Evolutionary biologists study how animals developed, but also what they might become.
A recent article on Vox.com speculated on how animals might adapt in response to changing environments, imagining flightless carnivorous pigeons, aquatic rats and bats with 6-foot wingspans capable of gliding long distances in search of food.
In their new book "A Dog's World" (Princeton University Press), bioethicist and philosopher Jessica Pierce and biologist and ethologist Marc Bekoff ask a different question: What would become of dogs in the absence of humans?
Subtitled "Imagining the lives of dogs in a world without humans," it explores how and whether dogs would survive if humans suddenly disappeared.
Through this lens, they consider how dogs live today, their relationships with humans and the factors that would shape this potential evolutionary future: size, intelligence, skull shape, food availability, daily caloric needs, reproduction, social organization, problem-solving ability and more.
Their speculative journey takes the reader from canines' past to a posthuman future where dogs suddenly left on their own must navigate a new world to find their own food and shelter, develop relationships with other dogs and protect themselves from predators.
What skills would dogs need to survive, and do they have them now? Behavioral flexibility is one and could play a role in the ability of individual dogs to solve problems and navigate social interactions with other dogs and other animals.
Learning ability is another. While cues such as "come," "sit" or "stay" won't be of much use to dogs on their own, the impulse control some of them may have developed through training could come in handy, Pierce and Bekoff suggest. And trained dogs, they write, may have learned that if they try something and don't get rewarded, they should change their behavior and try something else, a behavioral pattern that might translate into greater adaptability.
