No offense but you completely misconstrued the term "domestic". Canis Familiaris, the domestic dog, does not exist in the wild and does not hunt seals in the wild. Ergo, the seal is not on the natural predatory list for the domestic dog, which was the point of response to SCJ's original post. Now if you want to talk about behavior, discipline, and "prey" instincts and their reaction of the dog we can, but the context of the point was the dog/seal interaction as potentially seen in the wild (which doesn't exist).
I'll just agree to disagree.
One important tenet of biology is that nothing is static, but rather in a constant state of flux. Domestic dogs showed up in the fossil record roughly 14,000 years ago. No DNA is available to test (regardless of what you saw in Jurassic Park), so researchers may only look to the species around today for answers.
C. familiaris, while a very diverse species from a genetic perspective, about 2% variation by base pair (
Canis genome is ~2.8 billion base pairs over 39 chromosome pairs), is unique in that it is one of the most phenotypically rich populations which can viably interbreed.
C. familiaris has been shown to have originated from both wild dogs and wolves (depending on location) which share the same chromosome count as domestic dogs. Foxes and other wild dogs (i.e.African wild dog, jackals; also in the
Canidae family) have different chromosome counts, and were less likely to have been involved in this process. If I had to guess, I'd say that most dogs differ from their wild ancestors by less than a percent of base pairs; a very, very small difference indeed.
The point I'm making is that
C. familaris and it's non-domesticated relatives are very close genetically, all are naturally hunters/scavengers, and the differences between wild and domesticated are, like I said, more related to human interaction, but not independent of genetic influence. This is not to say that genetics play no role. My bro-in-law has a wolf hybrid, which is the most skittish, flighty dog I've ever been around. Nobody has yet looked for the specific genetic differences between
C. familiaris and wild canids, but based on my observations there are some, likely related to somatic nervous system function if I may venture a hypothesis. The genetic basis for behavior is a very complex, currently emerging topic to say the least. Certainly not something we are going to settle in an online shooting forum.
Again, agree to disagree.
