Sunday morning PETA philosophizing

Another fascinating article suggests that humans became the world's top dogs in large part because of their co-evolution with actual dogs:

"Domesticating dogs clearly improves humans’ hunting success and efficiency—whether the game (or the dog) is large or small. The same must have been true in the Paleolithic. If Neandertals did not have domestic dogs and anatomically modern humans did, these hunting companions could have made all the difference in the modern human–Neandertal competition."

I've never been a proponent of animal-rights (I usually figure we should get human rights taken care of first), but if certain species co-evolved with us and are responsible for our survival and good fortune, you can kind of argue that those species are us. That is, if humans wouldn't exist without dogs, that makes our two species almost one meta-species. If that's the case, then dogs might deserve at least a few of our rights.