Is it possible to selectively breed for intelligence

Is it possible to selectively breed for intelligence

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Damn, I'm surprised the AI was even allowed to answer this question.

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    erin hecht, Significant neuroanatomical variation among domestic dog breeds

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Any image of those pug abominations brain?

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    A short article about it from 1887:
    https://www.nature.com/articles/036246b0

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >implying more neurons = smarter

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Cortex neurons (not general neurons) has a far closer correlation to observable intelligence than brain size and brain/body ratio.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >this is what encephalization quotards believe

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    If there's consistently the same intelligence test, I wonder if over time the animals barely get smarter yet get good at a specific set of tasks

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Fun fact, a baby have more neurons than an adult human. This poop machine have more neurons than (you)

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Every day brings you closer to death
      What a revelation.

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Sure, once you find the smart-gene.

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Sure, just need to define it and find a way to objectively track it first. Then its easy peasy from there.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Alright, I'll come up with an intelligent test for dogs (the difficult part), and you'll do the rest (the easy peasy part)

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        NTA but there are a good number of ways to measure for intelligence in humans that can be applied to mammals. Memory recall, color perception, reflex speed, etc. all correlate with 'g' or general intelligence factor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) -- the idea being that intelligence is a reflection of an exceptionally performant brain. I'd argue the hard part isn't the tests or measuring, it's the keeping of animals and breeding them. All of that requires a steady income of cash and trained hands to administer the tests and monitor the subjects. Something simple like a small, rapidly breeding animal(like a guppy or some kind of solitary arthropod) could be done by some hobbyist who knows what he's doing, but anything bigger than that is going to require more and more resources.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Clearly rats are the right choice of animal. It makes me wonder whether it has been tried already.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            No and any claims that there was are lies. There is no lab rodent trying to take over the world.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >Color perception
          No, this does not correlate with general intelligence. This is a matter of physical ability.
          >reflex speed
          neither does this... those nerve fibers are nowhere near the thinking part of the CNS.
          >memory recall
          This is g loaded but not as essential as people think. Intelligence can surprise you in that way.

          We know for sure what is a reliable proxy for g in our own species because we are self studying from birth. With animals it is difficult, but also rather pointless.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >No, this does not correlate with general intelligence. This is a matter of physical ability.
            You seem to be mistaking sensory discrimination for color blindness, or am I wrong in assuming that's what you meant? Sensory discrimination does correlate with g, even if not strongly.
            >neither does this...
            But reaction times do correlate with g. I'll admit I should've said reaction times instead of reflex speed but I hope you're not being pedantic about this.
            >With animals it is difficult, but also rather pointless.
            I mean the point given in this thread is to breed for intelligence so being able to measure a general factor for it has a point here. I don't know why you'd assume it's pointless outside of even that context though.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >we don't already have the means to determine that poodles are smarter than smashed and slammed micro exotixxx

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          they are smart dogs

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Heres a thought experiment, lets assume some smashed and slammed mutt had some gigabrain up its slammed skull. Given that the owners are morons and its body is all fricked up, would the dog even be able to show it? Or others notice it?

          NTA but there are a good number of ways to measure for intelligence in humans that can be applied to mammals. Memory recall, color perception, reflex speed, etc. all correlate with 'g' or general intelligence factor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) -- the idea being that intelligence is a reflection of an exceptionally performant brain. I'd argue the hard part isn't the tests or measuring, it's the keeping of animals and breeding them. All of that requires a steady income of cash and trained hands to administer the tests and monitor the subjects. Something simple like a small, rapidly breeding animal(like a guppy or some kind of solitary arthropod) could be done by some hobbyist who knows what he's doing, but anything bigger than that is going to require more and more resources.

          >I'd argue the hard part isn't the tests or measuring
          >requires [...] trained hands to administer the tests
          So it is the tests in part too as you say. Specially since in this theoretical scenario they'd need to be done on every animal sample of a generation, correctly each time. With a constant track to make sure things aint going wack.
          Also gonna have to ensure that diferences in g(if any) are factually result of genes and not nurture.
          Looking at a another recent selective breeding as a baseline
          >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox
          It takes at minimum about 130 individuals and possibly around 30 generations for a concrete result wherein newborns are factually diferent from the beginning sample. About 45 thousand individuals bred. That however is just for a simple "friendly to humans" breeding, intelligence could likely take far longer. Doing the test you suggested for all of those animals, and doing it correctly would in itself be a massive undertaking.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Training, responding to commands. Shell games, picking the hand with more treats. Basic cause and effect: Schopenhauer wrote about his poodle understanding that the drawstring opened the curtains. Like with wh*te women, you just know.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              >Training and responding to commands
              This one has been proven to be bullshit when it turned out belgian malinois, who score lower the collies and labs in obedience, actually have higher general intelligence.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                So the coefficient isn't 1.0, I'm sure the correlation is still strong

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            That's all quite fair but I would put forward that certain measures wouldn't need to be tested too frequently. You can also automate quite a bit for these tests since we're not aiming for that friendly nature to humans(which will of course require a human present for each individual). I'm reminded of the memory tests done with chimpanzees before. Essentially a game with a reward at the end. Transport of the animal and initial training to understand that game are important and then from there you have a standardized and computerized measure of their abilities(at least insofar as their performance with that game and all of the forms of intelligence/neurological ability it correlates with). I'd say that other kinds of games could be had too, like tests that reward delaying gratification, maze tests for spatial intelligence and memory, "quizes" where a subject is made aware of something at some point before the test and is then given a task to use information from that "something". An example of that quiz thing being to match the right color to an image of a car that they were shown a week prior. A lot of these tests though would be more fit for something as intelligent as a chimpanzee or a dog but tests like the maze test and basic tests to see if an animal recognizes patterns(An example being that I remembered was researchers putting a specific card against a guppy's tank before feeding. The more intelligent guppies associated the right card more often with being fed and came to their feeding area when the card was placed whilst the less intelligent guppies were more error prone).

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              Forgot to link a video of the chimpanzee stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyJomdyjyvM

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              I was thinking the same thing but couldn't put it into words. I'd like to add that flawed testing wouldn't undermine the entire thing, it's just gonna slow it down.

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    NO YOU CAN'T ASK THAT QUESTION, IT'S ILLEGAL!!!

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      That chart shows we're able to make them dumber, but can we make them smarter?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Marginally. It's far easier to topple a tower than build one. Relying on chance for incremental improvements takes a long time, but genes that aren't under selection pressure can be lost in a couple of generations.

        They've gone 10,000 years with only moderate intelligence needed to reproduce, so I doubt we'll be seeing wolf-tier intelligence any time soon.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        How does it show we can make them dumber or smarter? Without knowing what the neuron count of the original population of grey wolves dogs descend from, it's impossible to say whether humans have bred dogs to be dumber or smarter.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          It's pretty evident that wolves are smarter, no matter how hard doggays cope.
          Even without testing them, it's still reasonable to assume that 10,000 years without selective pressures for intelligence would have an effect.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            I'm looking for a neuron count like what the first commenter posted.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              I've been waiting for to too, but all the seem to add are more dog breeds that no one cares about.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            The only thing we cope with is not being allowed to have wolfwi…pet wolves.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          I don't think it's a coincidence that the most wolf-like dog on the list also has the most neurons.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            The "most wolf like" dog is still just as distantly related to wolves as every other dog.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            No, the smarter dogs are just working breeds. Unless you think a beagle is more wolf-like than a golden retriever.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >cats with the least neurons on the chart
      >still such adaptable and flexible hunters that they're completely holocausting birds wherever they show up
      How do they do it?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Wasn't that bird species they 'holocausted' an island adapted species with no natural predators on said island? It isn't really impressive if the thing you're killing off is indifferent to your presence until you pounce on it.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Brain size is related with body size. A whale or elephant brain is much bigger than the human brain. But that doesn’t make whales and elephants more intelligent than humans

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          That's not what the image was measuring you dumb baboon-cat-Black person.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            more like tardoset

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            I keep wondering what gorillas think about. They're the dumbest great apes but have a high neuron count. Is it just fluff or are they hiding something?

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              A gorilla weight 4 times more than a chimp, this is why they have more neurons as the other anon was explaining.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                How does that work? Do they process more sensory information? Do they have more neurons simply because their size allows it, yet they are wired less efficiently?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                The gorilla's neurons are estimated, to there's a good chance that it's wrong.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Bigger animals need bigger brains to handle their bigger bodies both on physical and sensorial level. It happens that Gorillas are relatively smart for an animal of its size so things get weird. There probably is a minimum amount of brain cells needed as well for a complex animal so really tiny animals like tiny ants have surprisingly large brain to body ratios.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Isn't controlling the body almost entirely done with the cerebrum and cerebellum?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >A gorilla weight 4 times more than a chimp, this is why they have more neurons as the other anon was explaining
                I don't think it's that simple for cortex neurons.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                It involves both, body weight and intelligence. Just having more neurons don't makes an animal more intelligent but a small animal with same amount of neurons than a big animal probably is much more intelligent than the big animal. according to that pic

                https://i.imgur.com/GCiyooE.png

                That's not what the image was measuring you dumb baboon-cat-Black person.

                the chimp have 2/3 of the number of cortex neurons of a gorilla but it is 1/4 of its size making the chimp the one more likely to be smarter.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Cortex neurons really doesn't scale that much with body size.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >a small animal with same amount of neurons than a big animal probably is much more intelligent than the big animal.
                Is that so.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                I believe it.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Yeah? Are lions known to be particularly intelligent? I never heard anyone claiming that before.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Cats in general aren't known for their intelligence.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                How bad are wild cats?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Not on the list.
                I just want them to do to collies and huskies to compare with the shepherd. The consequences and shitposting will never be the same.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                https://i.imgur.com/izV3PjP.png

                >a small animal with same amount of neurons than a big animal probably is much more intelligent than the big animal.
                Is that so.

                Dogs are an interesting case. Their number of neurons don't vary wildly despite their wild size differences. Since we artificially breed into extremes chances are that their brain and intelligence corresponds more to what would be expected from a wold sized animal than an animal of the same size

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                *wolf sized animal

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                If you look at the dogs here

                https://i.imgur.com/LTeQRa9.jpg

                NO YOU CAN'T ASK THAT QUESTION, IT'S ILLEGAL!!!

                you'll notice something. The neurons don't correlate that well with size, but all the smarter dogs are working breeds.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Those have to do shit instead of being purse accessories.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            So you are saying the gorilla is much more intelligent than the chimpanzee because it have more neurons? Same thing applies, the chimpanzee is more intelligent than the gorilla despite having less neurons.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              Gorillas are probably placed higher than they should be.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        By having motor skills and not being inbred gnomes, while in most cases still being supported by humans.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Brain size is related with body size. A whale or elephant brain is much bigger than the human brain. But that doesn’t make whales and elephants more intelligent than humans

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Brain size is related with body size. A whale or elephant brain is much bigger than the human brain. But that doesn’t make whales and elephants more intelligent than humans

        https://i.imgur.com/1zFjkyz.png

        [...]

        The relation also is not linear with tiny animals having a higher brain to body rate so a mouse have a bigger rate than an elephant but the elephant is considered more intelligent.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        They aren't holocausting birds. They have a moderate impact on birds. Humans are holocausting birds by destroying their habitats, introducing animals that prey on their eggs (rats) that nothing we want roaming free preys on (because canids also hunt livestock), and disrupting their natural lifestyle, and then the last few confused, unhealthy birds are promptly mopped up by the billions of cats. The cats weren't really necessary here, they just sped up the process slightly.

        Nature: Scores 49 points
        Dogs and foxes: On the bench for fouls (more like eating fowl)
        Humans and rats: Scores 50 points
        Cats: score an additional point for team human
        Humans: wow cats just won us the game!

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >More numerous
        >More adaptable
        >More sociable and co-operative
        >BTFO more species than cats
        >Cuter
        Catgays coping.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Baste

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >are the shadow industry behind herpetoculture
          based rodents. a snake will easily eat a thousand in a lifetime

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Golden retrievers are the african americans of dogs

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        That would be pits. Would be interesting to see where they place though.

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Yes. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3566478/

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