A Nice Beagle

a natural choice

Today we will be inspired by Charles Darwin and then by geneticists who figured out the why of his ideas. Now we intervene and make what we need with two popular examples, dogs and corn are wonders of selective breeding.

Special Note

Thanks to my friend “M”, who is an ambidextrous tennis player and most of all music cognoscenti (he laughs when I use silly words). With the long-overdue firing of the Minnesota Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer, he recommended a great song to commemorate. Here are the lyrics. Non-football readers, skip forward.

The Inspiration

I am a dog lover and I am thankful for our current dog Denny who has continued to soldier on into late age through the pandemic. Denny is a cocker spaniel. When you think about all the variations in dogs, it is sometimes hard to believe they are all “just dogs”. My mind works in strange ways at times, and the thought of dogs and where it led was no exception. This story continues because of the inspiration of one of my sons. My youngest son “N” is an economist who works for a company that “crushes corn” to make ethanol and other products. The incredible diversity and optimization of corn is a similar story to the wonderful diversity of dog breeds. Selective breeding is evolution on steroids! Tonight it will be dogs and corn and I will try to connect them the best I can. All of it thanks to a passenger on the ship pictured above.

Denny has grown through the years to enjoy bath day. He is a cocoa-colored cocker spaniel we “rescued” as a young dog. He took to us immediately on the ride home from a small town in Iowa and has endeared himself ever since. He is either 15 or 16. That’s a lot in dog years. Over the years we’ve had a Sheltie (Shetland Sheepdog), a brief stint with a Jack Russell Terrier, and our Cocker Spaniel. It is hard to believe they are all dogs and the same genus. Denny has been a fine dog and has become more than willing to adopt my vegetarian habits.

The Setup

The inspiration for all of this comes from a naturalist whose ideas and insights nearly 160 years ago have now somehow become “controversial”. Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882) was inspired by his observations and proposed an explanation for living things and how each came to be. I will not engage in any controversy nor stir the pot. Rather, my point today was that Darwin proposed a comprehensive explanation of things and managed to do it without any knowledge of the secret decoder ring behind the curtain. It would be the discovery and understanding of DNA and modern genetics that would VALIDATE at the MOLECULAR level what Darwin managed to surmise in his head and record in his naturalist journals as the “On the Origin of Species”.

The Details

The remarkable range of canines in our world today is a tribute to selective breeding. When you consider a toy poodle and a Great Dane, it is interesting to realize they are both canines (genus Canis). Very subtle differences in the DNA of one dog and another can lead to such diversity. Tonight’s post is not about evolution. It is more about a different kind of observation due to the one special attribute that makes the human race so special. Having the capacity to contemplate, evaluate observations, and formulate them into evidence is a tribute to the wonder of the frontal cortex that makes it all possible. Charles Darwin was an insightful and patient naturalist. He did not jump to conclusions. He logged his observations and let his inspirational thesis bubble up. I am excited as his thesis continues to be validated for individual species as more and more genomes are indexed. Modern gene sequencing is rapidly detailing the subtle differences at amazing speed.

All of the claims made by Darwin that followed his thesis were impossible to prove when he made them. For people philosophically opposed, it was easy. With an estimated nine million different species of plants and animals on earth, the war of numbers could be used to plant seeds of doubt at any time. When Darwin presented his thesis, the existence of DNA would remain unknown for nearly a century. It is easy to fall back and report what is not assured as a way to discount his “theory”. Our human genome took about thirteen years to map in the 21st century. What the doubters might have underestimated is the human proclivity to explore. Equipment to map genomes improves at unimaginable speed. There is now a project to map EVERYTHING that lives so as to have a record of what makes any given species unique. As we methodically evaluate each living thing’s genome, the picture becomes clearer and clearer. One of my Dad’s favored expressions was “paper never refused ink”. The genome of each living thing and how it fits into the tree are validated day by day.

The clarity in these discoveries is exemplified best by species like the bonobo (sequenced in 2021). I mentioned the bonobo in a previous post titled Mom and Dad Have Rotors. They are fascinating primates similar to chimps. They are isolated in a small region of Africa on the south side of the Congo river. Because they are poor swimmers, it is likely the water was the boundary that led to two distinct animals, chimps to the north and bonobo to the south. They were only identified in 1929 and their genome was mapped in 2021. The common practice is to assess such animals relative to their closest, most similar animals. For the bonobo, that is the chimp and much further differentiated human.

It would be easy to pile on and say “yeah it’s just a theory” to sow doubt and uncertainty. Of course, whenever someone says “it’s just a theory” they betray their ignorance of what a scientific theory is! Here is a thorough blog explanation from the Field Museum in Chicago, a wonderful place to explore our natural world and its former secrets. Once you read it, it will provide context the next time a “talking head” says it’s just a theory. The unexpected information to come was that SUBTLE differences that exist and define the relationships between different forms of life are all WRITTEN DOWN for us in the genome. What a blessing as we now have the DNA “written down” for everything that lives. When my dog Denny jumps up and cuddles next to me, I can accept some of his more unusual habits (lots of paw licking) with the realization that he and I share about 82% of our DNA in common. The fact that EVERY LIVING thing has a DNA record there for the analysis is akin to everyone having a comprehensive diary. It sure leads to a lot less controversy unless you just like to argue!

Dogs and corn are an interesting combination to prove a point. They are both success stories of humans and selective breeding. The first of the dog breeds is likely to be the Akita. It is thought dogs were the first domesticated animal approximately 15000 years ago. Today there are over 450 recognized dog breeds. The focus on selective breeding started in the Victorian Age but most have emerged in the last 200 years. Dogs and corn jump out as examples of where humans intervened and guided evolution. No more waiting to see what nature, on a random basis might have in store. We are now at the vanguard of guiding the process forward. While the statement is not original, it is a brave new world. The history of dogs is an interesting trip on the treadmill for those that are interested. Here is an article and here is a video worth about 10000 steps.

The story of corn is another tale of human persistence to understand and improve. Yields held steady at 26 bushels per acre from about 1866 through the late 1930s. Such a FACT belies how recent our progress is! Interbreeding and hybridization were introduced and yields began rising about 0.8 bushels per acre each year through the mid-1950s. Continued hybridization and improved techniques caused yields to start rising at about 1.9 bushels per acre per year. The 3rd miracle began in the mid-1990s with the introduction of transgenic hybrid traits to the corn. Modern corn has built-in insect and herbicide resistance. Today we are marching toward a 200 bushel per acre output average with no end in sight. In the United States, an estimated 92.7 million acres will be committed to the growing of corn. The United States raises about 3000 pounds of corn for every man, woman, and child in the country. Most of us only eat a handful of ears each summer. Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) have saved billions of lives in the last fifty years. Here is a great video that explains this stuff.

We all know the wide range of dogs we have managed to selectively breed. We have sped the evolutionary tree with amazing tuning. The chart below shows the success of the same sort achieved with corn.

We are well on our way to 200 bushels per acre on average. Today, in the west coast states of Oregon and Washington, yields have reached 230+ bushels per acre. As usual, almost everything has been happening lately as the chart shows.

Today’s title is inspired by the exploration ship of Charles Darwin called “The Beagle”. It’s all about the dogs. Here’s a final teaser if I can find it. My dog Denny loves vegetables of all kinds. His favorites are carrots, cucumbers, and brussels sprout. In a future post, I will include (if I can find it) a video of him eating corn on the cob. It ties tonight’s topics together. IMHO it is more entertaining than a cat video. Almost any vegetable is a sell whether fresh or cooked. Here’s a tune my son the corn-crushing economist will like.