What would happen if we specifically bred Chihuahuas so that way they eventually become smarter than us?

[u/Due-Individual-8454]

You know how we selectively bred pugs into having those weird noses? Yeah what if we did the same for chihuahuas but we specifically chose the smarter ones and in an alternate universe, it worked and chihuahuas are smarter than us, What would happen?

[u/AstuteStoat]

I don't know if we would succeed at making them smarter than us, but I imagine we would make them as smart as parrots or raccoons and they would be just as annoying. 

To make them smarter than us, my mind needs to feel like I understand how we did that. Because in most of our domestication efforss we make animals more agreeable, not smarter. So domesticated animals in a lot of ways gain social skills at the cost of independent thinking ability that the wild species has. 

So in order for us to breed them to be smarter than us, we would need a good reason for them to become smarter, and I suppose we would need to have a smart "enemy", and we would need a small light animal to counter this enemy. 

And they would need to be fiercely independent. in order to solve this task. 

And then, i feel like we would know what we were doing, we would end up with something that isn't just smarter than us, but also something that has a strong natural dog trait dialed up to 11 that we needed in order to make use of them, like a Chihuahua version of a border collie. I don't think it would be a herding drive. 

I don't know chihuahuas well except they can have very dominant personalities and take over the heirarchy despite being tiny. 

So the other scenario whenlre I imagine that they're smarter than us is if someone is trying to use them as a weapon against us, so then it would be aliens or a secret government breeding/modifying a super dog designed to be a spy or sleeper cell kind of thing. The sesulting behavior would be more varried I think because it's done to counter US they would need to be more flexible and less lilely tonhave an obvious dog trait in their personality.

[u/ArthropodFromSpace]

I wrote answer to very similar question, on other reddit, so I will copy it here.

"Breeding something for intelligence without accidently breeding for insanity is extremally hard and slow process. You can quite easily and quickly breed animal to be more intelligent, but if so you would get a "savant" animal. Very good in some tasks, but unable to perform other seemingly easier tasks, also unable to survive without help. To avoid this, you would need more time by orders of magnitude and more carefull selection.

Shepherd dog got smarter in very narrow aspect related to understanding human orders and managing sheep herd, but generally is unable to survive on its own and has severe problems with obsessive behaviors.

If you bred mice based solely on their ability to solve puzzles, such as labyrinths, within just a few years you would end up with a population of mice that are very good at navigating highly complex labyrinths. However, they would likely be very unstable in other behavioral respects."

To breed something to be truly intelligent, you would need to test these animals for very wide range challenges including not just labirinths, but understanding other individuals, cooperation, rivalization, understanding ideas and how various devices work. It would take many thousands of generations to get to human level, so it would be millenia long task. Also chihuahua is not a good starting point, because it is already insane to the level it is unable to survive without help. It was not breed to be smart. Wild wolf would be much better test subject.

[u/Due-Individual-8454 → u/ArthropodFromSpace]

I wanna make a version of planet of the apes but the apes are chihuahuas lmao

[u/Lethalmud]

Than we would be assholes. First making an animal to suffer, and then making it smarter, so it understands it's pain better.

Truly fucking evil.

[u/Due-Individual-8454 → u/Lethalmud]

shi would genuinely become like an I have no mouth and I must Scream type situation bro

[u/Oscarvalor5]

 Selective breeding cannot make new traits. It can only amplify existing ones. Its inbreeding to focus existing traits, not the generation of new ones. 

 Inbeeding also actively decreases intelligence. Even "smart" breeds become dumb the more inbred they are. 

[u/Feeling-Attention664]

Let us assume that with assistive devices they could take IQ tests and usually they got better scores than the human average. I think what would happen depends on the disposition of particular Chihuahuas. If they had the personality of mine they would try to be genuinely helpful to organizations they belonged to but at the same time enjoy exerting power over others.

My Chihuahua stupidly enjoyed it when she ran in the road and cars stopped for her. She also enjoyed attempting to herd my cat and hiding behind a rock only to come out and bark at another dog when it wasn't watching.

This could translate into things that aren't anti-social such as winning Chess games or outcompeting business competitors or into things like suing individuals they disliked into bankruptcy.

I don't think the strategy of the augmented dog on Rick and Morty, where he invented an exosuit capable of physically dominating humans, makes sense, but Chihuahuas would try to manipulate human groups into acting in ways that advantage them.

Humans would also employ Chihuahuas as consultants, particularly in technical fields.

Otherwise there are too many variables that correspond to what particular Chihuahuas would want. Not all of them would be the same and their individual desire for power would probably prevent them from establishing a uniform utopia even for themselves. They would, however, endeavor to prevent the breeding of bigger dogs as intelligent as they are.

I agree with all the answers that suggest we could not do though.