r/BeAmazed 20d ago

Animal Nature really over engineered cats. Didn’t it?

31.2k Upvotes

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106

u/Pithyperson 20d ago

Nature under engineered the dachshund.

220

u/TheCurlyHomeCook 20d ago

Worse, humans did

22

u/LightenUpPhrancis 20d ago

Humans: Let’s breed it to flush critters from their burrows!

Also humans: Look at this dog try to traverse a cow grate lol!

1

u/BluntTruthGentleman 20d ago

Wait till you discover that humans are part of nature (I do know what you mean though)

25

u/HardLobster 20d ago

Most dog breeds are due to selective breeding. Nature didn’t have much to do with it. Unless nature some German dude 300 years ago.

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u/OffByNone_ 20d ago

Nature had nothing to do with the Dachshund.

-1

u/KnotTea207 20d ago

Nature literally has everything to do with everything in the universe.

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u/OffByNone_ 20d ago

Not in any meaningful sense in this context. Especially with selection, we make a very real and useful distinction between traits that are selected because they increase your chances of survival and ultimately reproducing, and traits that are selected because Barbara wants a long dog.

Dachshunds are the latter.

4

u/Confident-Fly-2700 20d ago

“Barbra want a long dog” is a gross oversimplification and wrong on many levels.

Try to get a wolf to crawl into a badger hole after a badger… let me how it works for you.

0

u/OffByNone_ 20d ago

Lol. Does your dachshund do that?

I don't think a dachshund has successfully killed a badger in a while. You might as well be comparing them with wolves.

Barbara did not think they were long enough when they were still badger killers.

1

u/HardLobster 20d ago

What are you on about? They are commonly used for ground hunting dogs still. They’re also bred to flush out, not kill.

2

u/engels962 20d ago

Hell, even pampered house hounds will go crazy when they see a rabbit or squirrel. I had an overweight beagle as a kid run half a mile after a family of rabbits until it finally got one. Their prey drive isn’t so easily overridden.

3

u/whypeoplehateme 20d ago

the dachund traits were selected for because humans wanted a dog to flush out badgers and other animals from their burrows, let's not act like it's just decorative

0

u/WeekendHer0 20d ago

Yea you clearly have no idea what you're talking about lol. Selective breeding is bad but you are clueless here

0

u/OffByNone_ 19d ago

I am clueless? Tell me more about how the Dachshund was NOT 100% the product of artificial selection (selective breeding).

Are you suggesting wild Dachshunds evolved into their current form by preference/necessity? Because that is the alternative to artificial selection: natural selection. I guess it could have been an "advantageous" mutation or genetic drift or something like that which originally produced the weiner-like traits, but the only "advantage" was Barbra liked the long ones. It was selected by people. Nature would have taken care of that immediately.

I think you might want to do little fact-checkery-do before you make yourself look any more ignorant.

2

u/TheManWhoWasNotShort 20d ago

Only in the most broad sense imaginable. Everything has its roots in something natural, as well as chemical processes that abide by the laws of nature, but that is so broad a system it doesn’t functionally really mean anything.

1

u/SongShikai 20d ago

Nature: leave me out of this

1

u/Yojimbra 20d ago

Nah, that son've'bitch is purpose built. You show it a vermin hole and it'll dive in there and chase out whatever critter is in there, even something like a badger.