Canis lupus hominis

All domestic dogs and dingoes are modified from some form of East Asian wolf.

One of the best ways to start a fight among dog people is mention their exact taxonomy. I usually use this as their scientific name: Canis lupus familiaris. That’s the same scientific name as as the wolf, but I use it only under a disclaimer. Domestic dogs may be the same species as the wolf, but they have some very  adaptations that make them very different from any other subspecies. They have their own unique adaptations, just as the Arctic wolf has certain adaptations to its environment and hunting habits and the Arabian wolf has its own adaptations for its peculiar environment. (The Arabian wolf has a fusion of its central toes on its front feet. The Arctic wolf matures into a white animal. And its thick coat gets heavily matted.)

Here are some characteristics that domestic dogs have that known wolf populations lack: smaller brains, shorter muzzles, smaller teeth, floppy ears, unusual tail length and shapes, shorter legs (in most breeds of dog),  inactive precaudal gland, constant fertility in males (male wolves aren’t fertile all year), the habit of carrying puppies in their mouths that are older than just a few weeks old, heavy male investment in the puppies, dogs have can learn rules from from people very easily, and dogs have innate abilities in “people reading.” Those are just a few of the differences, but some dogs have a few wolf-like characteristics in their behavior, and some wolves, like Murie’s “Wags,” behaved more like a dog. Dogs and wolves have lots of variation on the same sort of theme– a highly social carnivore with high intelligence that is of the dog family.

I happen to like that dogs aren’t exactly like wild wolves, especially the really low serotonin wild wolves that centuries of persecution have produced. I don’t think that our ancestors would have ever tolerated the current wolf anywhere near its camps.  Not only that, an habituated wolves have attacked people, and the only well-documented fatality from a wolf attack happened at a landfill (haha! a dump) in northern Canada. Wolves are not suitable as pets. I don’t think that prehistoric people would be able to domesticate this animal, not the least of which is that modern wolves absolutely fear people.  It’s because of this fear that we really don’t know much about their real social lives, and we were forced to make inferences from captive animals. That’s actually a big mistake, because wolves really aren’t comfortable living with us, even if they are habituated and socialized to people.

I like that dogs do have some modified wolf predatory behavior, like retrieving, and I like that the intense social bonds that wolves share with each other have been transferred onto the dog’s relationship with its people.

So while I do consider wolves, dogs, and dingoes all the same species, I do so only with the understanding that there are important differences.

I’ll add one more difference (and this may lose my pro-wolf readership– hey I’m pro-wolf!).  Domestic dogs are not normally so territorial that they kill members of their own species who are not members of their group. It happens sometimes with packs of free roaming dogs, but it’s not that common. Certainly not as common as it is with wolves.  Actually, several studies in Yellowstone and the Denali wolves found that the numer one cauase of death among all wolves was from each other, usually killed over territorial disputes. Now, if that were the case with most dogs, dog parks would be places of great chaos, great bloodshed, and lots of dead dogs lying about.