The Posthuman Dog | MetaFilter

If humans disappeared tomorrow, about 1 billion dogs would be left on their own. [] Although many people, when asked to picture a dog, will think of a furry companion curled up on the couch by a humans side or walking on the end of a leash, research suggests that roughly 20 per cent of the worlds dogs live as pets, or what we call intensively homed dogs. The other 80 per cent of the worlds dogs are free-ranging, an umbrella term that includes village, street, unconfined, community, and feral dogs. In other words, most dogs on the planet are already living on their own, without direct human support within a homed environment. In our new book, A Dogs World (2021), Marc Bekoff and I [Jessica Pierce] invite readers into an imaginary world in which humans have suddenly disappeared and dogs must survive on their own. We consider two key questions. First, could dogs survive without their human counterparts are they still capable of living on their own, as wild animals, without help from and relationships with humans? Second, and perhaps even more intriguing, what are some of the possible evolutionary trajectories of posthuman dogs, as artificial selection is replaced by natural selection? Would dogs look or behave anything like the animals we now call our best friends? This is a serious thought-experiment in speculative biology and one that can ultimately help us better understand who dogs really are. Thinking about dogs without us can help us understand who dogs are with us, and what they need from us, right now, to flourish and be happy. posted by Johnny Wallflower (70 comments total) 23 users marked this as a favorite

Everything else, like "agriculture" and that whole "industrialization" mess... double-edged swords, at best. Might turn out to be regrettable moves in the end.

Cats? Probably domesticated themselves. Probably wouldn't even admit they're domesticated if asked.

Horses, cows, water buffalo, and other large herbivores? Obviously very practical as prime movers (and prime steaks). Same with most other true domesticated (v. tame) animals; they fit into a pretty obvious need (meat, milk, wool, power/transport, etc.) that justifies the investment into their domestication and maintenance as a distinct reproductive group.

And yes, while some dogs certainly do have jobsthey're rarely ideally suited. Generally they're just flexible enough to get hammered into the gap that needs filling. Very much like humans in that way.

For us to have dogs... someoneprobably quite a few someones, over timemust have found a litter of wild canids, and despite them being a competitor (and probable predator, at least occasionally) species to humans, decided to raise them and began the slow process of domestication. I'm not aware of any other species that will do that. Most other top-of-the-food-chain species are pretty, uh, rough, when it comes to finding the vulnerable young of a competitor. That's the evolutionarily safe move.

But for some reason, humans didn't always slaughter them, in some cases must have taken care of them, and as a result of that impulsethat empathetic sparkwe got dogs.

I believe it is the closest we have ever come to being actual gods, to the fundamental act of creation in one's own image, and on a very real level I suspect that to dogs, we probably are indistinguishable from gods. (I haven't seen the study done yet, but I'd feel pretty confident in predicting that if you could do one of those fMRI studies of a domesticated dog interacting with 'its' bonded human, and that of a religious person having a serious spiritual moment of connectedness, you'd probably see the same brain regions light up.)

In the domestication of dogs I see the very best impulses of our species made real. In their treatment, some of the worst.

It would be sad, but perhaps entirely understandable, if dogs were unable to exist apart from us.posted by Kadin2048 at 10:21 AM on November 4 [6 favorites]

As far as I know, nobody has really tried this in any serious way. Which is a bit disappointing, given the sort of really lazy shit we've bred dogs to do for us.

And as moon shot projects go, I think it has a significantly higher chance of success than, say, Musk's Mars-colonization fantasy. I mean, we know the process is possible, because we exist. Over on the great timeline thread, we can see that there were a series of increasingly-intelligent hominids that predated sapiens sapiens. We know that, somewhere in there, consciousness evolved at least once. It stands to reason it could be made to happen again, under the right selection pressures. There's nothing about it that seems like it should be totally exclusive to primates.

I'd probably want to start with multiple candidate species (maybe include dolphins of some sort? how about a Procyon like the raccoon?), but dogs would certainly be on the short list. There would be some hard questions to answer along the wayhow do we measure intelligence? is the definition of "sentience" dependent entirely on communications ability with us? can a species be sentient but noncommunicative, or nonlinguistic?and I suspect there would be some blind alleys that we'd have to explore along the way. We'd pursue all the plausible ones in parallel though, of course.

But it seems like a tractable problem given enough time and resources. I feel like, given maybe a decade or two and couple gigabucks, you'd probably have something to show for it that would get you a Ted Talk.

If there are any reclusive billionaires out there, have your people drop me a MeMail or leave a burner phone under my pillow or whatever it is you guys do. I'd be happy to project manage this for you. Here's my elevator pitch: "Musk has fantasies of being Vasco da Gama in a spacesuit, and will almost certainly fail. For the same amount of money, I'll take an honest shot at making you an actual god." The dogs get a retirement village, though, that's non-negotiable.posted by Kadin2048 at 10:36 PM on November 4 [1 favorite]

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The Posthuman Dog | MetaFilter