like a gray wolf - but these days we have St Bernards,
poodles, chihuahuas, rottweilers, dalmations, Jack Russell
terriers, Doberman Pinschers and greyhounds.
--
__________
|im |yler timtyler.orgtimtyler.orgOpen ↗ [email hidden] Remove
lock to reply.

SpiralOut said:

Hi, first of all, I hope this is in the right group, and
hasn't been asked repeatedly in the past. A quick search
didn't give me what I was looking for.

This is a difficult subject to google, so I just need
some direction, any help would be appreciated, I don't
mind doing the research for myself if I can get on the
right track.

I would like to find out (a) a rough estimate on the time
of divergence from the respective ancestors of: sheep,
chicken, and cattle. And, most importantly (b) some idea
of the nature and lifestyle of these species before they
were widely domesticated by humans. Where they lived, what
they fed on, what their predators were, how they survived
extinction..

See, my thinking is this, the modern sheep, chicken, and
cattle seem to be contradictory examples to natural
selection. They have no defenses; they can't run fast,
they can't fight predators, they are not suited for a
diverse climate or terrain; I cannot imagine them living
in the wild. Without humans they would seem to be nothing
more than snack food for predators until they were quickly
killed off. Am I totally off base here?

So i'm trying to figure out how a species like this could
come to be, it seems contradictory to natural selection.
How did survival of the fittest lead to such inept
animals? My real question is if this is because of human
interference 'arresting' natural selection (taking
predators out of the mix, feeding, breaking up fights?,
etc.)? Or something more complex.

I'm not even sure if any measurable evolution will take
place in 10,000 years (the estimate on how long ago animal
husbandry began.) So maybe there is no way human
involvement has effected anything.

So, any direction would be greatly appreciated. Also, any
examples of "arrested" natural selection? Grasping here,
hope you can help me out.

It is purely a case of selective breeding by humans.
Qualities chosen by humans can be bred for quite quickly. A
scientist in the Soviet Union selected foxes for some sort
of human-friendliness and already there are even
morphological differences in the foxes due to the relevant
biochemistry. This has happened in less than sixty years.

--Jeff

--
A man, a plan, a cat, a canal - Panama!

Ho, ho, ho, hee, hee, hee and a couple of ha, ha, has;
That's how we pass the day away, in the merry old land of
Oz.

[email hidden] (SpiralOut) wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Hi, first of all, I hope this is in the right group, and
hasn't been asked repeatedly in the past. A quick search
didn't give me what I was looking for.

This is a difficult subject to google, so I just need
some direction, any help would be appreciated, I don't
mind doing the research for myself if I can get on the
right track.

I would like to find out (a) a rough estimate on the time
of divergence from the respective ancestors of: sheep,
chicken, and cattle. And, most importantly (b) some idea
of the nature and lifestyle of these species before they
were widely domesticated by humans. Where they lived, what
they fed on, what their predators were, how they survived
extinction..

See, my thinking is this, the modern sheep, chicken, and
cattle seem to be contradictory examples to natural
selection. They have no defenses; they can't run fast,
they can't fight predators, they are not suited for a
diverse climate or terrain; I cannot imagine them living
in the wild. Without humans they would seem to be nothing
more than snack food for predators until they were quickly
killed off. Am I totally off base here?

So i'm trying to figure out how a species like this could
come to be, it seems contradictory to natural selection.
How did survival of the fittest lead to such inept
animals? My real question is if this is because of human
interference 'arresting' natural selection (taking
predators out of the mix, feeding, breaking up fights?,
etc.)? Or something more complex.

I'm not even sure if any measurable evolution will take
place in 10,000 years (the estimate on how long ago animal
husbandry began.) So maybe there is no way human
involvement has effected anything.

So, any direction would be greatly appreciated. Also, any
examples of "arrested" natural selection? Grasping here,
hope you can help me out.

Thanks alot. -David

Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond has many facts
about the species that man domesticated and those he didn't.
Any library will have it, or: s The book is worth reading
for lots of other reasons too.

Yes. measurable evolution can definitely take place in
10,000 years, or even shorter, if the environment has taken
a dramatic turn. And the environment of domestic animals is
dramatically different than that of their ancestors.

"Arrested development" is the wrong term for what happened
to these species. Instead, their direction of evolution took
a sharp turn and the accelerator was pushed to the floor.

[email hidden] (SpiralOut) wrote in news:c2u6ku$20sj$1
@darwin.ediacara.org:

Quoted message said:

Hi, first of all, I hope this is in the right group, and
hasn't been asked repeatedly in the past. A quick search
didn't give me what I was looking for.

This is a difficult subject to google, so I just need
some direction, any help would be appreciated, I don't
mind doing the research for myself if I can get on the
right track.

I would like to find out (a) a rough estimate on the time
of divergence from the respective ancestors of: sheep,
chicken, and cattle. And, most importantly (b) some idea
of the nature and lifestyle of these species before they
were widely domesticated by humans. Where they lived, what
they fed on, what their predators were, how they survived
extinction..

See, my thinking is this, the modern sheep, chicken, and
cattle seem to be contradictory examples to natural
selection. They have no defenses; they can't run fast,
they can't fight predators, they are not suited for a
diverse climate or terrain; I cannot imagine them living
in the wild. Without humans they would seem to be nothing
more than snack food for predators until they were quickly
killed off. Am I totally off base here?

Jim Menegay has already given the reference to _Guns, Germs,
and Steel_ which should give you good starting points for
your search. I just wanted to make a few comments about the
above living in the wild.

Longhorn cattle - the cattle that you see in all the
westerns - were the choice of cattlemen in the old west
precisely for their ability to run fast, fight predators,
and survive in diverse climate and terrain, especially on
the long drives necessary to get them to market. They in
fact have a rather nasty temperament and are not the best
tasting beef, and no sane rancher would put up with them
other than for their survival value. Once the west was
tamed, the predators were eliminated, and transportation
became widely available, the longhorn was superseded by more
domestic varieties.

Until recently, roosters were famed for their fighting
ability. While this was directed largely for sport,
"gamecocks" are hardly defenseless. "Free range" chickens
still live partly in the wild, albeit with help from humans.

There are still wild kin of sheep ancestors that survive
quite nicely in the American Rocky Mountains.

Yours,

Bill Morse

[email hidden] (SpiralOut) wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Hi, first of all, I hope this is in the right group, and
hasn't been asked repeatedly in the past. A quick search
didn't give me what I was looking for.

This is a difficult subject to google, so I just need
some direction, any help would be appreciated, I don't
mind doing the research for myself if I can get on the
right track.

I would like to find out (a) a rough estimate on the time
of divergence from the respective ancestors of: sheep,
chicken, and cattle. And, most importantly (b) some idea
of the nature and lifestyle of these species before they
were widely domesticated by humans. Where they lived, what
they fed on, what their predators were, how they survived
extinction..

I am thinking that you mean how long has it been since they
were seperated from thier undomesticated, wild ancestor, not
since they shared a commyn ancestor.

'Auroch' is the name i have allways heard given for wild
bovines that were domesticated and gave rise to our
modern cattle.

I don't know about sheep, but they are related i beleive to
the Musk Ox. But please, don't think that i am saying the
modern sheep livestock are descended from the Musk Ox, or
that primitive humans domesticated the musk ox.

as far as chickens, as i recall there are still a large
number of animals that more or less resemble chickens and
are in the wild, and that the chicken is beleived tohave
been domesticated in southeast asia

Quoted message said:

See, my thinking is this, the modern sheep, chicken, and
cattle seem to be contradictory examples to natural
selection. They have no defenses; they can't run fast,
they can't fight predators, they are not suited for a
diverse climate or terrain; I cannot imagine them living
in the wild. Without humans they would seem to be nothing
more than snack food for predators until they were quickly
killed off. Am I totally off base here?

I think they would survive quite well. I think any modern
predator would have quite a bit of trouble taking down the
sort of bulls that are breed for the bullring. Of course,
you have to keep in mind that modern livestock has been
breed into its current states by humans, not by nature.

Quoted message said:

So i'm trying to figure out how a species like this could
come to be, it seems contradictory to natural selection.
How did survival of the fittest lead to such inept
animals?

Evolution is much more involved than mere 'survival of the
fittest'. Modern domesticated livestock only give postive
information for natural selection. They demonstrate just how
variable animal populations are, and how direction can be
given to that normally undirectional variation if something
is consistently selected for.

Quoted message said:

My real question is if this is because of human
interference 'arresting' natural selection (taking
predators out of the mix, feeding, breaking up fights?,
etc.)? Or something more complex.

I'm not even sure if any measurable evolution will take
place in 10,000 years (the estimate on how long ago animal
husbandry began.) So maybe there is no way human
involvement has effected anything.

a huge degree of selection can take place and have a quite
visible effect on a stock in short period of time. Just look
at the enourmous number of dog breeds, all distinct from one
another. And that is all just for sport and fun. Just think
about how much can be done when your very existance depends
on it. Unless you would contend that all the different
breeds of dogs each had a similar wild ancestor, all of
which have disappeared without leaving any fossil traces or
appearances in the historical records.

Quoted message said:

So, any direction would be greatly appreciated. Also, any
examples of "arrested" natural selection?

I would say that in any instance where humans are selecting
for a trait in animals -could- be looked at as arresting
natural selection, but is probably more correctly looked at
as adding to natural selection. We can select a strain of
cattle because it yeilds more meat or milk, but everything
we don't select for is probably going to fall under the
domain of natural selection still, so it wouldn't be best to
say it -stops- natural selection. Just look at corn. Very
old strains of corn are nothing like the modern product,
obviously nature never selected for the somewhat strange
characteristics that humans do. However, in another sense,
its all a sort of natural selection. The ones that respond
favourably to the demands of the farmers are the ones that
actually get to reproduce, while the rest dont. Darwin
himself was an avid pigeon hobbiest, and he also published a
huge book on domestic/artificial selection that detailed
variouf livestock and other animals that humans have breed
for some time.

snip

On Sat, 13 Mar 2004 05:36:30 +0000 (UTC), [email hidden]

(SpiralOut) said:

Hi, first of all, I hope this is in the right group, and
hasn't been asked repeatedly in the past. A quick search
didn't give me what I was looking for.

This is a difficult subject to google, so I just need
some direction, any help would be appreciated, I don't
mind doing the research for myself if I can get on the
right track.

I would like to find out (a) a rough estimate on the time
of divergence from the respective ancestors of: sheep,
chicken, and cattle. And, most importantly (b) some idea of
the nature and lifestyle of these species before they were
widely domesticated by humans. Where they lived, what they
fed on, what their predators were, how they survived
extinction..

See, my thinking is this, the modern sheep, chicken, and
cattle seem to be contradictory examples to natural
selection. They have no defenses; they can't run fast, they
can't fight predators, they are not suited for a diverse
climate or terrain; I cannot imagine them living in the
wild. Without humans they would seem to be nothing more
than snack food for predators until they were quickly
killed off. Am I totally off base here?

So i'm trying to figure out how a species like this could
come to be, it seems contradictory to natural selection.
How did survival of the fittest lead to such inept animals?
My real question is if this is because of human
interference 'arresting' natural selection (taking
predators out of the mix, feeding, breaking up fights?,
etc.)? Or something more complex.

I'm not even sure if any measurable evolution will take
place in 10,000 years (the estimate on how long ago animal
husbandry began.) So maybe there is no way human
involvement has effected anything.

So, any direction would be greatly appreciated. Also, any
examples of "arrested" natural selection? Grasping here,
hope you can help me out.

Thanks alot. -David

I see that you already have answers. If you want more, take
the question to sci.bio.paleontology. For the details of the
fox domestication experiment, see Early Canid Domestication:
The Farm-Fox Experiment by Lyudmila N Trut American
Scientist Vol 87 (2) March-April 1999 p 160 - 169.

Some species not yet mentioned: Most domesticated mammal:
[censored] sapiens Most domesticated insect: Silkworm moth Most
domesticated plant: A tough pick. Bananas and breadfruit
don't make seeds! They depend on human propagation
entirely. (Wild relatives are known). Why don't they make
seeds? Plants that spread across Polynesia can be started
much quicker from cuttings than from seeds; ( actually,
this is true of most plants); humans on little islands or
going to a new island need their food plants as soon as
possible -- and seedless forms are much easier to eat ---
human selection ....

Caribou & Reindeer
mnh.si.educaribou reindeer.htmlOpen ↗

Evolution can lead to species needing each other.
Obligate symbiotes in nature include ant-fungus pairs and
ant-tree pairs.

Dependance of one species on another is simply
specialization. Many

by the way, dogs are parasites on humans.

Dunk

To: Sci.bio.evolution moderation account
Subject: Re: Arrested development?

Quoted message said:

SO:- ..my thinking is this, the modern sheep, chicken, and
cattle seem to be contradictory examples to natural
selection. They have no defenses; they can't run fast, they
can't fight predators, they are not suited for a diverse
climate or terrain; I cannot imagine them living in the
wild. Without humans they would seem to be nothing more
than snack food for predators until they were quickly
killed off. Am I totally off base here?

JE:- You are on base, except that you may not have
identified what that base actually is. Don't worry, you are
in good company. Most of today's professionals can't/won't
identify it, either. It is termed organism fitness mutualism
(OFM). Mutualised forms maximise their total reproductive
count to a higher value compared to remaining a non
mutualised form. Darwinian fitness is the _total_ number of
_fertile_ forms reproduced by that parent within one
population. All parents within the one population compare
their Darwinian fitnesses with every other. This process is
completed entirely by default (nobody does it and it
requires zero energy). Thus a parental total is an
_absolute_ fitness measure of _each_ parent. The comparison
of all these absolute fitnesses by default, results in
relative fitness. This is just the difference between a
minimum of _two_ absolute fitnesses. A population of just
one parent is automatically selected because no relative
fitness measure is possible.

Modern sheep, chickens and cattle are not "contradictory
examples to natural selection (NS)" they are classical
examples of selection at work where however, OFM is the
predominant NS force. This means that classical
environmental forces such as temperature food availability
or even mate availability, have been reduced by OFM so they
take a back seat. We assist domestic forms to increase their
Darwinian fitness because we exploit them for food, clothing
etc. However, from their point of view they are exploiting
us, because we feed and protect them etc. The fact that we
kill and eat them is neither here nor there if we maximise
their Darwinian fitness in the process because this is all
nature needs to cares about. If we didn't maximise their
Darwinian fitness, populations of domestic forms would
dwindle to nothing. Billions of chickens, cattle and sheep
etc are raised to fertile adulthood providing us with a
renewable resource. From a domestic forms point of view this
is a good deal because we increase the absolute Darwinian
fitness of most domesticated parental forms by eating them.
NS quickly reduces these forms to a state where they "have
no defences", "can't run fast", "can't fight predators" and
are "not suited for a diverse climate or terrain" because
these _expensive_ sub systems are not needed or are now,
maladaptive. Using OFM, the chicken with the most meat/eggs,
that grows faster and is tasty and nutritious is naturally
selected over a leaner and tougher wild type of chicken that
could run fast to escape being caught and eaten by us, which
may indeed, have wound inflicting defences against us or
could even adapt better to changing climates. This is
because evading us reduces _their_ Darwinian fitness even
when we eat them. Note that our Darwinian fitness is also
raised by OFM, putting the "M" in OFM.

The problem has been that most professionals still think
that OFM is just some form of impossible group selection
and/or a form of altruism. It is neither. Unfortunately, OFM
has never been properly understood because Neo Darwinian
fitness counts do not explicitly exclude infertile forms.
Where gene centric Neo Darwinists have always seen altruism
only organism centric mutualism actually existed. This can
be proven mathematically using Hamilton's rule. This rule
has been consistently misused for over 50 years to
substantiate organism fitness altruism (OFA) within nature
after group selection failed to be able to do so. Hamilton's
altruistic gene can only have a measured gain in _relative_
fitness. In Darwinian reasoning, nature cannot select to
lower a parents absolute fitness, but this is exactly what
happens to Hamilton's donor when it donates to recipients.
No term for absolute organism fitness appears anywhere
within the rule. Thus Neo Darwinians end up with twisted
terms like "reciprocal altruism" which can only mean a loss
in Darwinian fitness for all those "reciprocating". Such an
event cannot be selected within nature. Neo Darwinists are
searching for OFM using OFA, which is absurd. Groups form in
nature because of selectee OFM, not because selectees are
altruistic or group selected.

Regards,

John Edser Independent Researcher

PO Box 266 Church Pt NSW 2105 Australia

[email hidden]