Salieri in Amadeus

[Alex K]

Golden Retrievers however are known as great pianists.... although they can't seem to handle violins.

I remember that experiment. It was about their absolute hearing. Not surprisingly so, since they hear better than humans. What I find most fascinating about dogs is their capability to form an absolute symbiosis with us. They read us like not other being on earth.

Dawkins writes in "The Ancestors' Tale" that they probably already started evolving towards being compatible with humans for a very long time before we started to domesticate and breed them, simply by following and adapting to human settlements as their survival strategy. Natural selection would, I guess, be driven by the fact that those most attracted to human company will automatically stay in that group. This adaptation is thought to have been mutually beneficial from early on because such groups of "benign wolves" hanging around would have kept predators away.