gerardo | Nov. 26, 2024, 8:56 p.m.
A while ago I saw this meme. It made me laugh, but then, it got me thinking.
Sometime between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago some random weirdo (let’s call this person Alex) somehow adopted a wolf (let’s call this wolf Max). Alex’s tribe, after some initial period of doubt and probably some lost limbs, started seeing the benefits of keeping Max (and later Max’s offspring) around. They could help fend off predators like saber toothed tigers, hyenas, and bears in exchange for a few mammoth ribs to chew on. A few generations later, Alex’s descendants realized they could manipulate Max’s descendants through selective breeding in order to optimize for certain traits. Some people wanted less aggressive wolves to watch the kids, some wanted smarter wolves, and others wanted wolves that look like mops. And now after many generations we, Alex’s descendants, can enjoy Max’s descendants on WeRateDogs.
A few thousand years later we domesticated other animals: goats, horses, cats, pigs, llamas, camels, and many others. Slowly but surely our “social circle” started growing. Dogs, however, hold a special place. They’re cute and pettable and keep us company and some of them have jobs. Some dogs are in the police force, some are soldiers, some are shepherds, some detect termites, and others help visually impaired people. Other animals also have jobs but they're way less complex. Horses, oxen, and camels help us with transportation. Donkeys are used to protect herds from predators. We have hero rats that are trained to find bombs and contraband. Why are these animals not doing more complex jobs tho? Are they capable of doing them? Why do we not have camels detecting narcotics at the airport? Or pigs joining soldiers in battle? Or swat cats catching criminals?
There’s probably a couple of reasons for this. A quick Google search on the topic mentions the brain size-to-body-weight ratio (also known as encephalization quotient, EQ for short). There needs to be a minimum level of brain capacity for an animal to start understanding what we define as complex tasks. Dogs/wolves have an EQ of 1.2 - 1.6, which is quite high in the animal kingdom. Big cats are in the same range, with an EQ of 1.2 - 1.5. Mustelids (otters/minks/wolverines) are between 1.7 - 2.0. Maybe the Mink Man is up to something here. The biggest EQ of any land mammals belong to primates. Chimpanzees have an EQ of ~3.0 and humans have an EQ of 7.5 - 8. The high EQ feathered friends from the bird world are the corvids (ravens/magpies) and the parrots, with EQs between 2.5-4. Reptiles, amphibians, and insects have normally EQs of < 1.
So, wolves were not the smartest animal back when they were first domesticated. I think there's another reason why dogs are doing complex jobs now: time. I'm not a biologist (or anything close to one) but probably (and don't quote me on this) there's some compounding happening with selective breeding. That means that in something like 30,000 years from now non-dog domesticated animals might be where dogs are now and dogs will be doing even more complex tasks. I would really want to see 30,000 years into the future to see the future of cats. Can you imagine a cat then? It would be very cool to see soldier cats, since they can be super stealthy and can climb.
I won't be around much longer, maybe something like 70-something more years (both my grandmothers lived to 100+ so I might make it a bit longer than the average human), and just like Alex and Max I won’t be able to see the distant future of our descendants. Hopefully my VPS and this blog post will survive until then, and my great great great great great (and so on) grandchildren can read this post next to Max’s great great great great great (and so on) grandpups. Maybe then they will also wonder what cats/dogs/aliens will look like in 30,000 years.
