Would humanity have turned out differently?
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00:00 Humans have many friends in the animal kingdom.
00:08 But when it comes to crowning a best friend,
00:10 dogs are the consensus pick.
00:12 These loyal creatures have stood, sat,
00:15 and rolled over by our sides for generations.
00:18 They're service providers,
00:19 cultural icons,
00:21 and valued family members.
00:23 So what would the world look like
00:25 without our trusted canine companions?
00:27 Would humanity have turned out differently?
00:30 What innovations would we lose?
00:32 And who would our replacement best friend be?
00:36 This is WHAT IF,
00:37 and here's what would happen if dogs didn't exist.
00:42 Dogs make a lot of obvious contributions to our society,
00:45 but some of their biggest contributions
00:46 were made under the radar.
00:49 If humans never bonded with dogs,
00:50 we'd likely miss out on some huge innovations,
00:53 like the telephone,
00:54 or pasteurization.
00:56 How did such an unlikely partnership
00:58 drastically change the lives of both species forever?
01:03 When modern humans first migrated from Africa to Eurasia,
01:06 they were in fierce competition
01:08 to become the region's alpha predators.
01:10 One of those competitors was a now-extinct wolf species
01:13 that dogs are descended from.
01:15 Like us, these wolves had their sights set
01:18 on bringing down bison, mammoths,
01:20 and the other big game animals of the day.
01:23 But somewhere along the line, a funny thing happened.
01:25 Instead of trying to out-hunt each other,
01:28 groups of wolves and humans joined forces.
01:31 Domestication had begun.
01:33 Over time, the partnership brought about
01:35 massive evolutionary changes.
01:37 The wolves' features shrunk,
01:39 their ears flopped,
01:41 and their coats became splotchier.
01:43 Their ferociousness diminished.
01:46 None of these evolutionary changes happen
01:48 without domestication.
01:50 So when you think about it,
01:51 humans didn't just pick a best friend,
01:53 we created one.
01:55 But dogs have played a pretty significant role
01:57 in shaping us as well.
01:58 Interacting with dogs can greatly improve
02:01 our mental, physical, and emotional health.
02:04 These interactions have been proven
02:06 to raise the levels of the love hormone, oxytocin,
02:09 and lower levels of the stress hormone, cortisone.
02:13 On a larger scale,
02:14 domestication redefined our capacity
02:17 for managing fellow species.
02:19 It kick-started the Anthropocene,
02:21 and paved the way for everything from
02:23 agriculture to fossil fuel extraction.
02:26 Would all that have happened
02:27 without our wolf and dog allies?
02:29 Maybe sheep or goats,
02:31 who came next in the order of domestication by humans,
02:34 would serve as a stand-in
02:35 for humanity's best friend.
02:38 However, it's tough to imagine
02:40 telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell
02:42 curling up with a sheep to study the relationship
02:44 between sounds and vibrations,
02:45 the way he did with his Sky Terrier.
02:48 Or that Louis Pasteur would have opened
02:49 the Research Institute,
02:50 where his famous food preservation method
02:52 was developed if he hadn't risen to prominence
02:55 studying and curing rabid dogs.
02:58 Indigenous Americans might have had a better shot
03:00 at fending off Spanish conquistadors
03:02 from colonizing the continents,
03:04 if the Spaniards weren't attacking
03:05 with vicious bloodhounds at their disposal.
03:08 What other ripple effects in the Universe
03:10 can be traced back to the existence of dogs?
03:13 Maybe humans would have evolved
03:15 to look completely different.
03:17 But that's a topic for another WHAT IF.
03:20 ♪ ♪