What If Dogs Didn't Exist?

WHAT IF

2/5/2024

Would humanity have turned out differently?

Transcript

00:00 Humans have many friends in the animal kingdom.

00:08 But when it comes to crowning a best friend,

00:10 dogs are the consensus pick.

00:12 These loyal creatures have stood, sat,

00:15 and rolled over by our sides for generations.

00:18 They're service providers,

00:19 cultural icons,

00:21 and valued family members.

00:23 So what would the world look like

00:25 without our trusted canine companions?

00:27 Would humanity have turned out differently?

00:30 What innovations would we lose?

00:32 And who would our replacement best friend be?

00:36 This is WHAT IF,

00:37 and here's what would happen if dogs didn't exist.

00:42 Dogs make a lot of obvious contributions to our society,

00:45 but some of their biggest contributions

00:46 were made under the radar.

00:49 If humans never bonded with dogs,

00:50 we'd likely miss out on some huge innovations,

00:53 like the telephone,

00:54 or pasteurization.

00:56 How did such an unlikely partnership

00:58 drastically change the lives of both species forever?

01:03 When modern humans first migrated from Africa to Eurasia,

01:06 they were in fierce competition

01:08 to become the region's alpha predators.

01:10 One of those competitors was a now-extinct wolf species

01:13 that dogs are descended from.

01:15 Like us, these wolves had their sights set

01:18 on bringing down bison, mammoths,

01:20 and the other big game animals of the day.

01:23 But somewhere along the line, a funny thing happened.

01:25 Instead of trying to out-hunt each other,

01:28 groups of wolves and humans joined forces.

01:31 Domestication had begun.

01:33 Over time, the partnership brought about

01:35 massive evolutionary changes.

01:37 The wolves' features shrunk,

01:39 their ears flopped,

01:41 and their coats became splotchier.

01:43 Their ferociousness diminished.

01:46 None of these evolutionary changes happen

01:48 without domestication.

01:50 So when you think about it,

01:51 humans didn't just pick a best friend,

01:53 we created one.

01:55 But dogs have played a pretty significant role

01:57 in shaping us as well.

01:58 Interacting with dogs can greatly improve

02:01 our mental, physical, and emotional health.

02:04 These interactions have been proven

02:06 to raise the levels of the love hormone, oxytocin,

02:09 and lower levels of the stress hormone, cortisone.

02:13 On a larger scale,

02:14 domestication redefined our capacity

02:17 for managing fellow species.

02:19 It kick-started the Anthropocene,

02:21 and paved the way for everything from

02:23 agriculture to fossil fuel extraction.

02:26 Would all that have happened

02:27 without our wolf and dog allies?

02:29 Maybe sheep or goats,

02:31 who came next in the order of domestication by humans,

02:34 would serve as a stand-in

02:35 for humanity's best friend.

02:38 However, it's tough to imagine

02:40 telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell

02:42 curling up with a sheep to study the relationship

02:44 between sounds and vibrations,

02:45 the way he did with his Sky Terrier.

02:48 Or that Louis Pasteur would have opened

02:49 the Research Institute,

02:50 where his famous food preservation method

02:52 was developed if he hadn't risen to prominence

02:55 studying and curing rabid dogs.

02:58 Indigenous Americans might have had a better shot

03:00 at fending off Spanish conquistadors

03:02 from colonizing the continents,

03:04 if the Spaniards weren't attacking

03:05 with vicious bloodhounds at their disposal.

03:08 What other ripple effects in the Universe

03:10 can be traced back to the existence of dogs?

03:13 Maybe humans would have evolved

03:15 to look completely different.

03:17 But that's a topic for another WHAT IF.

03:20 ♪ ♪

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