Dawkins: Lecture 2. Design and Designoid Objects (4 of 6)

Richard Dawkins

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• Richard
• Dawkins

[uReligious]

sry my ignorance on evolutionary biology, but why doesnt the bigger/smaller dogs resemble a wolf even if its bigger? random mutation within artificial selection?

I want a wolf, like in wow, that i can ride on, lol :P

[DrMontague]

Let talk about noses. Out of a litter of dogs one of them might have a smaller nose than the others. In another litter we might find the same thing. Now if we take the dogs with the small noses and mate them we end up with dogs with smaller noses. After many generations we end up with something that looks far removed from the wild wolf.

[uReligious]

Even though we have the german shappard which is without doubt subjected to artificial selection?

Did we take traits that purposely led away from fx the fur? The chihuahua is a lot "furyer" than the great dane. Did we on purpose choice less fur, or was it a byproduct?

And is it possible by artificial selection (in theory ofcourse) to create a german sheppard (very similar looks) much bigger.. Without byproducts that would result in a completely different look.

[DrMontague]

I'm not going to spend hours of my time being your free online teacher. You have the internet. Go and do some research. MNS Encarter and Wikipedia are good place to begin your research

[uReligious]

Then stop answering? Or maybe you just dont know? theres nothing wrong with that...

[DrMontague]

You have a world of knowledge at your finger tips. So stop being so lazy and start doing your own research. E.g. college courses, buy some books, visit authoritative websites. Then if you still find something un-answered then that is the time to ask others questions. At the moment I am researching cellular biology. I don't expect others to spend hours of their time educating me about cells when there is mountains of info out there. Do your research then ask questions.

[Rocker921]

lol "Have you ever used a computer with a mouse" :D not a joke

[jojocabaret]

lol 'have you ever used a computer with a mouse?' old school.

[hipp6y]

naughty pigeon :]

[Cheuvin]

LOL laurence failed

[VBranberg]

Oh I laughed out loud when he said that. :D

[FerretBob]

Nice reference :)

[Kimbahley]

hahaha! That was hilariously dated. I expected to fast-forward a few minutes to hear him say, "I am now telling the computer exactly what it can do with a lifetime's supply of chocolates."

[RajahBrooke]

Yes

[RajahBrooke]

After all, a dog that is larger than the other dogs in the same litter is likely to have a larger skull, or a heavier bone structure, or some other tiny difference, taking it further away from the original wolf. Obviously, the great dane was selectively bread not only to be large (after all, there are other large dogs like look nothing like it), so its dissimilarity from a wolf does not count for much besides taste. I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure that's how it works.

[RajahBrooke]

You probably could end up with something resembling a very large wolf if you wanted. I imagine though that after many generations of selective breeding, certain aspects of the animal's physiology would become prominent that you may not have expected - for example, the larger dogs in a litter may also have had slightly broader snouts, or less hair; those differences become more pronounced over time. As a result, I imagine it would take tremendous patience to breed HUGE wolves. cont.