Wednesday, August 15, 2012

My great-great-great-(etc.)-grandpa is not an ape!

If you've ever met my dog, you probably know what her favorite things to do are: take a walk, sit at the window (and look for squirrels and other moving objects), bark at squirrels (and other moving objects), sniff around outside, chase moving objects (on occasion) and lay down, curled into a tight ball.

In fact, if you've ever met any dog, or you own a dog, you have probably seen it do one (if not many) of these things. This is because dogs that we have as pets (domestic dogs) are descendants of gray wolves (according to wikipedia. I'm not sure if they only descend from gray wolves, but I'm pretty sure they descend from some type of wolf or wild dog).

Dogs (when I say dogs I mean domestic dogs) like to be outdoors because their ancestors lived outdoors. It is natural. I'm sure that given the choice, Toto (my dog) would spend her whole life outdoors sniffing for wild animals. Dogs like to chase wild animals because hunting is in their blood. Their natural instinct is to attack moving things because wild dogs had to do this to survive.

 Here is a picture of a wolf sleeping, which looks exactly like my dog's sleeping position. I heard somewhere that dogs walk in a circle to push down the "grass" beneath them, like wolves do (or in my dog's case, she has to push down the beanbag).

Dogs and wolves are clearly related.

I don't know very much about monkeys (or apes, chimpanzees, gorillas, etc.) But doesn't it seem like if we were descendants of them we would act a lot more like a monkey? Doesn't it seem like we would live in trees and be uncomfortable living in houses? Doesn't it seem like eating bugs would be accepted as a natural fact of life world-wide? Why would we have stopped eating bugs? Why would we walk on two feet rather than 4 like monkey do (and if you say that evolution changed us to walk on 2 feet, then why don't dogs and cats walk on 2 feet, too?)

My conclusion from watching my dog and realizing how much she resembled her ancestors is that it would be highly improbable for us to be descended from monkeys. Just my opinion.

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