Your example of collie herding behavior is cool; I’m not sure what to make of that. Do wolves herd their pups? Or are there other plausible precedents? How complicated is collie “herding” behavior?
As to smell and tracking ability in blood hounds: given that these same abilities occur in wolves (though to a lesser extent?), my guess would be that these adaptations are relatively simple to acquire, if you have a wolf’s genome as your starting point. Designing smell for the first time would be complicated, but designing a better sense of smell from a wolf’s sense of smell might just require sending more brain cells to the “process smells” brain center, or building more of the kinds of olfactory receptors dogs already have, or some other simple shift. (OTOH, if blood hounds are sensitive to many compounds that wolves aren’t sensitive to, or if they exhibit many strategies in tracking that wolves don’t exhibit, I’d be wrong and surprised. Let me know if that’s so.)
Right, wolves pack-hunt which involves pretty complex management
of prey herds including something like a “theory of prey mind” to
predict what the prey will do.
There is a lot known about cape dog hunting because they are in
fairly open country and can be observed. Not only do they
predict where the prey herd will go, they coordinate and signal to
each other with postures during the chase. It is absolutely beautiful
to watch, like stop-action ballet.
It can get quite complicated. That video has some post-production trickery but supposedly the majority of the herding is real. Sheep herding is sufficiently complicated that there was an English TV show devoted to it for many years called One Man and His Dog. I believe border collies dominate sheepdog trials but there are other herding breeds.
As to smell and tracking ability in blood hounds: given that these same abilities occur in wolves (though to a lesser extent?), my guess would be that these adaptations are relatively simple to acquire, if you have a wolf’s genome as your starting point. Designing smell for the first time would be complicated, but designing a better sense of smell from a wolf’s sense of smell might just require sending more brain cells to the “process smells” brain center, or building more of the kinds of olfactory receptors dogs already have, or some other simple shift.
It’s worth noting that size and shape differences are unusually easy to get from wolves, something to do with unusually flexible genes for skeletal morphology in the womb IIRC.
Your example of collie herding behavior is cool; I’m not sure what to make of that. Do wolves herd their pups? Or are there other plausible precedents? How complicated is collie “herding” behavior?
As to smell and tracking ability in blood hounds: given that these same abilities occur in wolves (though to a lesser extent?), my guess would be that these adaptations are relatively simple to acquire, if you have a wolf’s genome as your starting point. Designing smell for the first time would be complicated, but designing a better sense of smell from a wolf’s sense of smell might just require sending more brain cells to the “process smells” brain center, or building more of the kinds of olfactory receptors dogs already have, or some other simple shift. (OTOH, if blood hounds are sensitive to many compounds that wolves aren’t sensitive to, or if they exhibit many strategies in tracking that wolves don’t exhibit, I’d be wrong and surprised. Let me know if that’s so.)
IIRC, herding is explicitly mentioned in the book as a behavior that wolves do and which has been strengthened by selection in some dog races.
Right, wolves pack-hunt which involves pretty complex management of prey herds including something like a “theory of prey mind” to predict what the prey will do.
There is a lot known about cape dog hunting because they are in fairly open country and can be observed. Not only do they predict where the prey herd will go, they coordinate and signal to each other with postures during the chase. It is absolutely beautiful to watch, like stop-action ballet.
HCH
It can get quite complicated. That video has some post-production trickery but supposedly the majority of the herding is real. Sheep herding is sufficiently complicated that there was an English TV show devoted to it for many years called One Man and His Dog. I believe border collies dominate sheepdog trials but there are other herding breeds.
I think he was referring to instinctive herding behaiviors, not trained ones.
It’s worth noting that size and shape differences are unusually easy to get from wolves, something to do with unusually flexible genes for skeletal morphology in the womb IIRC.