igor on Sun, 17 Jun 2001 18:45:12 +0200 (CEST) |
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[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> Planet destroyed; film at 11 |
>> under the impression that we created the species by inter and cross >> breeding wolves, with the intent of domesticating them. > Are you saying we also "created" poodles from wolves? As a matter of fact, we did. Poodles are, zoologically speaking, a breed (or variety) of Canis familiaris, domestic dog. And the common scientific opinion says that dog is domesticated from the grey wolf, so - in conclusion - all of the 400 or so breeds of today are descended from Canis lupus. Estimations of wolf-human alliance dates back at least 12.000 years, selective breeding began about 10.000 years ago, and palaeontological evidences of noticeable differences in size from the Beaverhead Mountains in Idaho are 9.000 years old. The same story can be told about more or less all domestic animals, inner or cross breed (like, most likely, cats), and I believe that botanists can reveal in details such a pattern inside the plant kingdom - which have a more complex taxonomy and phylogenies to which I'm not especially familiar. On non-deliberate creation of new species through habitat changes, use of chemicals (like pesticides) and other human activities is still little known - excluding microbiology and virology, where one can find many fine researches about recent evolutionary changes of different species (Virology Arena at Elsevier's web site [www.elsevier.com], for example). So, if we put possible metaphysical discussion about meaning of "creating" aside, human beings actually created plenty of today's species, subspecies, varieties, and hybrids. ciao igor _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold