Everybody Needs to Hear ‘Science Guy’ Bill Nye’s Lessons on Dog Evolution

Bill Nye, the “Science Guy,” talks evolution from a canine’s point of view in a video from Big Think.

The former PBS children’s science show host explains in a new video how dogs evolved from early human-wolf interactions, which helped shape the bond between humans and dogs today. But maybe more importantly, Nye draws a comparison between dog breeds and the social construct of human race.

Nye states in the video:

“They’re all dogs, okay. And so the idea of a purebred is just a human construct. There’s no such thing – in a sense there’s no such thing as a purebred dog. … By the way you talk to any veterinarian and they’ll tell you that a mutt is a much healthier dog generally because they have this mix of genes, they’re not inbred, they haven’t made the same gene repeat too many times. And so it’s funny, it’s charming to me but there’s a great lesson to be learned. Dogs are a descendant either from wolves or from one ancestor before wolves. But what you and I think of as a modern wolf may or may not be the direct – what led to a modern dog.”

Nye then pivots to discuss how understanding dogs’ evolutionary history makes an important point about us as human beings.

“The other lesson to be learned from dogs for me is since they’re all dogs it’s just – if you have a dachshund and a Great Dane and they interact… [you] don’t get any new thing, new species, you just get a dog. In the same way if a Papua New Guinean hooks up with a Swedish person all you get is a human. There’s no new thing you’re going to get. You just get a human. Japanese woman jumping the African guy, all you get is a human. They’re all humans. So this is a lesson to be learned. There really is, for humankind there’s really no such thing as race. There’s different tribes, but not different races. We’re all one species.”

Nye has also been in the news recently for his opinions on global warming.

Earlier this month, Nye told Tech Insider that the planet is reaching a pivotal moment in its history and if the winner of the 2016 U.S presidential election rejects climate change, then the world is in big trouble.

“If this presidential election, in the United States, here on Earth, goes to a president who denies climate change, then the world is in for a lot of trouble,” Nye stated in the past interview.

You can check out the full video on dog evolution here.