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I wonder, how many new genes are present in dog's bread in captivity which are completely absent from wolves in the wild. I'm curious of our breeding has led to mostly/entirely phenomenological genetic changes or if there has been genetic mutations as well, which might suggest a path of speciation is occuring.
@freemo There has to be some studies of the genomes of dogs and wolves and how they differ.
Similar can be said for cats.
There are so many breeds of dogs it makes my head spin. Genetic engineering by us spanning thousands of years.
@lordalveric I have no doubt there are, but its a little out of my domain so I just dont know about them.
@freemo Consider all of our "domesticated" animals -- cows, for example, whose udders are udderly ridiculous in size, producing way too much milk for its own young.
Chickens too, not able to fly, but bearing a lot of meat -- for us humans to eat.
Similar deal with bananas, etc.
"Domestication" is just another word for Mendelian genetic engineering. :D
@lordalveric Yes no doubt breeding causes variation. The question at hand here is how much of that variation in phenotypic in nature and to what extent is it genotypic.
@freemo Good question. It would not take much, considering we share something like 97% of our genome in common with chimps.
It would be interesting to know not only how far divergent dogs are from wolves, but how much the different breeds differ from each other.
Great Danes vs. Poodles. May not differ as much as you think.
