Will Evolution give the dogs the ability to talk with humans in million years?

[Nihilist74]

Dogs already know how to talk. They keep a secret because we are there slaves. We clean up their poop, we feed them and bath them. Dogs can do whatever they want. Read the short story by Kurt Vonnegut called, "Tom Edison's Shaggy Dog"

http://tvtolstova.narod.ru/olderfiles/1/Shaggy20Dog.pdf

[Kraineth]

Speech is not some mutation, it's just a group of sounds put together that is understood by those who have learned it.

It is very unlikely that a dog will ever speak a human language, they just don't have the same vocal chords/tongue/mouth shape that humans do.

That being said, dogs already communicate with us on a daily basis, begging for food, wanting to be let outside/go on a walk, and everything in between. They don't need to be able to speak english to communicate with us on basic levels.

[Mormolyce]

Doesn't seem likely but who knows what kind of selective pressure will be on dogs over the next hundred million years?

The fact they're domesticated puts their development in our hands for the most part though. You know, if we survive that long.

[Danuru]

Am I the only one who watched Scooby Doo as a kid? Talking dogs already exist, albeit they do sound a bit ridiculous, but that's besides the point.

[RohanV]

No. The effects from deliberate breeding of dogs by humans is going to overpower the effects of cumulative random mutations (the mechanism of evolution).

[Caerule]

Evolution relies on the animals with the most successful adaptations to their environments, to be the most successful in spawning the next generations, passing on the properties that made them more successful than others in their generation.

For dogs of course, they've changed and diversified a ton, because it's not their pretty-consistent environment, providing natural selection. It's humans selecting for properties they like. Any plant or animal in which humans hold a controlling hand in the reproductive success for has changed a whole lot, in just a few hundreds or thousands of years. Artificial selection on properties can lead to a ton more properties and mutations being selected for, than those would be most beneficial in nature.

Can we deliberately breed dogs of intelligence that can comprehend and produce speech? Well, it wouldn't be fast, but it's possible. It's more plausible that we'd get lazy and do it through genetic engineering, long before we got it done through artificial selection.

Whether we should, is a whole different question...

[Dendrek]

Keep in mind that evolution did not give humans the ability to form advanced forms of communication: socialization and civilization did. Evolution gave us the tools, but we are not born talking, and we are not born with advanced thought processes. We learn those. So what would a dog need in order to speak? 1, the physical capacity to vocalize and make variable sounds (keep in mind that humans rely on their lips and tongues to differentiate noises -- with their different anatomical structure, dogs are physically incapable of making the same range of noises that we are) and 2, the mental capacity for complex thought processes. I would argue that they essentially already have both of these.

The issue we have, however, is that we humans have not developed a system of communication that allows dogs to use their own tools to learn to communicate with us. Take, for example, the prospect of trying to communicate with a deaf person. Do you try to teach them to communicate by talking at them and trying to get them to talk back at you? Believe it or not, for decades that's exactly what medical professionals tried doing. They tried to force deaf people to learn spoken language. As a consequence, deaf people were mentally underdeveloped -- they never learned how to communicate in a way that made sense to them, so they never developed a language with which to think. And for a long time, doctors thought deaf people were retarded, that deafness was a symptom of mental handicap.

We think of dogs in a very similar way: they are clearly stupid, right? Maybe not. If we could find the equivalent of sign language for dogs, we might find they have a lot to say.

[Deleted]

Keep in mind that evolution did not give humans the ability to form advanced forms of communication: socialization and civilization did. Evolution gave us the tools, but we are not born talking, and we are not born with advanced thought processes. We learn those. So what would a dog need in order to speak? 1, the physical capacity to vocalize and make variable sounds (keep in mind that humans rely on their lips and tongues to differentiate noises -- with their different anatomical structure, dogs are physically incapable of making the same range of noises that we are) and 2, the mental capacity for complex thought processes. I would argue that they essentially already have both of these.

The issue we have, however, is that we humans have not developed a system of communication that allows dogs to use their own tools to learn to communicate with us. Take, for example, the prospect of trying to communicate with a deaf person. Do you try to teach them to communicate by talking at them and trying to get them to talk back at you? Believe it or not, for decades that's exactly what medical professionals tried doing. They tried to force deaf people to learn spoken language. As a consequence, deaf people were mentally underdeveloped -- they never learned how to communicate in a way that made sense to them, so they never developed a language with which to think. And for a long time, doctors thought deaf people were retarded, that deafness was a symptom of mental handicap.

We think of dogs in a very similar way: they are clearly stupid, right? Maybe not. If we could find the equivalent of sign language for dogs, we might find they have a lot to say.

This. Considering they already taught a gorilla sign language, I'm absolutely positive that most animals really have a lot more going on in there than what has been traditionally thought to be the case.

[Eduardo]

Mutations happen - some are neutral some are harmful some are beneficial.

The ones that enhance your ability to mate and reproduce get carried on.

Not sure how we could intentionally breed for this.

Long before evolution allows it I think technology would just permit dogs to bark in human.

[Florena]

I wouldn't rule it out as strictly impossible, but unless we start breeding dogs on a massive scale for thousands, possibly millions of years, with the sole intent of somehow shaping dogs into ability I doubt it. Even then I can't imagine how it could be done. That said two hundred years ago noone would have imagined we'd put someone on the moon so who knows.

[Noomz]

if human civilization survive for a million year into the future do you think evolution will enable dogs to talk with humans directly?
]

That's not how evolution works, at all.
Dogs would have to get a bigger brain and a speech center in that brain. That's not a change that happens simply because they live with humans.

[Hooked]

Dogs are like dolphins with legs.

[Dendrek]

Dogs are like dolphins with legs.

The thing about analogies is they usually have a point.

An analogy without a point is like an a pen with its cap on.

[Mnevis]

Maybe, sure, why not? A million years is a really fucking long time. We'd have to define the terms more clearly; I'm not sure if you'd call what our ancestors were doing a million years ago "talking".

Like people have said, dogs do engage in rudimentary communication with their humans in the present day. Perhaps the mother of the talking dog evolutionary branch will be discovered on YouTube.

[wowaccounttom]

I doubt the neither the human race nor the planet will last even 1/4 of a million years.

Other than that, no. Evolution won't give dogs the ability to talk with humans.

Scientific evolution should give humans the ability to talk with dogs first.

Big difference.

[Rumred]

Whos to say i mean in a million years what we will be like if we make it that long. Now in a million years will we have the ability to make dogs able to understand and communicate with us? I would say more then likely yes but for natural evolution to do it? idk maybe?

[Zoaric]

I doubt it. Will science give us a way to talk to them and have them talk back? That's
more likely in my mind.

[Powerogue]

Not if technology can do it first!

[prwraith]

If we want to breed them for that purpose sure. But if they demonstrate marked intelligence after attaining the ability to speak, we lose the ability to keep them as pets and have to recognize them as equal.

Or we could give them the ability to communicate, recognize them as intelligent and discriminate against them.

[lokinrond713]

Not how evolution works, communication works by being able to interact within ur own grp and interpreting other groups, like how humans can talk amongst ourselves and try to figure out others like in Poker and dogs can bark, growl, sniff etc to each other. Otherwise that animal u misread mauls u because u thought it wanted a belly rub instead of u getting out of its territory or a "friend" shanks u for ur money.

And humans may be able to communicate w/ ourselves but not w/ "lower" species as the question implies requiring "evolution" as you define it to work both ways and not just for the dogs.

OR how evolution just does not work that way.