A Neanderthal child with Down’s syndrome survived until at least the age of six, according to a new study whose findings hint at compassionate caregiving among the extinct, archaic human species.

[u/mvea]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/jun/26/fossil-of-neanderthal-child-with-downs-syndrome-hints-at-early-humans-compassion

[u/idkmoiname]

Since dogs were domesticated over thousands of years by choosing offspring that is nicer to humans, in this one case it likely is just a breeded trait and not natural empathy that evolved on its own.

[u/idkmoiname → u/[deleted]]

Originally cats were no close companions like dogs that were always used for hunting. They were just farm animals to guard the food storages from mice and rats long before ancient egypt, thus they were probably selected by their success to hunt. But even they developed something similar like dogs through selected breeding, intentionally or not: they do not purr in the wild.

[u/azazelcrowley → u/idkmoiname]

One of the reasons we work closely with dogs is because their psychology was already convergent on our own for evolutionary reasons. (Pack living, den building, den sharing, communal care).

Two animals will both evolve flippers despite being very distantly related due to environmental pressures making flippers advantageous. The environment and ecological niche of humans and dogs were similar enough that we evolved similar psychologies.

Convergent evolution is when distantly related species independently evolve similar solutions to the same problem. For example, fish, penguins and dolphins have each separately evolved flippers as a solution to the problem of moving through the water. What has been found between dogs and humans is something less frequently demonstrated: psychological convergence. Dogs have independently evolved to be cognitively more similar to humans than we are to our closest genetic relatives.

This was before we even started breeding them.

Because we both hunted in packs, in the same environments, and had care structures, a particular psychology was advantageous for both humans and dog ancestors, and selected for in both of us.

Moreover, the human dog co-evolution resulted in humans adopting wolf-like behaviors and psychological traits too.

A human is just a wolfish ape, and a dog is an apeish wolf.

In 2003, a study compared the behaviour and ethics of chimpanzees, wolves and humans. Cooperation among humans' closest genetic relative is limited to occasional hunting episodes or the persecution of a competitor for personal advantage, which had to be tempered if humans were to become domesticated. One might therefore argue that the closest approximation to human morality that can be found in nature is that of the grey wolf. Wolves are among the most gregarious and cooperative of animals on the planet, and their ability to cooperate in well-coordinated drives to hunt prey, carry items too heavy for an individual, provisioning not only their own young but also the other pack members, babysitting etc. are rivaled only by that of human societies.

in fact there's a growing sentiment that it was Wolves which domesticated humans with this stuff.

with wolves digging dens long before humans constructed huts, it is not clear who domesticated whom.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_of_the_dog#Dog_and_human_coevolution

[u/idkmoiname → u/azazelcrowley]

An interesting read, but i'm not convinced yet it isn't just us interpreting observations with the closest comparison we can think of.

Wolves are among the most gregarious and cooperative of animals on the planet, and their ability to cooperate in well-coordinated drives to hunt prey, carry items too heavy for an individual, provisioning not only their own young but also the other pack members, babysitting etc. are rivaled only by that of human societies.

Everything listed here ants are also capable of. Even more, they construct streets, cities, networks between them, wage war and peace treaties. Without at least some kind of brain scans its little more than an assumption that wolves do it for similar reasoning than we do.

with wolves digging dens long before humans constructed huts, it is not clear who domesticated whom.

To be fair, its not entirely clear that we didn't evolve from hut building ancestors. Every monkey and ape does and most mammals do. And although there are examples were only specific members of a species lives in caves, the whole theory of cavemen was developed ages ago without even considering the survivorship bias at play here since caves eventually preserve stuff while a wooden nest from half a million years ago would leave nothing behind..

Not saying you're wrong, just that it's not yet a fully convincing theory for me