Big difference in wild animals and domestic animals.
Domestic animals and selective breeding can vastly out compete environmental factors. You can change domestic animals very quickly. You can change the gene expression of eye color, coat/hair color, hair length, size in one generation. You could selectively breed great danes bigger and bigger in south Tx.
It would take thousands of years to change a wolf from long hair to short hair. or long tail to bob tail just breeding to wolf.....unless you hybridize with dog. Then it would not be a wolf anymore. The coyote basically hybridized the red wolf out of existence.
We have mapped the genome of the domestic dog. With CRISPR genome editing you would be able to express ANY trait you wanted. This will be the future in gentics.
So where in the evolutionary chain of events do you reckon the dog and the wolf became separated, ENVIRONMENT would make the physical change happen much faster based on the environmental pressures present in the organisms life at the time, a naturally long haired animal brought from an environment suited for its phenotype to an environment that it's phenotype isn't suited for, within the next few following generations the coat length will gradual,y become less thick and long, this has been proven in the show cattle industry time and again, for that very reason big time showers in warmer climates have commercial coolers installed to keep their animals in during the summer months to promote hair growth, cold temperatures stimulate hair growth, and given the amount of time it would take several generations to be born and live out their life span, it would be sufficient amount of time for the environmental pressures to start influencing cell and gene expression, there's more than one documented instance in which a family of dogs having their tails docked at birth, for generations and then in one generation shorter tails begin showing up in litters and if selected and bred for correctly bob tails become a genetic expression, dogs aren't naturally bob tailed so somewhere along their evolutionary time line environmental factors, be it man made or freak accidents, became so frequent of occurrence that a mutation took place, yessir anybody with any little hint of knowledge of genetics could breed Great Danes or any other animal, to what ever size and color of their choosing, it's done everyday, that's a result of artificial selection and genetic manipulation, now you take those same xxl Great Danes those breeders in south Texas are known for and turn them loose in the wild to fend for themselves and let the natural order of things do the mating selecting and I'll put my lucky marbles against your buffalo nickels that within 3-5 generations at the minimum there will start to become a phenotypical change in size within the population of the xxl Great Danes of south Texas, from one generation to the next until they level off in size to match and maximize what the environment has to offer them, let's all look at the bigger picture here, all those same things that you mentioned can be changed through selective mating is absolutely spot on, we most certainly can do that and we do, but have you ever given any thought as to how those various differences in coat color/length, eye color, size etc. all came about (in canines only), remember all canines descended from one original ancestor, the wolf, one base genome from which all dogs originated, I'm going out on limb here and say ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES, which covers a wide umbrella of different factoring contributions, it's always been I front of us all along, the scientific community couldn't explain it so they just looped it into the category of evolution, which in actuality is changing to adhere to the ENVIRONMENTAL circumstances....
How does any of this EPIgenetics stuff effect the outcome of our litters, if it does at all, again I don't think it's a difference maker in taking thing to another level in one litter to the next, but just as in nature , only the smart then the strong survive, why are the survivors the smartest or the strongest, because they had that little edge over their competition, enough of an edge to survive to perpetuate that gained edge on to the next generation until that edge it had outlasted it's competition to become a set standard within the species population. By knowing your hounds and kinda knowing what to expect in your chosen makings all the little things that have been mentioned in all of these EPIgenetics conversations, that can and are done along the way of a pups development will eventually add up to become slight edge in advantage over its competition, however slight or vastly impactful it maybe, either way it's an advantage and in a game of life, where the end reward can only go two ways life or death, that minuscule edge of advantage suddenly becomes game changing, this is all speculative theory and pipe dreams to most who will never raise the number of litters to ever see this first hand in life and that's all cool because the sun still rises and sets everyday just the same way it does for those that can open their minds and be able to understand and comprehend the complexities and in the same thought the simplicity of the science in front of us...
