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Asked by safia123 to Ed, Katie, Sam, Steve, Vera on 20 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by tuenchi1.
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Steven Daly answered on 18 Jun 2011:
As humans had a common ancestor what must have been millions of years ago, then we could no more bark like a dog than we can have its sense of smell, or they can open doors.
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Ed Morrison answered on 18 Jun 2011:
I can bark like a dog – woof, woof!
Interesting fact for you. Dogs evolved from wolves a few thousand years ago. Wild wolves don’t bark, only domestic dogs that live with humans. So the dogs ability to bark is actually to communicate with humans rather than other dogs.
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Vera Weisbecker answered on 18 Jun 2011:
That is an interesting question and hard to answer. In evolution, organisms always keep some traits from our ancestors and some traits are lost. We call this “mosaic evolution”, because the result of evolution is always a mosaic of new and old features. For example, our faces and facial expressions are quite similar to chimpanzees, showing that we are related. But our skeleton and the way we move is totally different.
I suspect that Steven is right, we would have lost our barking ability because it is in the way of us communicating through language.
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Katie Marriott answered on 19 Jun 2011:
Nothing else to say other than that is an really interesting fact Ed!!
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Sam Tazzyman answered on 20 Jun 2011:
That’s cool about barking, Ed. So why do domestic dogs bark at each other? And what noises control social interactions between wolves, if not barking?
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