Is the dog’s ‘collar bone’ vestigial?

Creation Ministries International ^ | 2-27-2014 | Philip Bell

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Is the dog’s ‘collar bone’ vestigial?

by Philip Bell

Published: 27 February 2014 (GMT+10)

In comparison to human beings, dogs have a rather different shoulder design, and the same applies to many other carnivorous and hoofed animals too, such as and cats and horses. The shoulder bones appear somewhat disconnected from the rest of the skeleton and dogs don’t have the obvious collar bone (clavicle) that we humans have. The tiny canine clavicle has a variety of sizes and shapes in adult dogs1 and some evolutionists have argued that it is rudimentary; implying that it’s now a largely ‘useless leftover’ from an earlier stage in canine evolution. But claims of it being vestigial don’t stack up. Together with other parts of the shoulder anatomy (termed the ‘clavicular complex’), the clavicle plays an important role in canine locomotion.

Evolutionary claims

Arguments for vestiges invariably turn out to be arguments from ignorance or they reveal faith in evolution in the teeth of contrary evidence. Therefore, regarding the canine clavicle we must peel away the rhetoric to find out what is known about its function. To pre-empt the accusation that creationists misunderstand or misrepresent the evolutionary argument about vestiges, we’ll first mention a recent promulgation of this argument by University of Chicago professor Jerry Coyne in his Why Evolution is True: “A trait can be vestigial and functional at the same time. It is not vestigial because it’s functionless, but because it no longer performs the function for which it evolved” (emphasis in original).2

However, this begs the question, for unless it can be empirically established that a trait is vestigial and shown to have once served a different role, the prior ‘function’ is just a statement of faith.

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CMI article images.

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Article excerpted. Full text at link.

[Kartographer]

So how do they know its a ‘leftover’ or evolution? ;-)

[Billthedrill]

I love frisbee dogs. BTT

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But I really don’t like slobbering Rottweilers (top photo).

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haha

[lurk]

Easy to find out. Remove it from 100 dogs and see how they get along.

[Salamander]

How dogs used to look before their collar bones became vestigial;

[JoeFromSidney]

I'm dubious about vestigial organs. The human appendix was once considered a vestigial organ. It turns out the human appendix is a very important part of the body's immune system. We need to be careful about defining away something just because we don't understand what it does.

[Verginius Rufus]

Didn’t Johann Sebastian Bach write some music for well-tempered clavicles?

[Octar]

Didn’t Johann Sebastian Bach write some music for well-tempered clavicles?

No, the music was for the ill-tempered clavintrude.