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Wait. Houseflies aren't around without people? What about horseflies, the true enemy?
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# ? Jun 11, 2024 09:54 |
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Arglebargle III posted:Wait. They're like cockroaches or rats or dogs. They exist in nature but for the most part since we settled down, they live with humans in commensal relationships.
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Grand Fromage posted:They're like cockroaches or rats or dogs. They exist in nature but for the most part since we settled down, they live with humans in commensal relationships. Yeah people like to talk up how impossible to kill cockroaches are but two winters without central heating and they’re banished back to the tropics. ![]()
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Grand Fromage posted:They're like cockroaches or rats or dogs. They exist in nature but for the most part since we settled down, they live with humans in commensal relationships. Eh, I believe dogs kinda don't, or at least they wouldn't, without humans' domestication. The species of wolf they descended from is long extinct, and the reason gray wolves are so similar to dogs nowadays is because of all the feral dog DNA admixture into their populations, not vice versa.
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Fuschia tude posted:Eh, I believe dogs kinda don't, or at least they wouldn't, without humans' domestication. The species of wolf they descended from is long extinct, and the reason gray wolves are so similar to dogs nowadays is because of all the feral dog DNA admixture into their populations, not vice versa. I mean, dingos are feral dogs
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It's real amusing that even the silliest bougiest inbredest mutant lap-dog breed is genetically speaking just a wolf.
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Tunicate posted:I mean, dingos are feral dogs Not really no
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Jezza of OZPOS posted:Not really no genetically they're domestic dogs plus a couple thousand years
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I'll let the scientists who are still debating this because of ongoing new genetic information know that a something awful poster figured it out
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Dingos also keep on interbreeding with modern dogs to muddle things up. A lot of breeding and essentially engineering went into creating most current dog breeds, and people don't talk about it often. We also did it with horses, cows, and a lot of crops, creating new species to suit our purposes that can end up unrecognizable compared to the original versions. With crops people are still manufacturing new variants (which is especially important to keep chocolate and bananas from going extinct), I don't know if there's much directed animal breeding these days with a purpose beyond aesthetics or health.
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SlothfulCobra posted:I don't know if there's much directed animal breeding these days with a purpose beyond aesthetics or health. Oh sure. American pigs have been bred to be larger and much leaner since the 50s, for one example I know offhand. But a lot of stuff that used to be done with selective breeding is now done with direct genetic modification since it's a lot faster and much simpler to target exactly the result you're going for.
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Jezza of OZPOS posted:I'll let the scientists who are still debating this because of ongoing new genetic information know that a something awful poster figured it out
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Jezza of OZPOS posted:Not really no nah they are
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Grand Fromage posted:Oh sure. American pigs have been bred to be larger and much leaner since the 50s, for one example I know offhand. But a lot of stuff that used to be done with selective breeding is now done with direct genetic modification since it's a lot faster and much simpler to target exactly the result you're going for. I'm pretty sure it's still a thing with e.g. horses, dogs and cats (i.e. non-commercial-food-production type stuff)
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I don't understand cats at all, I got a bengal so she's a cross (and a few generations) between a domestic cat and an Asian leopard cat. But those are two different species? Which, ok, different species can sometimes breed. But then they say they're two different genera. How the gently caress does that make sense? How can you be simultaneously that close and that far apart? And I bet you could breed all sorts of weird cat breeds if you tried, so what even are cats? I think the African wildcat seems a hell of a lot closer to the domestic cat than dogs are to wolves too, Im not entirely convinced there even is a difference between them. So I'll believe that dingos are dogs.
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BrainDance posted:I don't understand cats at all, I got a bengal so she's a cross (and a few generations) between a domestic cat and an Asian leopard cat. But those are two different species? Which, ok, different species can sometimes breed. Sturgeon and paddlefish can hybridize even though they are from different families. Their last common ancestors was in the Jurassic.
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feedmegin posted:I'm pretty sure it's still a thing with e.g. horses, dogs and cats (i.e. non-commercial-food-production type stuff) Those all fall into the aesthetics caveat though. Maybe someone's still breeding horses and dogs for specific working tasks but I don't know.
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Grand Fromage posted:Those all fall into the aesthetics caveat though. Maybe someone's still breeding horses and dogs for specific working tasks but I don't know. Racing horses and racing dogs spring to mind
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Grand Fromage posted:Oh sure. American pigs have been bred to be larger and much leaner since the 50s, for one example I know offhand. Also the "Chicken of Tomorrow". Without it, the modern chicken sandwich would not exist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G0stojwYjI
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Grand Fromage posted:Those all fall into the aesthetics caveat though. Maybe someone's still breeding horses and dogs for specific working tasks but I don't know. Draft/carriage horses are still a thing as is livestock/working dogs. Its still relatively common.
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I can't believe how thin he slices that chicken.
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Scarodactyl posted:I can't believe how thin he slices that chicken. I want to bake a chicken now.
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Telsa Cola posted:Draft/carriage horses are still a thing as is livestock/working dogs. Its still relatively common. But are new breeds still being actively developed for work? That's the question, not whether they're used for it.
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I kind of assume so? it's all selective breeding ultimately even if they're just trying to retain a specific set of qualities. look at what humans are using animals for and you will find the pressures that lead to adaptive traits, so gigantic loving police dogs count eg.
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Breed names and identities were kind of an afterthought for working dogs, too. Farmers would just select for certain traits in different parts of the world and you wound up with 300 different kinds of sheepdog and such. This is still pretty common today, with most working shepherds or livestock guardian dogs not really being purebred in the dog-show sense. But yeah, there are still a ton of working animals out there. Turns out having a fluffy buddy who makes your job a lot easier is pretty cool.
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Guide dogs are purposefully bred, I know
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Grand Fromage posted:But are new breeds still being actively developed for work? That's the question, not whether they're used for it. I think this really depends on how you define actively develop, people are still purposely breeding/selecting animals for draft purposes and the like but you aren't seeing massive projects for it.
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It is still happening to mixed success.hersrory begins now posted:https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3873659&pagenumber=1167&perpage=40&userid=0#post491120171
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BrainDance posted:I don't understand cats at all, I got a bengal so she's a cross (and a few generations) between a domestic cat and an Asian leopard cat. But those are two different species? Which, ok, different species can sometimes breed. A “species” or “genera” are entirely human ways of trying to organize and understand the world, and probably don’t have much to do with reality. We’re still figuring this poo poo out. And we always will be. Much like with history. And yes, dingos are dogs (domesticated wolves or other wild dogs). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingo
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as it turns out interbreeding between species is more complicated than you can realistically capture in a hierarchical tree. two organisms can be very genetically different but as long as certain parts of the genome haven't changed then you'll still have compatibility. but if they have changed, then two organisms can be almost genetically identical and be unable to interbreed. generally, species in different genuses or families have accumulated enough of these incompatibilities that it doesn't work, but not always
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Gobleki Tepi ain’t the only one: https://www.dainst.blog/the-tepe-telegrams/2016/05/08/the-current-distribution-of-sites-with-t-shaped-pillars/ https://www.heritagedaily.com/2022/08/karahan-tepe-the-sister-site-to-gobekli-tepe/144272?amp https://www.thetravel.com/gobekli-tepe-and-other-weird-sites/
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Jazerus posted:as it turns out interbreeding between species is more complicated than you can realistically capture in a hierarchical tree. two organisms can be very genetically different but as long as certain parts of the genome haven't changed then you'll still have compatibility. but if they have changed, then two organisms can be almost genetically identical and be unable to interbreed. generally, species in different genuses or families have accumulated enough of these incompatibilities that it doesn't work, but not always Yeah, humans have long liked to sing the “One of these things is not like the other” song, but we are just finding out that we were very very wrong.
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Otteration posted:Gobleki Tepi ain’t the only one: That's fascinating I wonder if we will find something bigger?
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Lawman 0 posted:That's fascinating I wonder if we will find something bigger? Not much of any of them have been excavated. The bigger question is why. We don’t know yet. Maybe never will. Still, keep trying. Otteration fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Sep 5, 2022 |
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Otteration posted:Gobleki Tepi ain’t the only one: Talianki is my current favorite neolithic site.
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There's apparently several caves fairly close by with preserved mammoth and giant sloth poo poo and well now those are on my to do list to go check out. Because that shits cool.
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I love that avocados evolved alongside giant sloths and were entirely dependent on giant sloths pooping out their giant seeds until humans figured out they could eat them at the same time they exctincted the sloths. I wish the sloths were still around, I bet we could be friends ![]()
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Lawman 0 posted:That's fascinating I wonder if we will find something bigger? I think it’s more an indication that people have been people. We don’t necessarily have writing to explain what was happening before a certain point, but I posit that people were very much still people. People 10kya were basically the same as us today. Yes, some technology obviously separates us, but generally speaking we’re no different today than we were then. We like to think that agriculture drove civilization, but it seems more and more likely that agriculture didn’t change us, but rather just let us feed more people. Humans 40kya are more similar to modern humans than human like ancestors from 200kya. People are people. See, for example, chariot drivers from 8kya yelling at someone making them mad that they’re going to break off the tip of the sacred horn and shove it up their rear end.
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FishFood posted:I love that avocados evolved alongside giant sloths and were entirely dependent on giant sloths pooping out their giant seeds until humans figured out they could eat them at the same time they exctincted the sloths. I wish the sloths were still around, I bet we could be friends I read that sloths basically let themselves get insanely filthy and maybe even grow junk on them as a defense mechanism to make them smell so horrible they're unpalatable to predators. If giant sloths do the same thing I dunno if you'd really wanna be their friend. If they did and they still lived maybe the world would be a completely different place as we'd all have to deal with the giant stank animal walking around, too slow to get it away from you fast enough.
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# ? Jun 11, 2024 09:54 |
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BrainDance posted:I read that sloths basically let themselves get insanely filthy and maybe even grow junk on them as a defense mechanism to make them smell so horrible they're unpalatable to predators. if they're giant they don't need to stink to be not worth the effort of killing
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