Puppy: “I was watching TV with my humans last week and they were watching a show on animals. It was all about dogs and humans and how much we love each other. The show explained that dogs and humans have been together for a very long time. The show said that dogs are descended from wolves and evolved from them . . . is that true?”
Grandpa Dog: “No, that’s not true! That’s the most ridiculous idea I ever heard! Dogs and wolves have nothing in common. Just look at us and then look at them; do we even look alike? No, not at all! The very notion is absurd. Dogs were born dogs; we have always been dogs and nothing but dogs. It’s the craziest thing I ever heard to think one kind of animal can change into another kind of animal. How do you suppose that gets done, Pup? By magic?
“Humans come up with some crazy ideas and this is just another one of them. Why, they think dinosaurs and birds are related! How funny is that? First there was this dinosaur that weighed like a thousand tons and made the earth tremble when it walked and then one of its great-great-great-grandchildren was a little bird that could fly in the sky! Don’t pay no attention to the nonsense of human beings, Pup. Sometimes they really make up crazy stuff!”
Pup: “But the program said scientists know dogs are descended from wolves. They have ways to prove it and . . .”
Grandpa Dog: “Hold it right there Pup! I’ve been patient with you so far because you’re young but it’s time for me to put my paw down!! You know I’m a member of the Dog Church and a member in good standing, I might add. I’m not about to meet my church brethren and have to explain to them that one of my grand-pups thinks dogs came from wolves! Why, that’s such an insult and a shaming of me, child, you simply have no idea! Us dogs are loyal and smart and brave; wolves aren’t.
“We can think and sense every mood of our humans. Do you think wolves can do any of that? We eat out of bowls and lap up clean water with our tongues the way dogs should. Do wolves do any of that? All they do is follow their noses hunting prey all day long when they aren’t sleeping and fighting and farting. They smell bad, too! Dogs have nothing in common with them! How on earth can dogs come from wolves if we have nothing in common with them, eh? You tell me that!”
Pup: “But we do look alike, kind of, don’t we? Wolves have four legs and a tail and so do dogs, right? Wolves have long muzzles and can smell real good and dogs have long muzzles and can smell read good, too? Is all that just coincidence?”
Grandpa Dog: “Yes, that’s exactly what it is, coincidence and nothing more! Next you’ll be telling me monkeys and humans are kin because they both have arms and can climb up trees! Think of what you are saying, Grandson, and don’t shame me so! When I go to Church and meet my pals at the fire hydrant what will I tell them? My grand-pup is an agnostic wolf-worshiping dog?
“You know what our church believes: the great God of All Dogs made dogs just as we are, perfect and whole right from the moment of our creation. After God Dog made the first male dog, Adam-Dog, he took a rib from it and made the first female dog, Eve-Dog. This all happened in the Garden of Dog-Eden. We have always been right here where we live right now. We didn’t come from someplace else and we sure as hell weren’t some other kind of animal first!
“We have always been dogs and nothing but dogs and that’s the end of it! Our great Dog God knew exactly what He was doing. Doesn’t our holy book say our Dog God made dogs in his own image? Now do you think it would say that if it weren’t true?
“Please, grandson, don’t start thinking like some of them wild-eyed radical no-good-for-nothing hippie Darwinian barking-up-the-wrong tree atheistic no account trouble-making sons-of-bitches dogs that you see slinking around the neighborhood and pissin’ every few feet on god-only-knows-what with no rhyme or reason. They don’t know their butts from a beehive, believe you me!”
Pup and Grandpa Dog are of two different generations and so have two different points of view. One is old-school, traditional, and inflexible; that’s Grandpa Dog. The other is modern, hip, and flexible; that’s Pup. People and dogs have this in common, don’t they?
There are a lot of people who believe God made man and don’t believe human beings are related to primates in any way. Of course, there are also a lot of people who believe man evolved from an earlier life form most closely related to the primates and Great Apes: great apes and man not in a direct line but both having a common ancestor—as Darwin said.
Likewise, there are plenty of canines that believe Dog God made dog and don’t believe dogs are related to wolves in any way. Of course, there are plenty of canines that believe dogs evolved over time and are in fact descended from wolves (the Dogwinian view). There are plenty of people and dogs in each camp, but only one camp has the right to defend its core beliefs as being based on scientific evidence and facts.
The difference between man and dog is not as great as we are sometimes led to believe; it is not so much a question of magnitude as a question of quality of those differences. Man is descended from an earlier non-human ape-like species just as dogs are descended from an earlier dog-like species we call wolves.
There may indeed be members of both humans and canines that deny this bio-evolutionary relationship, but whereas among dogs it appears natural and cute (understandable given their limited access to the benevolent influences which spring from book-learning) among humans it appears sadly stubborn, innately imbecilic, devastatingly dogmatic, and terribly tragic: in short, insanely inflexible!
Many humans consciously choose to believe the wrong thing while dogs make no such conscious choice. Men and women rejoice in their ignorance, inflexibility, and intolerance while dogs need not ever seriously concern themselves with denying the self-evident truths of anatomy and biology, genetics and evolution.
To the question, who is smarter, man or dog—who is smarter, human beings or animals?—the reader must be given pause (no pun intended) to not answer too quickly. The “lower animals” at least know what they are and can accept it; only man feels the need to substitute a mythological birth certificate for an actual bio-evolutionary history as obvious and incontrovertible as that which exists for any other living species!
Despite our brilliant intellects, we appear to be the only species capable of consciously retrogressing toward a state of ignorance and self-denial that shames our purported advance into the realm of higher thought.
No other creature can take its most preeminent evolutionary feature (intelligence) and so whack it around as to leave it in worse shape than before that feature first emerged; to believe in mythological and preposterous tales of a magical origin after the advent of human reason is a spectacular denouement of retrogressive and excessive madness gone completely wild!
Instead of thinking matters through, some among us have chosen to return to a state of blissful ignorance and perpetual zealotry. Dogs may not consciously know they are descended from wolves but in their simple ways of living and smelling their surroundings as they exist, they still remain ahead of a lot of humans.
Yes, dogs (and lots of other animals) remain ahead of humans who must substitute fiction for fact.
They remain ahead of humans who must wave around this merry flag of intellectual mayhem as a wonderful and exemplary display of religious faith of which they themselves are so incredibly (albeit foolishly) proud–to the everlasting discredit of the human race and our ability to reason and think, to study, learn, and know.
It is a display of religious zealotry that contributes mightily to the retardation of intellectual progress and cultural liberation for the human race taken in its entirety.
The evolutionary relationship between our ape-like predecessors and today’s humans does not depend on the whims of religion, any more than the relationship between wolves and dogs depends on the whims of what Grandpa Dog “believes”.
Regardless of the capacity for thought of any given species under consideration, the evolutionary facts of its first appearance–and subsequent physiological changes over time–remain incontrovertibly with us; they cannot be disputed by fair-minded persons open to scientific inquiry and deduction. Facts are stubborn things and cannot be “wished” or “disbelieved” away.
Grandpa Dog may be older than Pup but it doesn’t mean he’s right.
Progress in knowledge, independence of ideas, and revision of earlier chains of thought sometimes require the flexible enthusiasm of youth to proceed, prosper, and take root.
To the old belongs the past but to the young belongs the future!
