You could think of it this way: as domestication and transfer of duties. Wolves find their own food. Dogs, being domesticated, rely on humans to feed them. By mutual agreement, over the course of fifteen thousand years, wolf descendants have transferred their food-gathering functions (and responsibilities) to us. It began with bones and meat scraps at the edges of human campfires, probably. It progressed to all manner of extremes. In exchange for food and other emoluments, canines now offer love, bark at mailmen, herd sheep, point at pheasants, and chase Frisbees. Likewise mitochondria: they
...more
