Comments for Nature

Comment on About by Richard Thornton

Richard Thornton — Thu, 15 Jan 2015 08:21:00 +0000

Consider this: a population of wolves discovers that a population of humans leave a lot of edible debris. They also have tender young, but are quite aggressive in defense of their young. So the wolves begin to select the human groups that are most tolerant of wolves eating refuse. Since they have a reliable source of food, they eat fewer babies. Being highly territorial, they effectively defend the those humans from other predators.
The wolves have domesticated the humans. Hunting is easy for wolves, killing is hard, and dangerous. Hunting is hard for humans (relative to wolves), but humans can kill from a distance. It’s a match made in heaven.
Humans and dogs co-evolved; did dogs come from wolf pups adopted by humans, or from wolves that foraged from scrap heaps? The two are not mutually exclusive. Human women suckle other animals fairly regularly, and if legend holds any truth, wolves suckle human babies on occasion.
As time passed, the two worked on each other. The wolf/dogs that were least aggressive toward humans got fed by the humans more often, and the humans that were least aggressive toward the wolf/dogs got fed by them more often.
That’s why most people are dog lovers. They bred us. And I agree it must have started at 30,000 years BCE at the very least.

Comment on Dogs By Design | Full Episode by ty

ty — Thu, 15 Jan 2015 07:48:00 +0000

In reply to Esther Neter. Creations of man. Artificially selected by humans.

Comment on About by Raymond Pierotti, PhD

Raymond Pierotti, PhD — Thu, 15 Jan 2015 02:06:00 +0000

PBS, WGBH and Nature should seriously considering retiring this episode. I have studied wolves and dogs from the past 25 years and I can tell you that much of the material in it is inaccurate and has been refuted, especially the material from Ray Coppinger about dogs deriving from wolves that hung around human refuse dumps. We now know that dogs are a minimum of 30,000 years old, rather than the 14,000 year old date given in this show. This means that wolves cannot have become dogs hanging around refuse dumps because there were no such things 30,000 years ago when humans did not live in permanent settlements. Similarly the results from Savoleinen's research have been shown to be misleading because otehr studies produced very different results. Depending upon the DNA-based study, there have been four identified separate ‘origins’ of domestic dogs reported (Eastern Asia and China [Savoleinen et al. 2002]; Middle East and Levant [Leonard et al. 2002]; Southern Asia [Skogland et al. 2011]; and, most recently, Europe [Thalmann et al. 2013]), each presented as if it were the ‘original’, and only, site where this process took place. This episode is wrong in its science and misleading in what it says. Also the associated quizzes are also incorrect with regard to several answers..

Comment on Full Episode by Catherine Hudson

Catherine Hudson — Wed, 14 Jan 2015 22:16:00 +0000

To the producer: This was a beautiful trip down a river. I loved the commentary and peacefulness. I really felt I was there, thank you for the trip. I love nature and you for filled your task of wonder, delight, and the need of preservation of our world. All my best and I hope you explore more in this region.

Comment on About by iamawesome

iamawesome — Wed, 14 Jan 2015 14:23:00 +0000

In reply to macieros. booty

Comment on Full Episode by dave

dave — Tue, 13 Jan 2015 19:01:00 +0000

cannot launch video for these two episodes- keep getting error codes: cannot load mu308, 404 not found. any ideas?