Traditionally, the experts studying the evolution of modern dogs believed that domestication was a conscious effort of humans. The theory was that ancient people took wolf pups from their dens, adopted them, fed them, trained and tamed them.
Biologist Raymond Coppinger, who has spent over 45 years working with and studying dogs, says that this story is nothing more than a romantic fairy tale. “I call it a ‘just so’ story. Nobody who has ever trained a wolf had any success if they started after 19 days,” says Coppinger, a professor of biology and animal behavior at Hampshire College in Massachusetts.
“We’ve got a graduate student doing it now. You take them out of the den when they are 13 days old and their eyes aren’t open, and you spend 24 hours a day with them, socializing them with people, bottle feeding them. You have to have a time surplus society like mine, where you have graduate students with nothing else to do. Mesolithic people would have been struggling for life. They wouldn’t have had time.” In addition, Coppinger says, even tamed wolves aren’t likely to be docile when it comes to food-or breeding. “I work with tamed wolves all the time. I don’t care how tame they are, try to take their bone away. It’s even worse when it comes to breeding. You start to fool around with wolves when they’re in a courtship performance, you could die right there on the spot.”
Biologist Raymond Coppinger Coppinger has another idea: the wolves domesticated themselves. He suspects that the process would have begun at the end of the last Ice-Age approximately 15,000 years ago when people began to gather and live in one place for the first time. The appearance of these villages was fairly rapid and coincidental with the fossil evidence of dogs as we know them.
“People are organized into continuous settlements — villages where they remain for a long period of time, whether there were sitting on the edge of a shell fishery or on the edge of a coral reef. When humans live in the same spot for a long period of time, they create waste, including both sewage and, more importantly for the dog, leftovers. There are things people can’t eat, seeds that fall on the ground, things that have gone bad,” Coppinger says, “The garbage, which might be found in dumps, or just scattered near houses, attracts scavengers: cockroaches, pigeons, rats, jackals — and wolves.”
Coppinger believes that a behavioral characteristic called “flight distance” was crucial to the transformation from wild wolf to the ancestors of the modern dog. It represents how close an animal will allow humans (or anything else it perceives as dangerous) to get before it runs away. Animals with shorter flight distances will linger, and feed, when humans are close by; this behavioral trait would have been passed on to successive generations, and amplified, creating animals that are increasingly more comfortable around humans. “My argument is that what domesticated — or tame — means is to be able to eat in the presence of human beings. That is the thing that wild wolves can’t do.”
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Flight distance seems not enough, intelligence should be add in the equation. By being intelligent, an animal can detect aggressive from passive stance, irrespective from distance of the trespasser. The dog wolf seems more able to detect our intentions via intelligence or social empathy.
I agree and also appreciate the notion that some subset of low flight distance wolves may have learned to follow (and eventually lead) humans on hunting expeditions. This kind of collusion could have added to the success of each species and become a selective factor in the evolution of both man and the burgeoning domestic canine. This relationship could also explain some of the ready instincts of the modern hunting breeds.
I think that dog temperament plays a large part in this as humans would be very unlikely to allow an animal exhibiting any aggression whatsoever to be in the presence of their children. What likely occured was the most docile animals were adopted as a curiosity and later utilised as a tool in hunting. When litters were born, any pubs exhibiting aggressive tendencies would have been culled and only the most docile allowed to breed, just as top breeders do to this day. So rather than natural selection having its way, humans guided the process which afforded humans with the many forms of domesticated dogs that exist today.
Gracchus,
In the program it states that the size of the brain shrank during the selective process going from wolf to dog. Are you suggesting that a smaller brain correlates to greater intelligence? The effect on brain size of the domestication of other mammals is similar. read http://www.primitivism.com/domestic.htm for more details. I would argue that the same phenomenon applies to most domesticated humans as well.
I think the smarter wolves, wisely, kept their distance from humans.
I was wondeding, if wolves than turned into domesticated dogs, how long would it take for it to be a chawawa or a poodle. That couldn’t be just wolves. We helped in the way so I think wolves didn’t make all dogs, they made some, but humans mostly breeded the dogs to make new species. :-)
An important criterion for domestication in addition to flight distance was the ability of the wolf-to dog precursors to be able to read human expression and body language to know what human intentions were…something wolves and other wild canidae may not have developed even to the current day. This important trait allowed them to know who meant them harm and who might toss them a scrap. Dogs have been working that angle to their advantage ever since.
On a hunt for white tailed deer with my family I noticed a coyote circling our hunt. It stayed outside our circle, but remained close by. I assumed he was waiting for the fresh gut pile that would be left following a kill. As the coyote circled the hunt it yelped and howled as if to keep any deer from trying to get out of the hunt. I thought about this behavior for awhile. Maybe we began our lives together by hunting together.
In follow up to my last comment. Wolves or coyotes that have been banned from the pack, such as perhaps “my coyote,” quickly learn where an easy meal comes from. We actually can survive on almost the same diet as my Native American Ancestors did with the wolves. Wolves and coyotes didn’t follow them because they could pick up leftover squash.
My ancestors learned to live in harmony with the wolf and other wild animals. The stories from Native Americans about the wolf and coyote are not legend (legend denotes some untruth from my point of view). They are our oral history that has been passed down through generations.
They are one of our main family clans in my tribe.
I love the Wolf!!! I have dreams about them.
Wabishkewajiw, I believe you are right. We as humans are animals too. We are all related and have connections that are rarely sought or realized! If only more people could understand and embrace our kin with animals. It is what we lack most in our world, is our connection to our environment and every living creature!
I would also like to comment on the temperament of dogs breeds. My family and i had a dog who became aggressive to my children. We couldnt understand because we treated him well and he was vert protective of them. After biting both my children badly, i had to ethanize him. It was heart breaking, and we mourned him. We did do some research on his breed, and learned that although he was protective of the children, he viewed them as “lower” in the pack order. He bit them over food, so it seemed correct. AND after watching both programs on IPTV we learned that his breed was selected for those tendancies to be aggressive and fiercly protective. Had we known, or done research before he was given to us, we would not have taken him. Or at least would have found an appropriate outlet for his tendancies.
hello my name is billy bob joe and i love wolves they are awesome and pretty many people are also wolf lovers but i am definently one of the biggest i have been to yellow stone national park and o my! we saw 4 different wolf packs! all with beautiful leaders that were as brave as could be! when we were down there we heard about the most famous wolf pack and they had been going from farm to farm house to house and most of the residents had agreed to kill the leader. she was the most BEAUTIFUL wolf i have ever seen and she was on a role with her group. since they made this decision, the pack was almost destrioed until a male came and put every thing back in to place!
thankyou tor reading
billy
bob
joe!
In response to: I was wondeding, if wolves than turned into domesticated dogs, how long would it take for it to be a chawawa or a poodle. That couldn’t be just wolves. We helped in the way so I think wolves didn’t make all dogs, they made some, but humans mostly breeded the dogs to make new species. :-)
All dogs are the same species, they just have different genetic traits. If you watch the show they go into great detail about how the canine genes have an amazing ability to adapt certain traits from one generation to the next. In the Victorian times (can’t remember the years it says in the programs), but people figured this out and began breeding dogs based on their appearance. In the past dogs were selectivly breed for their ability, mainly hunting.
Elizabeth Meyer – “My family and i had a dog who became aggressive to my children. We couldnt understand because we treated him well and he was vert protective of them. After biting both my children badly, i had to ethanize him. It was heart breaking, and we mourned him. We did do some research on his breed, and learned that although he was protective of the children, he viewed them as “lower” in the pack order. He bit them over food, so it seemed correct. AND after watching both programs on IPTV we learned that his breed was selected for those tendancies to be aggressive and fiercly protective.”
It is a common misconception that aggression is due to a particular breed of dog. Yes, dogs have been bred to do certain jobs (Border Collies are for herding livestock, and Bull Mastiff’s were to guard prisons) and so still have their natural “instincts” in them today. But, the truth is, we humans have the power to manipulate dog behaviour and prevent these bad instincts from escalating into something like aggression. Simply by regular training and a better understanding – we can stop dogs from believing they are the pack leader (such as your dog did) and therefore prevent dominant (and dangerous) behaviour. Dogs can be followers just as easily as they can be leaders. The owners of the dog (that is, the whole family) need to take the leader role, and this can be easily achieved with proper training and understanding. I believe with all my heart (and 15 years of experience in the dog industry) that there are no bad breeds, only bad or uneducated owners.
If any of you are interested in how the dog began to develop all the physical and behavioral differences from wolves which we see today based just on the tameness factor, or if you doubt that dogs domesticated themselves then check this out.
http://www.floridalupine.org/publications/PDF/trut-fox-study.pdf.
This experiment shows just how much resource and time is needed to domesticate these animals and shows that it must have begun by dogs moving closer themselves in a time when people had niether the time nor the knowledge to attempt to start the process.