Study: Starch Digestion Adaptation in Dogs

[Fran101]

Originally Posted by Laurelin

Honestly I may be the only one around here that just thinks we 'dog people' sit around and overcomplicate the whole feeding business. Pretty much everything we 'know' is speculation and based upon anecdotes. There is not much hard science behind it in either direction. Hopefully this is a good step in the right direction.

Dogs evolved alongside us, surviving off our scraps. I have no doubt they can handle most of our food and survive off of it. Now what is 'ideal' is up for more debate.

This.
Do your own research..feed what your dog seems to do best on and what you can afford and easily deal with.

BAM.
Dogs are much hardier than we give them credit for.. Merlin (perks of working at a pet-store) eats everything. So let's guess I've got my bases covered Raw, pre-made, very high quality kibble (Acana) all the way to medium quality (Blue)
He is doing very well.

[JacksonsMom]

Originally Posted by PWCorgi

While I don't think I am an ingredient label snob, I will TOTALLY admit to being a sourcing/company snob.

THIS! I've very much turned into a sourcing/company snob. Ingredients don't bother me as much as they previously used to.

[CatStina]

Ugh!! C'mon people! This study is fascinating and a jumping off point for future research. This study doesn't mean that people should feed their dogs on a diet of potatoes it means that dogs can digest starch.

Ok, raw feeders, your dog does well on raw food. Congratulations! I'm happy you found a food that works for your dog. Guess what? My dog does well on a high protein, grain free kibble that contains starch. I'm going to keep feeding him that no matter what you say.

[Flyinsbt]

Originally Posted by Linds

Exactly this. Though I do think my dogs are better off on raw than they would be on the Pedigree we used to feed, if only because they aren't gross to the touch and sleep in my bed. Wait, that's better for me

Honestly, I just really don't understand the anger, meanness and hate that people show when talking about it. I mean, REALLY?! You care that much about the food I feed MY dogs? REALLY??

And especially when it gets into "Oh, you feed that insert high quality diet? Wow. I guess you don't know about this and this and this and want your dog to die. You should really be feeding this insert high quality diet."

But, I do like discussing it and will probably continue to do so.

I hear you there! It has gotten kind of amusing to me, the vigorous opinions people have on this subject. We really do overthink it. And people are crazy judgmental about other people's choices. Me, I'm getting too old for that. I mean, not the overthinking, the judgmental stuff. Or caring about the judgments other people make about my choices.

I think the dogs I have now would do well on raw, maybe a bit better than they do on quality kibble, I'm just not well situated to feed it. I think the dogs I had previously, it wouldn't have mattered. I also think the dogs I have now are well able to thrive on kibble, anyway. I'm not sure I'd be willing to breed dogs that couldn't do well on most diets, since I think the natural, healthy state for a dog is to be flexible in their diet.

But hey, that's just my opinion, and I'm not going to judge what anyone else chooses to do. And if people want to tell me I'm killing my dogs with my feeding choices, well okay. Feel free. Though I'm probably not going to be willing to pay you money for that opinion.

[rudysgal]

Originally Posted by Lyzelle

This. That's a pretty ridiculous argument. Disease, starvation, injury, traps/shot, larger predators....and we're just going to say it's obvious we should feed dogs grains because wolves don't eat them and they die within 5 years.

Yeah. Okay.

Yikes. I never said that they didn't die of other things at all. I know they do, having studied wolves myself.

Oh man... I was going to explain myself but sounds like it might not be worth it tbqh. Have a nice day

[Shai]

Originally Posted by Laurelin

Honestly I may be the only one around here that just thinks we 'dog people' sit around and overcomplicate the whole feeding business. Pretty much everything we 'know' is speculation and based upon anecdotes. There is not much hard science behind it in either direction. Hopefully this is a good step in the right direction.

Dogs evolved alongside us, surviving off our scraps. I have no doubt they can handle most of our food and survive off of it. Now what is 'ideal' is up for more debate.

I both agree and disagree with this (how's that for taking a position? ). I do think it's easy to overthink it all and most dogs will do well on anything reasonable...but on the other hand modern dogs are often wholly dependent on humans to consciously hand them every morsel of food they eat. There's much less scrounging around and eating a bit of this or a bit of that. I'm pretty sure I have family members whose dog has never, ever eaten anything other than a single brand of kibble and milk bones. Not exactly making use of the "variety over time" safety net.

[Shai]

Originally Posted by CatStina

Ugh!! C'mon people! This study is fascinating and a jumping off point for future research. This study doesn't mean that people should feed their dogs on a diet of potatoes it means that dogs can digest starch.

Ok, raw feeders, your dog does well on raw food. Congratulations! I'm happy you found a food that works for your dog. Guess what? My dog does well on a high protein, grain free kibble that contains starch. I'm going to keep feeding him that no matter what you say.

Thank you for this...I think a lot of griping is going on over an argument that isn't actually being made lol

[Laurelin]

Originally Posted by Shai

I both agree and disagree with this (how's that for taking a position? ). I do think it's easy to overthink it all and most dogs will do well on anything reasonable...but on the other hand modern dogs are often wholly dependent on humans to consciously hand them every morsel of food they eat. There's much less scrounging around and eating a bit of this or a bit of that. I'm pretty sure I have family members whose dog has never, ever eaten anything other than a single brand of kibble and milk bones. Not exactly making use of the "variety over time" safety net.

My dogs eat whatever these days. I feed like Fran does. We usually have at least 2 brands of grain free kibble, several brands of canned food (both grain free and with grains), real raw, premade raw, and I'll admit they get food I eat as well. They've been doing really well this way for a long while now.

I think it is important to feed food that is good quality to your dog and that your dog does well on. I also think variety no matter what the diet is a very important thing. I think there are some kibbles that are pure crap. (Have you ever looked into I think it is called 'Feed Bag' at Tractor Supply? Blegh)

But once you get past that... eh. Is there really any scientific data to back this all up? Reading 'stuff' on the internet really mean it's all factual. There are very few scientific studies on dog nutrition (well that aren't funded by a dog food company). People are almost fanatically religious about how much better X diet is versus Y. and people get angry over things that I will be honest, I don't think really matter.

[Raegan]

Originally Posted by Pops2

Not single breeding experiment has ever produced a new species from within a species. All new artificial species have come from crossing existing species (in higher animals) or from gene splicing in lower animals.

Actually that's not what evolution predicts. And if that DID happen, THAT would disprove evolution definitively and be much stronger evidence for some kind of spontaneous generation. Speciation isn't as cut and dried as it's often made out or presented to be. Don't think of it as a horse giving birth to a pegasus, it's more like compounded genetic differences driving a gulf between populations. Think of a gradient from blue to orange, on the far left you're definitely in blue territory, on the far right you're definitely in orange territory, but the closer you get to the middle it's harder to figure out.

Here's a video on ring species that explains it pretty well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb6Z6NVmLt8

Both potholder54 and Aronra are worth watching if you're interested in understanding evolution better. Specifically AronRa's Falsifying Phylogony and Fundamental Falsehoods of Creationism. They are slanted specifically to anti-Young Earth Creationism, because that is usually the most vocal anti-evolution contingent but the science is really well presented.

Further the assertion that dogs came from wolves would in fact make them wolves but current research shows only 98.6-98.8 % genetic commonality (coincidentally humans and chimps have 98.8% commonality). That is there is over 1% of genes that exist in one but not the other. Likewise dogs and coyotes have 98% commonality but wolves and coyotes only have 96% commonality. Dogs have an "elasticity" to their genes that so far hasn't been found in wolves. Oh and wolves from the ice age are on the species level genetically identical to modern greys. So yeah not at all convinced that dogs evolved from wolves. A common ancestor, MAYBE, but not FROM wolves.

Nope! Dogs ARE wolves. They really are still wolves. They're a wolf that's adapted to living with humans, but they're still wolves. At BEST, they are a subspecies. The plasticity of the dog genome is pretty unique, but that does not override their genetic history. But "wolf" is a much broader category than many people in North America might know. The popular image of the Timber Wolf is a specialized wolf too, just like the dog. They're specialized to hunt large game in packs. Dogs more likely originated with the Middle Eastern Wolf, but there's a lot we don't know about the process of domestication (and I personally am not up to date on what the current research is). Mark Derr's book is supposed to be pretty good. He was on Science Friday this week! http://sciencefriday.com/segment/01/...st-friend.html

But saying dogs are not wolves is as incorrect as saying humans are not mammals or birds are not dinosaurs.

[Romy]

Originally Posted by Raegan

Actually that's not what evolution predicts. And if that DID happen, THAT would disprove evolution definitively and be much stronger evidence for some kind of spontaneous generation. Speciation isn't as cut and dried as it's often made out or presented to be. Don't think of it as a horse giving birth to a pegasus, it's more like compounded genetic differences driving a gulf between populations. Think of a gradient from blue to orange, on the far left you're definitely in blue territory, on the far right you're definitely in orange territory, but the closer you get to the middle it's harder to figure out.

Here's a video on ring species that explains it pretty well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb6Z6NVmLt8

Both potholder54 and Aronra are worth watching if you're interested in understanding evolution better. Specifically AronRa's Falsifying Phylogony and Fundamental Falsehoods of Creationism. They are slanted specifically to anti-Young Earth Creationism, because that is usually the most vocal anti-evolution contingent but the science is really well presented.



Nope! Dogs ARE wolves. They really are still wolves. They're a wolf that's adapted to living with humans, but they're still wolves. At BEST, they are a subspecies. The plasticity of the dog genome is pretty unique, but that does not override their genetic history. But "wolf" is a much broader category than many people in North America might know. The popular image of the Timber Wolf is a specialized wolf too, just like the dog. They're specialized to hunt large game in packs. Dogs more likely originated with the Middle Eastern Wolf, but there's a lot we don't know about the process of domestication (and I personally am not up to date on what the current research is). Mark Derr's book is supposed to be pretty good. He was on Science Friday this week! http://sciencefriday.com/segment/01/...st-friend.html

But saying dogs are not wolves is as incorrect as saying humans are not mammals or birds are not dinosaurs.

Dude. Birds are not dinosaurs. Dinosaur encompasses a MASSIVE group of extinct animals, including sauropods, that have very tenuous genetic connections to modern birds (if any, because there are plenty of well documented cases of convergent evolution). Birds =/= dinosaurs. They have probable ancestors among the dinosaurs based on the fossil record, but there is no DNA evidence where we've definitely looked and said, "huh, these two are genetically the same group of creature". Also, some dinosaurs had fur. No birds have fur.

Just because an extinct group of animals are ancestors to a living population does not mean they are the same creature. That's like saying there's no such thing as foxes and wolves and dogs and black bears and grizzly bears because they're all just variations of amphicyon.

Humans are mammals. That comparison has nothing to do with anything, because nobody is saying dogs are not mammals. It would be more like saying humans are not chimps. Which is true. Humans are not chimps.

Dogs are not wolves. There is less in common between dogs and wolves genetically, phenotypically, and behaviorally than there is between Canadian greys and coyotes. Feral dogs never revert back to a wolf-like phenotype after living in the wild for several generations. Most domestic animals revert back to a wild phenotype that is nearly identical to their closest ancestor. Dogs revert to reddish yellow, prick eared dogs (see dingos as a well established example of this).

Dogs originate from several points of domestication, including non wolf canids. There are some extinct domestic canids that have no wolf blood at all. Some lines of dog (like GSDs) had wolf recently added (in the past 120 years). Canines in general seem to have a lot of plasticity between species, coyotes, wolves, jackals, etc. producing fertile hybrids with each other and with dogs. Does that mean golden jackals are wolves as well? No.

The idea of species is a human one, because we like putting things in little boxes and drawing little charts and naming things. Really, that's not how things work. You can hybridize rat snakes from the genus elaphe with king snakes from the genus pantherophus and get very fertile, vigorous hybrids.

What a lot of people regard as evolution, I see as adaptation. Changing beak shapes to fit different flower shapes is an adaptation. It doesn't create a new species of hummingbird. Blurry spots becoming predominate in one leopard frog population where another has sharply delineated spots doesn't mean they're two different species now. How many adaptations does it take to make a new species? If you go by the definition of whether or not they can hybridize and produce fertile offspring, then we've really screwed up somewhere if different genuses can do it.

ETA: Graargh! My browser is so screwed up!

ETAETA: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/276/5319/1687.short

Mitochondrial DNA control region sequences were analyzed from 162 wolves at 27 localities worldwide and from 140 domestic dogs representing 67 breeds. Sequences from both dogs and wolves showed considerable diversity and supported the hypothesis that wolves were the ancestors of dogs. Most dog sequences belonged to a divergent monophyletic clade sharing no sequences with wolves. The sequence divergence within this clade suggested that dogs originated more than 100,000 years before the present. Associations of dog haplotypes with other wolf lineages indicated episodes of admixture between wolves and dogs. Repeated genetic exchange between dog and wolf populations may have been an important source of variation for artificial selection