What are some examples of intelligent small dogs?

[lissener]

@Smeghead

This is nonsense. There’s no “upgrading” or “downgrading”. That’s a purely emotional judgment that has nothing to do with reality. What matters - the ONLY thing that matters - is which traits will make the animal more likely to pass their genes on to the next generation. In artificial selection, we make that choice, so the most fit animal is the one that we like the best.

I know all that. You obviously have never read my posts in a thread about evolution before; I’m often the one explaining exactly that.

Note the quotes around the words you object to: I was attempting an explanation using an analogy.

In any case, “I know science, shut up” is, ironically, about the most emotional argument yet offered in this discussion. I’m not sure why you’d see that as some kind of devastating fatal blow to what we’ve been talking about, except as some ironic demonstration that all of the arguments against what I’ve been saying are based purely on an emotional attachment to the mythology of breed prejudice.

You want to address the actual content of what I was saying, fine; an emotional outburst about how I was saying it isn’t really helpful. You disagree that centuries of inbreeding, which have been demonstrated time and time again to cause health problems in dogs, can at the same accelerate the selection for intelligence, even though a stupid dog is far more likely to die in the wild than in captivity, go ahead. I don’t see a stronger system for selection for intelligence than natural selection. I don’t see centuries of inbreeding as a likely way to improve on that. Rather than having a temper tantrum about my analogies, please address the specifics of that point.

In any case, surely you don’t expect me to be surprised that breed fanciers refuse to be convinced by the argument I’m making. None of which is really original with me, by the way Smeghead; I’m largely parroting 25 years or so of research on the subject. (Layman’s research, but an interested and involved layman at any rate.) In any case, I’ve made the case in the best way I’m capable of. Nothing is served by my continuing to engage, mostly just repeating myself, with every emotional outburst offered in opposition, in this thread. I haven’t convinced you? Fine. Not a real big problem for me. I’ve been convinced by these arguments, a lot of people I know and respect IRL have been convinced, and my understanding of the general scientific consensus at large agrees with the overall argument that any measurable variations in intelligence in dogs is far, far more an individual trait than a breed trait.

Whether this or that random person on the internet understands that is really one of the more insignificant issues in my life, big picture wise. This thread having devolved into nothing more than repetition and personal insult, I’m pretty well burnt out on it. I leave you to the last word.

[Smeghead]

@lissener

You want to address the actual content of what I was saying, fine; an emotional outburst about how I was saying it isn’t really helpful. You disagree that centuries of inbreeding, which have been demonstrated time and time again to cause health problems in dogs, can at the same accelerate the selection for intelligence, even though a stupid dog is far more likely to die in the wild than in captivity, go ahead. I don’t see a stronger system for selection for intelligence than natural selection. I don’t see centuries of inbreeding as a likely way to improve on that. Rather than having a temper tantrum about my analogies, please address the specifics of that point.

If you understood the things you claim to understand, you would not have made these arguments.

Inbreeding, combined with artificial selection absolutely can select for intelligence more strongly than natural selection can. There is no question about this. In the wild, if you can get a selection coefficient of 0.1, that’s huge. In an artificial selection setting, depending on how you do it, you can make the selection coefficient arbitrarily large, approaching 1.0. The only reason you wouldn’t is the need to maintain genetic diversity at other loci within the genome to minimize health problems.

Inbreeding, in and of itself, is not harmful. It is only harmful if it exposes previously hidden recessive alleles that are present in the population. It’s not an inevitable slide downwards to idiocy and weakness. When managed properly, it’s perfectly possible to select desired characteristics while avoiding undesirable ones. You may not get a perfect result, hence the prevalence of inherited diseases in purebreds, but you can get pretty darned good. The main point is that the negative characteristics are side effects of selecting for your desired characteristics.