https://claireberlinski.substack.com/p/on-mexican-state-collapse-a-guest

Dogs are a really good example. I think there’s a case to be made that its entirely possible that instead of us domesticating the dog, that humanity was domesticated by the dog. You stop and think about it, and you have to wonder: Which way did that go, there at the beginning? Why didn’t Neanderthal Man have domesticated dogs or other things…? From what I’ve been able to glean, they’ve never, ever found Neanderthal remains in association with dogs, and there’s little evidence that they practiced anything like farming, in terms of what we know early modern man did. I’ve seen one paper that said that the two most noticeable things to look for, when trying to determine whether or not you were dealing with early modern humans or Neanderthal, was whether there were dogs, or any signs of deliberate alcohol being fermented.

Dogs and beer, people: The founding fathers of human civilization.

And, I’ll lay you long odds it happened because the nascent dogs, being playful wolves, wanted someone to throw stuff for them. Some early human probably threw a stick or a pinecone at a wolf that was hanging around the camp, a light went on in the wolf’s head, and Hey! Presto!, the wolf took it back.

Either that, or the early games included trying to lure the smaller humans out by dropping the damn throwy-thing further and further away… Could be it grew out of predator behavior, and not play. Dunno. Haven’t made my mind up–The Border Collie I have flatly refuses to bring me her throw-things, always dropping them just out of reach. I’ve often wondered just what the hell the point of that is, and it occurs to me that this might be “lure lumbering idiot into ambush” rather than “play”. Hard to say…

You never know. Some of the higher order lifeforms seem to have figured out the human environment to a sufficient degree to survive and thrive.

How they understand or interpret it and with which senses eludes me, but crows and geese seem about as clever handling road traffic as small children, and better than some small furry mammals. I’ve seen geese move en masse across a 6 lane road, at a traffic signal, and waiting until it is green for them. I don’t know what was actually happening or what drove their behaviour, but it sure looked like they had mastered traffic lights. The stragglers even sped up at the end.

I am sure it would be something to do with sound and vibration, but it was still impressive.

I don’t think we have a real clue as to how things work. As in, really work–I have a nasty suspicion, based on my reading, that the various and sundry interdependencies we’ve managed to trace out are only the tip of the icebergs.

Case in point–Look at the difference up in Yellowstone between today, and when we didn’t have wolves managing the herds for us. What does that say about “unexpected consequences”? Wipe out the mosquito, starve the bats, destroy another part of the ecosystem we didn’t even thing connected to it all.

One of the things I’d like to know is what the hell happened to all the guano deposited by the dinosaurs over the course of their existence…? There had to be massive, massive deposits, somewhere, no? So… What the hell happened to all of that? Where’d it go? We find coprolites all the time, but nothing resembling guano that I’ve been able to trace out in the literature. Sure seems like there should have been absolutely massive deposits of it, but… Where did it go? Hell, I can’t even find where the paleontologists have really discussed things beyond the idea of isolated coprolites…

Bees, of course, get tons of attention.

I believe I have seen some discussion of decline in other useful insects, like ants.

Usually it’s presented as a subset of climate change, but there are specialists focusing on them.

I agree, though, even if its getting attention it’s not getting huge media play, even the bees only come up now and then.

If science could tell me mosquitos are useless, I’d vote to exterminate them at least. But they are probably food for something, the bastards.

I may be wrong, but I feel that this is a significant issue, one that may be sneaking up on us all.

War. Everybody hates it, as Malaclypse the Younger pointed out.