A New York Times reporter got to wondering where dog breeds come from:
For example, when you watch a giant Newfoundland dog lunge into the surf and forcibly drag ashore a wader who doesn’t want to be rescued, just remember that the dog is merely at the mercy of the socially constructed trope that Newfoundlands were bred to rescue drowning sailors.
That reminded me. I have heard that without selective breeding, dogs tend over just a few generations to develop a default look: in the tropics, it tends to be short-haired, 30 or 40 pounds, pointy nose and ears.
In Moscow, there is a stray dog population of about 35,000, with some using the Moscow subway to get around. My impression is that they look rather like generic third world dogs, but with thicker fur. Wikipedia reports:
Many, if not most, street dogs share certain physical similarities: medium-sized with thick fur, wedge-shaped heads and almond eyes, with long tails and erect ears.
Most dogs are born homeless; others arrive on the streets as rejected or abandoned house pets. Poyarkov estimates that fewer than 3 percent of abandoned pet dogs live long enough to breed.
Over the years that Poyarkov observed the dogs, he noticed that the population has lost such features as spotted coats, wagging tails, and friendliness, characteristics known to distinguish dogs from wolves.
On the other hand, I’m not an expert on dogs, so don’t take my word on this idea of the Default Dog.
This got me wondering whether there is a default human?
You could speculate that with mass panmixia, everybody would wind up looking like, I dunno, Tiger Woods. But that strikes me as more speculation than observation. People who are mixes between different races tend to look like mixes between their different races rather than some common underlying prototype human.
