Evolutionary logic

Over at Darwin Catholic there has been some discussion of the human influenced evolution of dogs. Seed actually has it right, it is human influenced evolution. Some of the interpretation of the paper which showed an increase in the frequency of 'deleterious' alleles spin the results as suggesting that dogs are beyond the constraints of evolution. But, as I pointed out over at DC's weblog dogs are evolved toward their own special adaptations, and the lack of these adaptations in their wild cousins is not evidence that wolves carry "deleterious" traits. For me, the most fascinating case of dog evolution is the possibility that they can read human faces. Their wild cousins can not do this, and in fact, it seems that man's best friend is better at this then his closest relative, the chimpanzee. Now, we don't think that wolves are "unevolved" because they don't have the capability to ...