Diet Shaped Dog Domestication by Elizabeth Pennisi on 23 January 2013, 1:17 PM
Excerpt: “…dogs have evolved to eat a more varied diet than their wolf ancestors. The shift parallels genetic changes seen in people and bolsters the idea that dogs and humans share similar evolutionary stories.”
My comment to the Science site:
A Comparison of the Sensory Development of Wolves (Canis lupus lupus) and Dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) — Lord (2013), attributes differences in social behavior in these two subspecies to odor associations made during the first two weeks of life in wolf pups. The connection from the diet of wolves to pheromone production and socialization should be fairly clear in the context of nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled reproduction.
That’s why I enjoyed reading this: “The shift parallels genetic changes seen in people and bolsters the idea that dogs and humans share similar evolutionary stories.” My enjoyment comes from the fact that I’ve already detailed the concept of nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled species divergence via the molecular mechanisms that are common to species from microbes to man. Clearly, this diet-driven difference between wolves and dogs brings us closer to recognizing that the evolutionary continuum of ecological, social, neurogenic, and socio-cognitive adaptive evolution is nutrient-dependent and pheromone-controlled.
See for example: Human pheromones and food odors: epigenetic influences on the socioaffective nature of evolved behaviors. — Kohl (2012)
James V. Kohl detailedl how quantized energy-dependent microRNA biogenesis links the pheromone-controlled physiology of reproduction to biophysically constrained viral latency and healthy longevity. Links from what organisms eat to the enzyme-dependent metabolism of food also link metabolic networks to microRNA-mediated genetic networks in the context of RNA interference. Drug therapies alter RNA interference by altering cell type differentiation in all cells of all individuals of all species. For comparison, during the past 26 years, Kohl has detailed how the chemistry of protein folding is biophysically constrained at every level of biological organization by conserved molecular mechanisms.