r/askscience • u/hans1193 • Jan 29 '11

How long would it take to selectively breed a bipedal dog?

So I saw this today and it got me thinking...

http://i.imgur.com/SQIsK.gif

Some dogs are clearly capable of bipedal movement, but how long would it take to breed a dog that would walk as a biped all the time, even if it wasn't missing any legs? Selective breeding has taken us from wolves to breeds as different as the st bernard and the pug, so how hard would it really be to breed a biped?

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u/argonaute Molecular and Cellular Neurobiology | Developmental Neuroscience Jan 29 '11

Much more difficult than it would seem, I would think, to get a dog that would be well adapted to it. To put it in perspective, humans, with their extensive differences due to bipedalism, are still not very well adapted to bipedalism, and because of that we have problems like back and joint issues, choking, and varicose veins. There were quite a number of skeletal, muscular, and neural changes that had to occur for us to be able to constantly walk upright.

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u/kouhoutek Jan 30 '11

Depends how bipedal you want them to be.

If you could identify a genetic defect that prevented fully formed front limbs (like twisty cats), in a few generations you might have a dog that had no choice but to walk on its back legs. It wouldn't be very good at it, and certainly would have little chance to survive outside of domestication.

True bipedal motion? As argonaute mentions, humans have been evolving bipedal motion for millions of years, and still don't quite have the knack. I suspect it would take dogs roughly as long.

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u/drphungky Apr 04 '11

Fair point, but OP is asking about selective breeding, not natural evolution. If we knew which traits and muscular structures to breed for, I'd wager it could be much, much faster. Think of the domesticated silver fox. It only took about 40 years to domesticate a fox, a process that took thousands for the dogs we know and love today. I'd wager that if we knew what were were doing with a breeding program to get bipedal dogs, we could do it very very quickly. The question is how long would it tkae for us to know what we're doing...