The hypothesis is that all organisms are in a constant state of evolution, susceptible to the effects of time and their surroundings upon their continual change; evolution is happening right now. The experiment involves dogs. I will have a pack of dogs, labradors of mixed color. I choose labrador because of their well documented superior intelligence, coupled with an natural affinity to water. I will through generations attempt to breed these dogs into a new species, the final result of which being a primarily aquatic animal. Definition of a new species may be hard to pin down. I want an animal that eats, plays, fights, and fucks in the water. My methods will be to have the dog living in water their entire lives. I will design an enclosed area or a reasonable size with water at varying depths. There will be an area where the water is very shallow at only maybe an inch or two deep, but I think it is very important to the experiment that there be no dry land whatsoever. I expect the dogs will live here in the beginning. But some kind of natural food supply will only be available in the deeper water. This experiment is not about conditioning the first generation of dogs to eat in the water. The dogs will be allowed to reproduce exponentially. The experiment will go on as long as necessary. Dogs have a very short evolutionary "cool-down rate" the next generation reproducing in only about a year. Dogs that are more adept at procuring the food in the water will gain a physical advantage over the other dogs, the dogs better suited for the aquatic environment would be expected to become the alpha dogs thus able to reproduce more and pass on aquatic genes. In order for the experiment to be valid you would need quite a few square acre's to simulate a natural habitat. I am considering it and I think that it would be best to let the dogs "go wild." You want the animal to return to a normal method of evolution, not one that is guided by human interaction. It really would need to be a double blind study, the dogs not seeing humans at all, so that humans will have no effect on the canine social structure, or upon their survival motivations. They may have a strong survival instinct to sit at the gate and beg instead of seeking out available food. This is certainly an experiment that lies in a moral gray area. Certainly the process of evolution would necessitate all of these dogs dying. The dogs will die in there, but conditions will remain good enough for some of the dogs to survive and reproduce or the experiment will have failed. If there are no dogs alive the experiment has failed. I hope you were all too lazy to read this cause then you can't steal my idea. But if you did read, Discuss.
Some of the dogs would drown. This is necessary if we are to simulate nature, and the effects of drastic environmental change on a species.
Dogs have a gestation time of ~63 days, litter size of 6 (on average) , and a total reproductive cycle of about 6 months, not to mention the 8-18 month period in which sexual maturity is reached. On the other hand, a smaller organism such as a mouse has a gestation time of ~20 days, litter size of 10-12, can breed 3-10 days after giving birth, and reaches sexual maturity after about 50 days. This shorter period would allow the mice to evolve significantly more in a few months than dogs would in a few years. Disposing of a dead mouse would also be much simpler than disposing of a dead dog. Therefore, using mice for an experiment such as this would be much simpler and ethical, and require significantly less resources. There is a reason we have lab mice. Mice are also unregulated by the United States Animal Welfare Act, while dogs are.
You won't live long enough to possibly see your experiment through to the end. Speciation takes thousands to millions of years. You may be able to find enough change to document a new breed, but they will still without-a-doubt be dogs and will be able to interbreed with other dogs.
With mice, ya that seems pretty much an obvious better choice. Ok change all of this to mice. Make aquatic mice, that would be crazy.
Made me laugh use a flies instead. Less ethical, shorter life spans, under greater pressure to adapt, less flies in this world.
Dude are you serious? This is sick... Go put yourself in water and I'll come see how you are doing in 6 months.
I think this experiment has potential, they criticized that dude who made human centipede as well but that didn't stop him.
I don't get it... So he wants to make a gigantic 2-3 acre swimming pool/swamp and breed dogs in it? But won't they all just die in a few days of not being able to chill on land? Just throw them in the ocean for christs sakes. What do you think it's there for?
This is really a great idea in the name of science, as though it hits the line of morality... But as I was thinking and as other posters have pointed out, if you're going to do it, do it with mice. They are unregulated and you won't have PETA sticking hot pokers in your asshole. Ouch, we don't want that. Mice, my friend. And I'm an animal lover. But I love science. Morality can be a bitch. It's a slippery slope. I wish we could experiment on humans, but it only sounds good until you actually think about the person/test subject. How horrible, but at the same time, we probably could be transplanting heads right now... Morality...
This is so dumb I can't believe anyone actually thinks this is a good idea. There are a ton of problems with this idea. Even if you used mice instead of dogs, it would take an extraordinary amount of time for it to work. That is ignoring the fact that your experiment doesn't replicate how land based organisms made the transition to water. Land organisms didn't simply go from spending all day and night on land to being only in the water, it was a slow transition. Also this assumes that every organism can adapt to any environment which we know isn't true as plenty of species go extinct when their environment drastically changes. Mutations can occur that lead to better adaptations but evolution only acts on pre-existing genes and structures, it can't spontaneously create all the necessary structures needed to live in any environment. Another thing, mice aren't completely unregulated. Wild mice are indeed protected by the Animal Welfare Act and while research specific mice aren't, they won't be sold to individuals who aren't associated with an institution or company. In addition to all this, you propose a double-blind experiment with animals? I don't think you understand what that would mean. Double-blind studies are for testing new drugs not experiments such as this. What will the mice be fed and how can you be sure they will eat it? The death of lots of mice in the water in addition to their waste products will contaminate the water unless you clean it out continually. Overall this won't work and we have computers that can simulate things like this.
Well, apparently many of us don't know it all like others... Regardless, your post does ultimately make more sense than the OPs... STILL - Good idea, OP. It's still a good IDEA - the idea itself. The idea of forcing an adaption of a species.
Yeah sorry that was a little harsh and the general idea to create a direct test of evolution is good but as already stated, the execution was severely lacking.
You won't live long enough to see the results, but you should start with a dog that is closer to what you want. Like an otterhound or Chesapeake Bay retriever, they're waterdogs. A few species of dogs have been bred for their webbed feet and/or love of water. CB retrievers were mainly used to hunt ducks and such, otterhounds though are badass. Kind of obvious, but they're called that cause they were bred to hunt otters, not an easy task. Otter hunting isn't as big as it used to be, so might be hard to find a legit otterhound.
So you propose an research project, with no clear cut research question, no discussion of contemporary literature, and a massively flawed research design that might actually even be an invalid test of the null hypothesis? I'm mostly curious about your motivation... do you actually think this could be a valuable contribution?