The Evolution of Our Favorite Pets

by Malcolm Riordan

Being dog enthusiasts, most of us hold the general notion that dogs are a separate species evolved from ancient wolves - man allowed and even strove for wolves to incorporate into their human hunter-gather society. It's pretty intuitive to envision humans taming the orphaned wolf pups or litters which they'd encountered or that had showed up, adults too, in the periphery of human camps. Man soon realized the wolf-like abilities to guard and aid in the hunt. Encouraging survival and selecting the early proto-dogs best fit for those purposes drove 11,000+ years of evolutionary process that led to our dogs of now - a species distinct from their ancient ancestor wolves.

Anthropologist Brian Hare of Duke University has been on the forefront of demonstrating a newer more specific refinement of our popular layman's beliefs about how Team Man-and-Dog actually performed their evolutionary dance.

Significant evidence demonstrates Hare's theory that man had not worked to draw in the wolves - rather that throughout historical time and the times previous, fossil records show that man had routinely and repeatedly hunted wolves - and other large predator species that competed with or threatened man - and had in every old world situation, hunted them to extinction.

That and other strong DNA evidence has led Brian Hare to posit that it was wolves who approached man - likely in the context of, say scavenging around garbage piled on the edges of human settlements. Wolves that were bold enough to do this would be readily killed if they at all menaced humans with aggressive behavior. Meanwhile the bold but friendly wolves would have been tolerated - and from there - over generations, centuries and millennia gone by - eventually converted the tame-able and friendly wolves that would evolve into ever expanding mutual benefits of hanging out closer and closer to, and then with man.

In the big picture, Hare simply states: "Most likely, it was wolves that approached us, not the other way around."

As noted in last month's Best Friends, along with the evolving genetic behaviors of domestication also came certain genetically linked physical characteristics that are seen across the spectrum of all domesticated species: ie. that with domestication of any animal comes changed head shapes, splotchy and variously colored coats, white markings on the face, floppy ears, wagging tails. In as short as several generations, the friendly wolves would have become very distinctive in the changed appearance from their more aggressive relatives. The most significant evolutionary developments that occurred within those early transition prototype dogs was that they evolved the ability to read human gestures.

As dog owners, we take for granted the numerous and subtle ways that our dogs can read our emotional state, intentions or other information gained by their intent observations of us.

Although commonplace to us, the ability of dogs to read human communicative and social gestures is remarkable, special and sophisticated within the animal kingdom. To quote and paraphrase Brian Hare of Duke University: "Even our closest relatives — chimpanzees and bonobos — can't read our gestures as readily as dogs can. Dogs are remarkably similar to human infants in the way they pay attention to us. This priority and ability accounts for the extraordinary communication we have with our dogs. Some dogs are so attuned to their owners that they can read a gesture as subtle as a change in eye direction.

"With this new ability, the proto-dogs were worth knowing. People who had dogs during a hunt would likely have had an advantage over those who didn't. Even today, tribes in Nicaragua depend on dogs to detect prey. Moose hunters in alpine regions bring home 56 percent more prey when they are accompanied by dogs. In the Congo, hunters believe they would starve without their dogs. "Dogs would also have served as a warning system, barking at hostile strangers from neighboring tribes. They could have warned or defended their humans from predators."

So, far from a benign human adopting a wolf puppy, it is more likely that a population of wolves adopted us. As the advantages of dog ownership became clear, we were as strongly affected by our relationship with them as they have been by their relationship with us. It seems quite plausible when Dr. writes in his book "Dogs may even have been the catalyst for our civilization."

* * * * *
Sources:

Dr. Brian Hare is the director of the Duke Canine Cognition Center at Duke University. He has written extensive research articles, contributed to many publications and has co-authored the popular book The Genius of Dogs.

And Duke University / Evolutionary Anthropology