Dogs Evolved 'on The Waste Dump', A New Genetic Study Suggests

[DocsDoctor]

I haven't seen this mentioned yet on Greytalk so thought some of you might be interested. A new study by a US/Swedish team suggests that, compared to wolves, dogs have many more genes for metabolising starch - and so for scavenging and digesting the kind of waste likely to be produced by early farming settlements:

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21142870

 

 

 

[Guest cwholsin]

Cool!

[a_daerr]

Wow! Very interesting! I guess this debunks the whole "dogs are carnivores, carbs are bad" theory.

[DocsDoctor]

Wow! Very interesting! I guess this debunks the whole "dogs are carnivores, carbs are bad" theory.

Yes, that was my thought on reading it too!

[EnzaFerrari]

There was an article in the Post two days ago.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/learning-to-love-cereal-was-key-to-the-evolution-of-dogs/2013/01/23/30c47500-6510-11e2-85f5-a8a9228e55e7_story.html

[greysmom]

I first saw this theory several years ago on a PBS show about dogs. Quite interesting.

[Guest undergreysspell]

Very interesting, thanks for sharing.

[Guest grey_dreams]

Interesting article! I've read (but can't find the article now) that in evolutionary terms, the most important function of early domesticated dogs was to dispose of the human feces around the settlements. Human feces still accounts for something like 80% of dog diet in 3rd world countries. They think that this is one reason why coprophagia is so prevalent in dogs.

[Guest Giselle]

There has been a lot of evidence in the past to suggest that dogs evolved passively by scavenging human waste. However, like the article alluded, there is a bit of a time lag between when dogs became a distinct species and when people started pursuing agriculture/congregating in large enough groups to generate trash. So, there's still a lot of controversy.

 

That said, morphologically, dogs have a very simple gastrointestinal tract like humans. There is a very rich field that studies "natural" animal diets using evolutionary/morphological clues, and what I seem to conclude from that info is that dogs (like people) are selectively omnivorous. When given the opportunity to eat meat, dogs and people will preferentially choose animal-source food (barring any moral objections ). But dogs and people can live very well on largely vegetarian and, yes, carbohydrate-laden diets. I don't know whoever said that carbs were "bad" for dogs anymore than I can understand why people think carbs are "bad" at all. Our brain feeds off glucose and only glucose. Never mind those pesky ketone bodies! Animals with big brains (like dogs!) need a steady source of glucose, and it only makes sense that they have the morphological traits necessary to consume large amounts of glucose, like carb-specific enzymes.

 

Here's another geneticist offering his findings on dogs and evolution:

http://www.cornell.edu/video/?videoID=2259&utm_source=cornellcast_weekly_update&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2259