Bill Nye Talks Dogs and Explores the Lessons of Canine Evolution | Big Think.

Bill Nye Talks Dogs and Explores the Lessons of Canine Evolution

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Bill Nye the Science Guy returns to Big Think to discuss evolution, this time from a canine point of view. Nye explains how dogs evolved out of an early human-wolf interaction which today benefits both species. He also draws a comparison between dog breeds and the social construct of race, claiming that both are man-made myths not steeped in science.

Bill's latest book is "Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation."

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BILL NYE, THE SCIENCE GUY:

Bill Nye, scientist, engineer, comedian, author, and inventor, is a man with a mission: to help foster a scientifically literate society, to help people everywhere understand and appreciate the science that makes our world work. Making science entertaining and accessible is something Bill has been doing most of his life. In Seattle Nye began to combine his love of science with his flair for comedy, when he won the Steve Martin look-alike contest and developed dual careers as an engineer by day and a stand-up comic by night. Nye then quit his day engineering day job and made the transition to a night job as a comedy writer and performer on Seattle's home-grown ensemble comedy show “Almost Live." This is where “Bill Nye the Science Guy®" was born. The show appeared before Saturday Night Live and later on Comedy Central, originating at KING-TV, Seattle's NBC affiliate. While working on the Science Guy show, Nye won seven national Emmy Awards for writing, performing, and producing. The show won 18 Emmys in five years. In between creating the shows, he wrote five children's books about science, including his latest title, “Bill Nye's Great Big Book of Tiny Germs." Nye is the host of three currently-running television series. “The 100 Greatest Discoveries" airs on the Science Channel. “The Eyes of Nye" airs on PBS stations across the country. Bill's latest project is hosting a show on Planet Green called “Stuff Happens." It's about environmentally responsible choices that consumers can make as they go about their day and their shopping. Also, you'll see Nye in his good-natured rivalry with his neighbor Ed Begley. They compete to see who can save the most energy and produce the smallest carbon footprint. Nye has 4,000 watts of solar power and a solar-boosted hot water system. There's also the low water use garden and underground watering system. It's fun for him; he's an engineer with an energy conservation hobby. Nye is currently the Executive Director of The Planetary Society, the world's largest space interest organization.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Bill Nye: I love dogs as much as the next guy. I talk to dogs. In preparing this book I spoke with dogs at length. Maybe I spoke more to dogs than with them. But they’re all dogs, that’s the thing. I know we all love our kennel club show we all go there. We obsess about whether our dog is a pug, Jack Russell terrier mix with corgi overtones and an oaky finish. An approachable little dog, whatever. They’re all dogs, okay. And so the idea of a purebred is just a human construct. There’s no such thing – in a sense there’s no such thing as a purebred dog. And that’s – I don’t have a problem with that. That’s the way it is. By the way you talk to any veterinarian and they’ll tell you that a mutt is a much healthier dog generally because they have this mix of genes, they’re not inbred, they haven’t made the same gene repeat too many times. And so it’s funny, it’s charming to me but there’s a great lesson to be learned. Dogs are a descendent either from wolves or from one ancestor before wolves. But what you and I think of as a modern wolf may or may not be the direct – what led to a modern dog.

People talk about this as I’m writing the book. In the next five years it will probably be resolved. Somebody will come up with a definitive answer to that. But anyway, apparently these experiments were done with foxes which are just the coolest thing where the foxes that were friendlier, that they were more comfortable around people, they were allowed to approach, they were allowed to use human food. After just three generations they had floppy scritchable ears and they were much more like dogs...

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