Domestication - from Wolf to Dog

Dogs are thought to be one of the first animals to be domesticated by humans, and are today use in a wide variety of areas, including working dogs, hunting, herding, guarding, as companionship, and most recently as service dogs. On the basis of this, it can by the first glance seem as though humans were the first to pursue contact with the wolves, but can we really be too certain about this?

 The domestication on wolves and the development of today’s domesticated dogs did clearly not happen over night, and findings from Goyet Cave in Belgium, Chauvet cave in France and Predmosti in the Czech Republic suggest that the process of domestication started long before first imagined, as long as 35 000 years ago. However, the first indication of a working relationship between man and wolf can be found at the Bonn-Oberkassel site, approximately 14 000 years old. ⁽¹⁾

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There are two main hypothesis of how wolf and human came in contact with each other; this was during the time when humans were still nomads, following the migrating patterns of the animals they hunted. The wolves would have been one of the humans’ competition in the hunting game, and it is therefore thought that humans were to first to take contact, finding abandoned wolf cubs, or simply stealing them when possible, to tame them and use them for hunting purposes. This would most likely have happened over a long amount of time, and in geographically different areas, taming several various species of wolves. The wolves showing desirable traits, such as good hunting skills and submissive states of mind were then thought to be chosen for the process of selective breeding, making sure that these characteristics were passed on to the next generation.⁽²⁾

The other hypothesis believes that the wolves were the ones to seek contact with the humans, as their paths were more than likely to cross at several occasions, meaning that some wolves might have became less shy, seeking out food from the humans garbage areas, or even over time from the humans directly. The less shy a wolf became, the more of an advantage it would gain by being able to feed for longer. A natural selection of the more contact seeking wolves could have occurred, making them more and more used to humans, eventually living and working together as the humans control increased. ⁽²⁾

Domestication lead to morphological and behavioural changes, such as changes found in the skeleton. Skeletons were showing a form of juvenile regression; meaning that it returned to a less developed or juvenile state, know as pedomorphism.⁽¹⁾⁽³⁾ The same could be said for the behaviour, meaning that after generations the wolves would decrease in size, as well as exhibiting a more juvenile and playful temperament, eventually leading to the domesticated dog. ⁽¹⁾

References

(1) http://www.kursagenten.no/artikkel/354/Domestisering-1868.aspx

(2) Dominique Grandjean & Franck Haymann, Dog Encyclopaedia by Royal Canin, p. 6 – 8. Published by the Royal Canin Group, 2010.

(3) http://9e.devbio.com/article.php?id=223