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From Cave to Condo: The History of the Dog
An Aboriginal creation story tells of how shortly after the world was formed, it split in two. Man was left on one side of the chasm and all the other animals were on the other. Of all the beasts, only Dog was unhappy. Dog paced back and forth restlessly until he finally ran forward and leapt across the gap. He managed to catch the edge with his paws but couldn't quite pull himself up. Man reached down and saved him, saying, "You shall be my companion forever."
Based on archeological evidence, dogs and humans have co-habitated for at least 14,000 years. Dogs were around when humans were living in caves. They helped these early humans hunt for food, and later followed them into farming, serving as guards against other animals that might feed on planted crops. Along the way they became the domesticated pets we know today.
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Photo: Nancy Gibson |
Who is that Doggie in the Window?
Dogs, wolves, foxes, coyotes and jackals are all members of the canine family tree. Which branch the domesticated dog (Canis familiaris) came from has been the subject of much conjecture. One early theory held that there was a "missing link," a now-extinct wild dog that led to the modern domesticated canine. Austrian animal behaviorist Konrad Lorenz favored the theory that dogs had a "double origin," descending from both wolf and jackal. Recent thinking has focused on the idea that dogs descended from the wolf. Analysis of the DNA of 67 breeds of modern dogs, including the wild Dingo of Australia, suggests a lineage that goes back to the Eurasian gray wolf. The divergence took place over 100,000 years ago, around the time that the first wave of Homo sapiens began to emigrate from Africa. John Altman, an evolutionary biologist at the California Institute of Technology, suggests that the domestication of the dog could have played a crucial role in this group's eventual replacement of other hominids such as Neanderthals by giving them an edge in the struggle for survival.
Breeding is Everything
Why (and how) then do we have such a variety of shapes and sizes of dogs? Whatever a particular dog looked like, wild dogs allowed to breed at random among themselves, eventually look quite similar; a medium-sized, shorthaired dog with a tightly curled tail and sharp ears. A 10,000-year-old Mesolithic site in Denmark contains the remains of two types of dogs, one small and one large. Greyhound-type dogs were bred by the Egyptians. (Translated hieroglyphs reveal that they called their dogs names like "Blacky," "Useless" and "She of the Town.") Herding and guard dogs have been bred for thousands of years. Irish Wolf Hounds were imported to Rome around 400 AD to fight in the Coliseum. The diversity of dogs that we know today, however, has almost entirely been developed in the last 300 years. There are about 500 breeds of dogs in the world. The American Kennel Club recognizes about 180 of these. Any dog can breed with any other dog or other member of the canine family and produce fertile offspring. Much research on this subject has been carried out by the Dog Genome Project which has been working to map the complete canine genome.
Man Bites Dog
Dogs have been bred for specific traits such as loyalty, aggression, herding ability, or some combination of these. There are benign and not-so-benign aspects of this type of breeding. Bulldogs were bred for loyalty and protection while Golden Retrievers were bred to not be loyal, as they were used by hunting clubs and had to be able to go out with any member of the club. Aggression is among the most problematic attributes that humans breed into dogs, with fighting dogs trained and bred to attack other animals or people. The Bull Terrier, for instance, was developed around 1860 by James Hinks, an Englishman who was trying to create a better fighting dog for the pit. He bred together Bulldogs, Dalmatians and a now-lost breed known as White Terriers. While some dogs are still bred and trained to work (seeing-eye, drug-sniffing, herding and guard dogs), most dogs these days are family pets and human companions.
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