Oh so you have evidence that the American buffalo and the Eurasian cattle are more genetically distinct then say Native American and a Caucasian?
No, sorry. As a dog breeder I try to stay slightly more informed than the average layman about canine biology but I'll let somebody else take care of bovine biology. These days most cattle breeders are frelling experts in genetics.
And if so are you saying there is a genetic breaking point where we can now say two groups of organism are now a different species?
Considering how many species were identified long before modern DNA analysis was available, I'm sure that only a relatively small fraction of them have actually had their genome mapped. I'm not clear on how biologists actually define the word "species." After looking it up on Wikipedia I get the impression that they're not very clear about it either. The same is true of "genus," and scientists even admit that they quarrel about it among themselves.
Ironically, I think we have more rigorous definitions of "population" and "subspecies" than of "species" and "genus."
All we can do is try to conform to the naming conventions used in science, or we'll lose all coherence.
I never side they migrated to america several dozen thousand years ago just they split off genetically then, stop nitpicking.
Forgive me if I misunderstood you. Presumably you know that the Native Americans split off from the rest of the "mongoloid" peoples long enough ago that they have a few of their own genetic markers that identify them as a distinct population--or at least did until the Christian armies came. The people of the Western Hemisphere don't have the epicanthic eye fold that is widely used as a shorthand definition of "Orientals." Apparently that mutation happened after they had already departed for the Americas.
I think it has to do with the fact that the cattle aren't from here? They're introduced?
Cattle were one of the very first domesticated animals, and different species were domesticated independently in different regions: the zebu, the European taurine cattle, and the aurochs, which is ancestral to both but continued to survive until the 17th century. Modern cattle are hybrids of these three species of genus
Bos, and other members of the genus (such as the yak) have been added to the bloodlines as well.
No species of
Bos is native to the Western Hemisphere, which may have been one reason why agriculture was so difficult to establish here. Cattle are relatively docile and they are extremely amenable to inter-species crossbreeding, just what the early Stone Age agricultural tribes needed.
I assume that there just wasn't enough genetic drift between bison and cattle for them to lose the ability to interbreed . . . .
Apparently so, although as I pointed out earlier, this is by no means a unique phenomenon. It happens with felines and psittacines as well.
Wolf and dog have the same pliable genetics...however, somehow we bred them dumber.
That happened more-or-less naturally. The maintenance of brain tissue requires a huge amount of protein in the diet. As dogs transitioned from full-time predators with a 100% meat diet to midden scavengers with an omnivorous diet, they had to adapt to a lower protein intake.
I also knew someone who adopted a wolf-hybrid...eerily smart, very neurotic, regularly trashed the house when upset about something.
In the 24,000 generations that dogs have gone through since they first joined our multi-species community, their instincts have evolved, in addition to their brains and their teeth.
- They are much more gregarious. Wolf packs rarely have ten adult members, whereas feral dog packs number in the dozens. Wolves are hostile to strangers; dogs often greet strangers with a cautious invitation to play.
- Their gregarious nature extends to other species; not just humans but almost any animal that shares our home and is too large and quiet to be mistaken for a squeaky chew toy.
- They have a much lower incidence of the alpha instinct. Wolves frequently fight for dominance; most dogs readily defer to the leadership of anyone who demands the role, even another species.
As I have noted before, humans have a much longer breeding cycle so we've only gone through a few hundred generations in that same time period. As a result, ironically, dogs are actually better adapted to the civilization we have created together than we are!
since we were discussing people, Africans have the greatest amount of genetic variance. All non-Africans tend to be more homogenous.
That's because we are all descended from a group of individuals from a single tribe that ventured out of Africa: the San or "Bushmen." Our DNA matches theirs, with the predictable drift from 50,000 years of separation. Of course when North Africa turned into a desert there was considerable migration of peoples and the San now live in the south.
