Thread by @AlexandraErin

Unpopular opinion: Dogs are wolves we dragged into the uncanny valley. They are terrifying and eldritch, mankind's living threat to nature that we will take even apex predators and turn them into drooling, misshapen clowns, and they will love us for it.

Muting everybody who replies to this with co-evolution because
1. Don't you have a well to actually?

and

2. I'm not talking about a dog-forebear/wolf-descendant that grew up following our camps. I'm talking about DOGS. Those things with bad backs, lungs, eyes that fall out, etc

Cats also co-evolved alongside us, "domesticated each other", but you know what we didn't do to cats? Breed away their entire faces. Turn them into walking sausages. Turn them into giants. Turn them into tiny rats.

There are dogs whose muzzles just aren't. There are dogs whose spines aren't. There are dogs whose legs aren't. Whatever shape we needed them to be, we made them, and they live like that. Die like that. Die very, very slowly like that.

We made a dog that can sneeze its eyes out. Just hanging out on an optic nerve, like a bad movie zombie. Like a cheap haunted house effect.

Dogs are a horror story. I've said the uncanny valley thing before but I'm serious, I think this is why I'm *less* scared of dogs that look more wolf-like. The farther they get from that phenotype, the freakier they are to me. Don't @ me, I don't care. They're horrors.

People tell me "Oh, your cat would eat you if you died." Good. I should hope so. That's natural. I don't hope that it happens but I would hope that, given the need and the opportunity, that's what would happen. There's nothing in the world wrong with that.

Basically any short-faced breed can develop protopsis.

Pugs. Bulldogs. Terriers.

One good bump, one bad sneeze.

Pop goes the weasel.

https://twitter.com/whatthehekate/status/1003857706871123969

I had a cat who I believe had some form of gigantism. People thought he must have had some Maine coon or Norwegian forest cat or something and as far as I know, he didn't. But he was immense. "Absolute unit," as they say these days.

Dead at age nine, sudden cardiac failure.

I loved him. He never knew how big he was, did not intrinsically understand that he was the biggest cat in any house. If another cat intimidated him, he'd get high and do all the tricks to look bigger, which just aggravated the situation, which was: he was big and threatening.

But he wasn't a fighter and so he'd always run.

I loved him.

I can't imagine breeding cats to get more like him.

And, yes, I know there are some specialized breeds of cats, and yes, I know, some people try to deliberately breed "twisties" or polydactyls or whatever. But it's not the same scope and scale.

And yes, here's the crux of it: we made most of these dog breeds to do a job, and the whole course of human history would be different if we didn't have these specially engineered organisms living and working alongside us.

https://twitter.com/arthur_affect/status/1003860157942714368

But to me, that's what makes it such a horror story.

We took an animal at the peak of its biosphere, that learned to cooperate with us, that we even learned to communicate with somewhat, and... re-made it. Again and again. To fit whatever niche we needed.

It's... neat?

But it's also freaky and the end results are just so jarring to me.

Freaks me out.

People are like "Tee hee, you have a solitary amoral predator living in your house." and it's like... you have a thing that was bio-engineered to climb into rat warrens and fight them and eventually die doing that sleeping in your bed.

Give me an afternoon with a cat and I'll have its trust. If it didn't grow up around humans, then we'll at least have an understanding. If it likes people, I'll only need an hour. I

can understand a cat. I can come to an understanding with a cat.

But it's the cat doing it.

People tell me, "Get a dog! You'll have something that's always happy to see you!"

And.

That's the kind of thought that keeps me awake at night the way the contemplation of infinity does some people. *Always* happy? It doesn't get to have a bad day? Never has a snit?

I am sick right now and anyone who thinks cats can't tell when something is wrong and never care, don't know cats. But when they care, it's because they care.

Dorian once gave me a very loving headbutt when I had a deeply abscessed tooth. It was not the most pleasant expression of love (this was the giant cat I mentioned), but I took it in the spirit in which it was intended.

A cat is not going to communicate joy every single time it sees you.

But when it does, you know it means it.

And I have probably lost enough followers with my honest thoughts on dogs, so I'm going to wrap this up, except for one final observation: if humans were aliens in a book and our disparate breeds of working dogs being one species were a plot point, it would be deemed far-fetched.

One more thing: because definitions are fuzzy and porous and "species" as a concept is weird and fake, our weird Lovecraftian biotools that are always happy to see us can breed with wolves and coyotes, producing things we never intended but which have no fear of us.

Good night!

LOL; I saw someone saying this thread is "ugly" and "intended to shock and outrage people for responses".

Nope.

It's what I think and if I would have thought to put "Don't @ me" on every single tweet I would have, because don't @ me.

https://twitter.com/alexandraerin/status/1003787669858549761

The only things I post for responses are jokes. I don't care what emotional response I evoke otherwise. They're like water bottles; don't leave them with me, I don't want to be responsible for them.