The Domestication of Dogs

Domestication of Dogs

Humans know dogs as a sweet and loving animal that wants to be loved, or also a man’s best friend, but until they were domesticated, they weren’t always like that. Even though many people think that the dogs were domesticated from wolves, not many people truly knows what kind of wolf that the dogs domesticated from. Researchers think that the gray wolf is the primary target of the domestication of dogs. The scientists believe that the dog comes from the gray wolf and the dogs have similar DNA in their body. It took a long time to domesticate the dog, and it didn’t just happen overnight. Dogs are a man’s best friend, have evolved from wolves, and then were domesticated.

We know dogs as loving and caring animals, but many hears ago they weren’t. The dog is a carnivorous, domesticated wolf (Canis lupus familiaris) of the family Canidae, to which the jackal and fox also belong. The dog is descended from the wolf. True wolves appeared in Europe about one million years ago and then are seen in America about 700,000 years later. Many people think that the dogs resemble the Dingo in this age. Dog breeds are thought to be classified when humans discovered the most useful traits of the dog. The Romans are thought to be the first to classify these dogs. Some classifications involve house dogs, shepherd dogs, sporting dogs, and war dogs. Evidence suggests that the dog has lived in most parts of the world over time. There are two main categories that make the dogs what they are, the first is how the dogs are all over the world, and in close association with humans, and the second is the many amounts of variation between subspecies. One of the oldest breeds is the basenji, which originated in central Africa and is use...

... middle of paper ...

...opulation, and then the wolfs started to adapt to the humans niche (Wayne). Constance says that it is called Miacis, the genus that became the ancestor of the animals known today as canids: dogs, jackals, wolves, and foxes. Miacis did not leave direct descendants, but doglike canids evolved from it. She says that it is likely that wild canids were scavengers near tribal camps at the same time that ancient humans discovered someone to hunt with in the animals that lived close by. In ancient Egypt, dogs were thought to possess godlike characteristics (Vanacore). Brian Hare says that dogs self domestication, and it happened because a population of wolves one day spotted an easy meal—the garbage lying around where the humans were. He also said that if we can figure out how to dog was domesticated and evolved, then we can figure out how it happened to us humans (Hare)