I was previewing John Bradshaw’s Dog Sense on Google, and I came across this profound passage. Please read it and then spend a few minutes reflecting upon it.
It is so poignantly true. The wolf that hitched its wagon to our star has thrived– thrived beyond what one would expect from any large species in the order Carnivora. Most large carnivores exist in very small numbers and at low densities. Not so with Canis lupus familiaris. It is everywhere.
And generally thriving.
No other large predatory mammal exists in these numbers.
Becoming the dog was truly an evolutionary breakthrough.
***
My only complaint about the quote is that last line about wolves “staying” wolves. That implies that wolves themselves have no experienced selection pressures but only dogs have.
Much is made about the selection pressures that produced the domestic dog, but what about the selection pressures that produced the modern wolf?
Many of our assumptions about wolf behavior come from an assumption that the ancient wolves that were ancestral to dogs and modern wolves were exactly the same as modern wolves in terms of their behavior.
This assumption causes some problems. Modern wolves are actually quite difficult to domesticate, but the ancestors of domestic dogs had to have been very easy to domesticate. Modern wolves must be habituated to people by 19 days of age to imprint upon people. After that age, they are next to impossible to domesticate. This means that it would have been hard for ancient hunting people to domesticate any wolves, because a wolf isn’t weaned at 19 days. It is possible to tame adult wolves that have had no prior experience with people, as Woolpy and Ginsburg were able to demonstrate. However, this tame process would have also been hard for hunter-gatherers to use, for their taming process involved what might be called “taming by Stockholm Syndrome.” These researchers isolated adult wolves, and the only other living beings they saw were people. The wolves became quite tame to people, and they were able to generalize their affections to all humans, even retaining this tame aspect 18-22 months after human contact had been discontinued.
It seems likely that the original wolf population was quite like other wild dogs in non-persecuted populations– opportunistic and quite curious. They were probably very interested in people, and people became interested in them. One can see possible parallels in this sort of relationship with Timothy Treadwell and his “pet” foxes. If Treadwell had focused his attention on his camp foxes instead of brown bears, he might have produced something really interesting, for within his fox family, I think we can see the contours of what the first tame wolves were like. For the foxes, Treadwell was company and a food source. For Treadwell, the foxes were a curiosity, and they sometimes barked warnings about approaching bears or wolves. I found his footage of his camp foxes far more compelling than the “grizzly” stuff, because I think that through his relationship with the foxes, he told us how dog domestication could have happened.
These foxes were curious about people because they had been fed (illegally) by park tourists– and because they were park foxes, they were never persecuted by man.
Persecution could cause selection pressures on wild populations. I seriously doubt that I could go out and tame wild red foxes in West Virginia, where they are heavily hunted by hound and have been extensively trapped for their fur.
The wolves that did not become dogs experienced some similar to these red foxes. The effects of man’s nearly crazed persecution of wolves on the evolution of modern wolves have not been fully considered. But one effect of this relentless trapping, poisoning, and shooting is that the only wolves that have been able to survive have been those most emotionally reactive and “paranoid.”
One of the overlooked aspects of the Belyaev experiments that domesticated silver foxes is that the critical period for socialization in these domesticated foxes increased simply through the selection for tameness. These experiments selected foxes for tameness and approachability, and the researchers bred from those foxes. Over generations of selecting for tameness and approachability, the foxes became very dog-like in both behavior and appearance. Because these experiments are used as analogies of the domestication process, they are almost always mentioned in dog domestication literature– but never the part about the critical period.
It seems to me that wolves have experienced a Belyaev experiment in reverse. Persecution was a selection pressure against tameness and approachability, and the animals that survived the cull were largely those that were most nervous and emotionally reactive. It is so severe that many wolves won’t cross roads. Roads and virtually anything else that appears novel are too much for them. This is one reason why it was found that many captive wolves won’t eat beef. They were raised eating deer and elk, and beef is just too novel and too scary. Perhaps one of the reasons why these wolves are so nervous is that nervousness and paranoia are the result of a selection pressure that chooses wolves with shorter critical periods for socialization. Just as Belyaev selected for tameness and got longer critical periods, man could have selected for only those wolves that were paranoid and emotionally reactive– and this may be in some way correlated or associated with a shorter critical period. Maybe it goes like this: If you have a short critical period for socialization, one has only a limited opportunity to learn which things are safe, so almost everything else in the world is scary. Conversely, if you have a longer critical period, one can learn that more things aren’t scary and one’s brain develops very differently. Both of those courses of development would have profound influence on how one’s brain would develop, and perhaps, it can explain many of the differences between dogs and wolves.
Such animals would have had a very hard time colonizing almost all of Eurasia and North America, so it seems likely that the ancient wolves that existed during the time of dog domestication were not nearly as paranoid. They were likely curious and opportunistic and maybe even a touch more socially tolerant. These animals could be more easily tamed, simply because they were not overwhelmed with fear or fear-based aggression. They also would have been more willing to exploit the new opportunities in becoming a camp wolves. These wolves would have regular access to large prey, which they may have helped their human counterparts bring down, and they would have humans around to help protect and raise their offspring, which means that the pair bond system that virtually all wild dogs seem to use would no longer be as efficient a way of passing on genetic material. The Casanova wolf strategy would be the best way for these camp wolves to breed, and thus more wolves in the population would be breeding. Early domestication would have had the advantages of good food and freedom from a pack structure in which only a few individuals breed.
One part that is always missing in the wolf and dog comparison is the tendency to ignore the simple reality that wolves have continued to evolve after dogs were domesticated. The dog didn’t descend from the wolf running wild today, but both descend from a common ancestor. Both may be the same species, but that same species exists in two distinct populations. One has been selected by both nature and man to be very close to humans. The other has been selected to fear humans at all costs.
The error is assuming that the latter has always been this way.
Doing so creates too much confusion in trying to understand how dogs could have been domesticated from wolves.
It wasn’t confusing. It was likely so easy that a caveman could do it.
The theme of this post is something I have thought for a long time. It seems so self-evident! “The wolf” that was the ancestor of our modern dogs was almost certainly not identical to the wild wolves of today.
(And the “breeds” that were the ancestors of our modern breeds of dogs, were in most cases not identical to the modern versions. Few people seem to be conciously aware of this; for instance, they assume that the Newfoundland dog of 1800 was the hairy giant of today.)
That ancestral wolf certainly proved the old adage, “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” …and become a highly successful canine.
I would like to change the title of this story to ‘Dogs kept as pets and for work are the really successful wolves’. The reason is that there are many dogs that end up in laboratories where they are subject to harshest of conditions and torture in the name of experimentation. The plight of those dogs is well documented. Dogs kept for laboratory experiments don’t get any exposure, are not normally seen by an average person, and die living a painful life in oblivion. Add to this, those dogs that are kept in worst conditions in countries like South Korea where they are considered edible delicacies.
On another note, I personally believe that dogs are descendants of those wolves who were lower in ranks who had to wait for their turn after a successful hunt. They sometimes had semi-hostile encounters with humans who were also on a scavenging mission. In time, these wolves and humans started sharing the meals on friendlier terms and then followed humans to their settlements / caves and formed coalition of sorts and then the friendly bond.
Dogs of today do show traits of submissive wolves of lower ranks, but hardly any of those that are alpha males and females or those closer to them.
Rank isn’t inherited. The so-called alpha wolves are just the breeding pair, and the other wolves are their grown offspring.
I was referring to wolf rankings as explained in this site I quickly found out for you:
http://www.angelfire.com/ca5/magic1/Ranks.html
That’s no longer valid science. The Alpha pair is just the breeding pair and the rest are their grown pups.
The original studies looked at captive adult wolves that were unrelated, which do form these structures to limit conflict. Highly emotionally reactive animals in an alien environment would have to.
But wild wolves don’t have these structures, nor do dogs.
Unfortunately, it’s one of those memes that has worked its way into dog and wolf folklore and is taking a long time to work its way out.
http://www.dogwelfarecampaign.org/why-not-dominance.php
Check out “Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation” by L. David Mech, and Luigi Boitani.
It’s fairly dry, but IIRC, each adult or close to adult wolf in a wild family has a zone around it’s mouth when eating that the other wolves don’t bother with. If the mother is pregnant or nursing she has first right to the food and will simply take it. Puppies always eat first.
So then it means that all those books and websites on dog behaviour and how to raise puppies that talk about not allowing dogs / puppies to assume alpha position (such as not allowing them to lead on a leash) over the owners are based on incorrect theory.
Yes. That Bradshaw book that I linked to in the post talks about the new ways to relate to dogs.
It takes 20-30 years for new data to be accepted by the mainstream. You have to remember, the boat wasn’t rocked until about 1999 or so.
This all is very interesting. Does this mean that pack ranking theory does not apply to African Wild Dogs (Cape Hunting Dogs) too. Surely, that has been proven to exist. There are documentaries after documentaries showing how males and females of lower ranks are ostracized if they are found to be breeding.
I have no idea about the Lycaon species.
It’s possible, but they often have a weird dynamic in which females disperse from natal packs but males do not. Often, there is just a single female per pack.
There may be a lot more aggressive between females in that species, but the males are more socially tolerant.
Not that far off from dogs…
Have you actually read this book? I’m reading it now and it’s absolutely fascinating.
Further on in the book, in a chapter describing how wolves came to be dogs, he draws a very distinct line in the sand between “domestication” and “taming”.
He uses many primitive tribal communities as examples; these tribes have a habit of taking baby animals they find while on the hunt or having stumbled upon them and they raise them–only most of these animals end up being kicked out because while “tame” to humans, they aren’t “domesticated” and they end up causing the usual problems that occur when you keep a wild animal around.
He says that most animals can be “tamed”, but there are very few animals that can be truly “domesticated”, and those are limited to the animals that we’ve already successfully accomplished this with.
He also speculates that perhaps the first wolves to become “proto-dogs” had a genetic mutation in them, which enabled them to socialize with both humans and other “proto-dogs”, versus the majority of wolves who could socialize with one or the other, but would be deficient in their socialization to the one they didn’t choose.
It’s really incredibly fascinating. I just reached that chapter today and I’m going to have to read it again to fully absorb it, as half was read while I was at work.
I’ve skimmed the previews. Some of the genetic stuff I think has been found not to be correct, but it’s more correct than say Raymond Coppinger’s book. For example, the genome-wide studies have found no evidence of any genetic bottleneck in dog domestication in which one can trace the place of domestication. Dogs, as a population, are almost as heterozygous as wolves are. That tells me the dog evolved from genetic drift. It was not the result of breeding easily tamed wolf to easily tamed wolf. It was a whole population of truly domesticated wolves that evolved from the common ancestor of both modern dogs and wolves.
I am getting this book through Amazon soon.
Can you cite the studies that have disproved the genetics he mentions that are wrong?
IIRC, he says there is no definitive origin for the beginning of dog domestication, but rather that it occurred in fits and starts over the course of several thousand years (possibly upwards of 15-20,000) in many different locations throughout the world of isolated populations (Asian, Middle Eastern, African, European).
http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/content/90/1/71.short
It’s just a slight disagreement with him.
I don’t know if dogs are as old as this study suggests, but they may be in the 20,000 to 60,000 year range.
The thing I think he quotes, but I don’t think is accurate is that we have found definite genetic bottlenecks in ancestral dog populations that indicate when domestication happened.
As in breeding tame to tame individuals. That’s not how dogs were domesticated. It’s how most other domesticated animals came into being, and because you have just a few founders, you can see where they were forced to inbreed to fix the traits. You can’t find that in domestic dogs. Most dog breeds were not created by inbreeding either.
I should say the thing about xolos is not necessarily correct, but they have the original mutation that causes the semi-dominant lethal hairlessness in domestic dogs. That study was a mitochondrial DNA study, which means that Chinese crested and the hairless dogs of South America received that hairless gene from only a few xolos. mtDNA can only trace maternal heritage, so maybe cresteds were created by crossing male xolos with fluffy toy dog bitches and then breeding those to other fluffy toy dogs, but still selecting for that hairless trait.
Maybe it’s like the red factor canary, where you have red-hooded siskin crossed in generations ago but only a slight amount of these genes exist in red factors today.
“He also speculates that perhaps the first wolves to become “proto-dogs” had a genetic mutation in them, which enabled them to socialize with both humans and other “proto-dogs”, versus the majority of wolves who could socialize with one or the other, but would be deficient in their socialization to the one they didn’t choose.”
I don’t buy this at all. The genetics show that dogs have had multiple domestication events. You don’t repeatedly domesticate something a genetic mutation is necessary for it. If that were true, a single domestication event would be much more likely.
Let me see if I can’t find the exact passage on that later (I’m about to hit the sack for the night). I don’t have my copy of the book handy, so I’ve probably missed something; what you say makes sense and contradicts what he says elsewhere in the book.
I also find it interesting that in the DNA sequencing he mentions, there were no traces of North American Timber wolves–so the dogs of today really were descended from wolves that no longer exist, thereby dispelling the “alpha wolf” nonsense even further since that behavior belongs to a wolf we can’t possibly know the behavior of.
The UCLA study on dog SNPs found only the Malamute had any North American wolf ancestry. And that may be relatively recently. I also came across a study on North American wolves, which was still operating under the red wolf paradigm, that found a gene in ancient American dogs that is only found in those dogs and North American wolves. But ancient American dogs have almost entirely been replaced by European dogs. The xoloitzcuintli, of all dogs, has a European dog mtDNA sequence. The only New Wold gene it may have is the hairless gene.
The dogs of today are most closely related to the Middle Eastern wolf, which still exists. Ecologically, it’s like a coyote.
Dogs are secondarily related to European gray wolves, and IIRC, Chinese wolves.
Because animals are not static, they respond behaviorally to changes in their surroundings, the behavior of wolves today is likely different than the behavior of wolves then. Scottie just did a good post on it.
The study you are looking for is:
“Genome-wide SNP and haplotype analyses reveal a
rich history underlying dog domestication”
It’s available on the web, if you can’t find it, e-mail me, it’s on the litters page on my blog.
All from that same study by VonHolt:
Middle Eastern wolves are the main source for the genetic diversity in domestic dogs today, but they aren’t the sexy, moose-killing wolves that everyone thinks about.
There is some evidence of other domestications in China and Europe, although these could also be evidence of backcrossing. The only dog that has any relationship–at least in that study– to any North American wolves was the malamute. And that probably happened recently– it’s a fad to breed malamutes to wolves and it is possible that mals with wolf ancestry got into the registry.
I don´t believe in the “domesticed itself” theori
There are several arguments againt it ,the first one would be that habitueted wolfs would be dangerus, espicially to children.The Fraiser island dingos demonstrates that.
Before humans domesticated wolfs .They could have kept
imprinted ones just as the australian aborigenes did with the dingos
http://www.savefraserislanddingoes.x10.mx/Aboriginal_History.html
If a couple of the imprinted ones where isoleted on a island or maybe in a oasis they could have been domesticated relativly fast.And geneticly isolated from wild populations.
When these domesticated wolfs where kept in other areas
they wold brobably breed with wild wolf ocasionaly.SomeSome times a pup from these wild crosses might have inherited enough domesticated trits from its mother to be kept.
When you look at hunter gathering tribes today they tend to use what food can get for them selfs and wast very little…
The Coopingers got the “domesticated itself idea” from
“village dogs”/pariah dogs but thouse dogs have
been domesticated as long as any other dogs .They are not wolfs!
I think you had to have some kind of human agency in domestication.
Raccoons have been scavenging in American cities for generations, yet that alone hasn’t produced a domesticated raccoon or one that can be easily domesticated.
I think the Native Australian relationship with dingoes was quite similar to how ancient hunter-gatherer man related to wolves. Around Aboriginal camps, there would be so many dingoes, which have now been replaced by scores of Western dogs, that virtually every early explorer mentioned it.
The reason why Fraser Island dingoes the way they are is because they don’t live WITH humans. Yes, they are exposed to humans everyday, but that’s not the same as sharing the same sleeping quarters.
Aboriginals use dingoes for hunting over and over again throughout the course of history, very much in the same manner how Japanese treat their Inus and Scandinavians, Finns and Russians treat their dogs as well.
So the dog probably did domesticate themselves, but they bonded to their human tribes. Comparing the Fraser Island scenario, where dingoes interact with tourists, is a really poor analogy.
I don’t know if dogs domesticated themselves or if that’s even a fair way to portray it. It’s more like humans and the wolves joined up– both sides evolving to fit each other.
I don’t buy the garbage-eater theory, or the “take the pups from the den” theory either. I agree, it’s more of a co-evolution factor.
All sorts of “primitive” people keep pets– even hunter-gatherers. I don’t see why there couldn’t have been at least some “captured cub” issues going on with wolves that became dogs.
But that alone won’t create a population of very highly domesticated animals. You have to have something like co-evolution.
Garbage eating is an excellent useful trait and likely a strong factor in increasing domestication and keeping of dogs once people became more settled.
Let me give you a counterfactual:
Black-backed jackals are excellent at scavenging from people. They even live in hunter-gatherer camps and at one time they might have even been semidomesticated in Southern Africa.
However, black-backed jackals have produced 0 domestic animals. They can’t interbreed with dogs, so we know they aren’t even remotely an ancestor of the domestic dog.
Why is it that the black-backed jackal wasn’t domesticated?
It has been around us far longer than wolves have.
If scavenging and garbage patrol were the main way that dogs were domesticated, then black-backed jackals would be the species from which dogs descend.
The answer is that black-backed jackals and humans don’t hunt the same prey. Black-backed jackals are basically the small coyotes of Southern and East Africa. They scavenge a lot and hunt only things from rabbits to small antelope– a few have learned to hunt fur seals but that’s about it. Humans in the region don’t really hunt those animals and never have.
I think you have to consider that humans and wolves occupied about the same niche. In normal competitor dyads, you’d have conflict, but this time it didn’t happened. In fact, people didn’t start hating wolves until they became pastoralists– and even some of them like the Mongols still worship the wolf. When you start to own animals, then you start hating predators. When animals are part of land’s bounty and you are not selling the animals to marker or hunting for trophies, the wolf becomes a creature that you deeply admire.
But seriously though, it’s not hard for a raven to go from trusting humans to guiding hunters to food sources. Comparing feral dogs who lack any intimate association with humans is a fallacy itself. Of course, comparing birds to dogs is a fallacy as well.
The point is: you need a human component to the story. Shit-eaters are not going to decide one day: “these folks are alright.” No, it’s more likely “this guy can help me get what I need if I show him the way.”
I wonder why man never domesticated ravens. There are plenty accounts of hunting people in Siberia and North America following ravens to quarry. The ravens learned that they could get fresh meat if only they drew the human hunters to their prey. The ravens were like aerial bloodhounds, scouting out the prey.
Probably because they are extremely common and they don’t really need us to survive. Why bother raising a few near your camp when you can tame any raven you see? Seriously, ravens are really easy to tame. Never once I felt compelled to keep them close to me since I can just find another bird. He doesn’t really need me because he can return to the life of eating garbage and carcasses.
That’s why I don’t buy the shit-eater theory. Yes, it’s plausible, but if that’s true, then we would had domesticated numerous birds and mammals already.
At least with camp wolves, both the canines and humans can work together to find quarry or take down a beast neither one readily is prepared to do by themselves. Co-evolution, baby.
The wolves that became dogs probably didn’t need us either. They were much more adapted to the northern continents than we were. I just think that over time a culture of camp wolves developed. Modern wolves have “cultures”– like the fishing wolves of the BC, the caribou specialists of the arctic, which become semi-nomadic in winter, and the beaver hunting wolves of Algonquin Park– why couldn’t they have developed a “camp wolf” culture? I just think that groups of wolves learned to exploit hunting with people as the people learned to exploit hunting with wolves.
I see a lot that would endear a raven to a person. They are like the wolves of the sky. I’ve always kind of wanted a pet one.
“At least with camp wolves, both the canines and humans can work together to find quarry or take down a beast neither one readily is prepared to do by themselves. Co-evolution, baby.”
I really fail to how this kind of behavior would coevolve at all. Wolves that brought down game would have been chased off to get the kill, and wolves that gathered at a human kill site would have been kept at bay until the butchering was done.
Shit-eating is actually far more plausible as coevolution; once dogs could be controlled better, or were better integrated into human culture, then something so important as hunting together could occur. Until that point, it would just be competition. Wolves that hunt in packs are quite capable of killing large game animals themselves, just as humans with distance weapons would be able to make their own kills without help. I really don’t see something like dogs holding a large animal at bay so the humans can kill it happening as the first stage of domestication.
Again, don’t assume that ancient wolves acted just like they do today.
There was a pod of orcas in Australia that helped whalers catch whales. They were rewarded by being given the tongue of the whale.
The reason why this is more plausible is that dogs were domesticated before there were large midden piles and before humans were accumulating lots and lots of garbage. It has to have happened within the framework of hunting people and hunting wolves, not scavengers.
Mammalian predators have never co-evolved before, but maybe this was an example.
I think the original wolves would have been willing to try lots of ways to get food, even if it means hunting with people.
Also, I have seen footage of a coyote chasing a deer at person. The deer tend to run towards people anyway, but if the coyote figured out that the human would kill the deer and it could get some meat, it would be more likely to do so.
One must also remember that hunter-gatherer man, which is thought of as a primitive, was actually quite sophisticated at managing game and ecosystems. Any being that could think out how to do this would have been able to domesticate a predator in the same way that later people would try to domesticate cheetahs, falcons, cormorants, and otters. These people often had an excess of meat, and really had a lot of leisure time– which they used to make art, make babies, make tools, and make war. Dog domestication could have been part of their games.
People in similar societies are always trying to tame animals.
Further, it has been shown that Bushmen in southern Africa who use dogs to hunt kill far more prey than those who don’t. I’m certain that similar results would have come from hunting with camp wolves. So maybe this potential domestication had real benefit.
Again, it seems to me that the wolf that was domesticated was far less aggressive and emotionally reactive than the modern version.
We also have evidence of wolf-like animals that have had their skulls crushed at mammoth sites– by the mammoths, not by weapons. It seems the wolves were used in hunting mammoths, too.
Dogs were not domesticated by farmers. They were domesticated by hunter-gatherers.
That’s why the shit-eater theory doesn’t fit.
“Again, don’t assume that ancient wolves acted just like they do today.”
So, ancient wolves would have simply waited by their kill for the humans to take it? Day one of Camp Wolf Camp, at the Hunting Seminar, the wolves learn to stand by while humans take a kill?
Unless the camp wolves had reached a state where they were taking behavioral cues from humans, I don’t think so.
Far more likely that camp wolves followed hunters to eat the portion of the kill that didn’t get taken back to camp. Which is NOT coevolving to hunt together, and IS garbage eating. Such behavior could easily then *evolve* into hunting *together*, but it wouldn’t have started that way.
With dogs, possession is nine-tenths of the law. Unless I train my dog to give things up, if it kills a mouse, it will keep it and eat it. Even Salukis must be trained to give up the kill. Are you actually positing that early wolves didn’t feel the same way about their own food?
Yes. Actually.
But it’s actually more like this. The wolves allowed people to kill so many much more prey that they didn’t fight over it. The closest I can get to for an historical parallel is the Great Plains wolves that became dopey and docile from eating all the bison that Indians killed.
I don’t think they could kill reindeer effectively without the assistance of wolves. The only people I know of who have killed reindeer without dogs are the Beothuck of Newfoundland, who used big deer fences to channel the deer into a killing field.
The wolves and people would have killed scores of deer or horses or helped bring down mammoth or two.
I don’t know why they would fight over it. They would eat until they got dopey.
Aligning with people would allow these wolves access to more carcasses than they would otherwise find.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/hj86151kq3m713u6/
If it can happen with these two animals on the hunt, why couldn’t it happen between humans and wolves?
“But it’s actually more like this. The wolves allowed people to kill so many much more prey that they didn’t fight over it. The closest I can get to for an historical parallel is the Great Plains wolves that became dopey and docile from eating all the bison that Indians killed.”
And this is coevolving how? How is this coevolving by hunting together?
What it is, is wolves taking advantage of excess killing by humans. “Hey, those humans are going hunting again, they always kill more than they need, we can just hang around and get the extras!” That is not hunting together by a long shot, not like, say, Ridgebacks bringing a large animal to bay, or Salukis chasing down a gazelle or hare. Explain to me, if you will, exactly how wolves eating the leavings of human hunting is coevolving and hunting together. How does this acclimate wolves in such a way that they learn to take direction from humans? How does this select for animals that can co-exist as partners to humans in their family groups?
“I don’t think they could kill reindeer effectively without the assistance of wolves.”
homo heidelbergensis was killing some big freaking animals with spears in Germany 400,000 years, without the assistance of wolves. For that matter, hominids were hunting large animals in Africa without help of wolves, either. Explain to me why homo sapiens would have difficulties with this same endeavor, without the help of wolves.
Because modern humans weren’t Heidelbergensis, and those other species died out.
Modern humans just figured out that it was much easier to do this with wolves. All of the Heidelbergensis and Neanderthals existed at very low densities. I would hardly call them successful species– unlike ours.
For modern humans to have stormed the northern hemisphere, they had to master these other prey species.
Hooking up with wolves on their hunts helped out a lot.
These two animals could have become competitors, but they didn’t.
And I think we have to look at the hunting mutualism literature on this. This may be the only example of large predators engaging in hunting mutualism.
Basically, the wolves learned how to drive prey into areas where people could kill a bunch of them. Whole populations of wolves figured out that people were smarter than they were, and over time they only hunted together. Human agency led to the mutualism getting to the level that it is, because they figured out that prey species were more willing to run from wolves into ambushes and killing pits than from humans. And the wolves obliged because they were able to have much more access to prey.
As for Africa, well, humans in Africa were not as carnivorous as they were in Eurasia. And those humans that hunted in the Bushmen way always existed at low densities. Bushmen didn’t have dogs until late last century– though they always had black-backed jackals running around. And when they got dogs their ability to kill lots of prey and have more children increased.
It was an issue of relative advantage, which happened only in the northern continents.
The only part of the analogy with the Great Plains wolves and Indians is that they suggest what wolf behavior towards people and other wolves may have been like if they had a ton of food lying around.
I doubt there was much fighting over 20 dead reindeer or four dead mammoths.
“That’s why I don’t buy the shit-eater theory. Yes, it’s plausible, but if that’s true, then we would had domesticated numerous birds and mammals already.”
This assumes a great deal. Camp wolves obviously had a behavioral quality that allowed them to be easily domesticated, so easily that it happened not once, but several times. Do these other animals have that quality? Or were they merely exploiting local resources? How do we know?
These people were likely taming all sorts of wild animals. It’s just this animal was so much more useful, and that this animal gained so much advantage by hooking up with people, that it was like a feedback loop.
Schleidt and Shalter contend that man learned how to hunt Holarctic ungulates from wolves.
The real interesting part is about reindeer. Reindeer/caribou are very hard to kill. They can run 50 mph, but wolves are able to herd them so they can be killed. The wolves themselves had done this for thousands of years before our kind showed up. Reindeer were a major prey source for humans living in the mammoth steppe, and it’s very unlikely that they would have been able to hunt them without wolves. Wolves also were always celebrated by reindeer/caribou peoples in the arctic, because the wolves essentially culled out all the skinny and unhealthy deer, leaving the fatty ones for man to eat. Fat is very important if you are mostly a carnivore, as all of these people likely were.
Good grief, Scottie, learning from the wild animals in your neighborhood is not the same as coevolution.
I don’t think taming these ancient wolves to hunt was any more difficult than taming falcons to hunt smaller prey.
There were many domestications. The most important was in the Middle East. The dogs that derive from those wolves were ultimately more successful or more fertile for some reason.
Dog domestication included a long camp wolf phase, which included capturing cubs and taming them and allowing wild wolves to learn the advantages of hooking up with us– and allowing these wolves to exploit people as we exploited them.
There just isn’t enough garbage for a mangy little pariah dog to be the ancestor of all dogs.
If these people has such an excess of food, there would be plenty of garbage to feed to camp wolves.
I think your predilection for Golden Retrievers is coloring your perception of primitive dogs. You need to spend some time with Azawakh.
This is also of interest because it likely fits within this framework:
http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm
Our species wouldn’t have made it much further than the gorillas and chimps have if we had not been so innovative. Even so-called primitive people weren’t just living on the edge all the time.
Such people could have spent lots of time working on tools and taming animals.
Considering how productive the Mammoth Steppe ecosystem was, these effects could have been even more extreme.
We don’t live in a world like that anymore. Some have come near it– the Mongols, the various Native Americans who adopted this lifestyle after th introduction of the horse, the Inuit and the “Eskimos,” and even the Masterless Men of Newfoundland, who lived almost entirely on what they shot or fished.
But those Fraser Island dingoes once did.
Dingoes started out as Indonesian domestic dogs– as in they had featured we’d associate with domestic dogs– then they lost these as they evolved away from living in agricultural societies.
Dingoes are essentially dogs that have re-evolved into wolves.
How humans domesticated the wolves is probably similar to how people tame ravens.
Ravens associate humans with surplus of food. In campsites, they are known to raid backpacks and ravage tents. However in an urban setting, with the right context, they can be coaxed into being expected to be fed everyday on the balcony of one’s apartment complex. Eventually you can get the raven to trust you to pet it. However this require constant exposure to the same person to develop a bonding. I’ve done this before.
I would not compare these self-tamed ravens to the ravens who attack people or destroy their kayaks.
“The reason why Fraser Island dingoes the way they are is because they don’t live WITH humans. Yes, they are exposed to humans everyday, but that’s not the same as sharing the same sleeping quarters.”
They are the way they are because they have been habituated to humans rather than imprinted just as the
“self domesticating wolfs”
They don´t have any social connection .
“Aboriginals use dingoes for hunting over and over again throughout the course of history, very much in the same manner how Japanese treat their Inus and Scandinavians, Finns and Russians treat their dogs as well”
No the aboriginal relationship is very different.They
did not breed them .They collected wild pups and did not
hunt with them.The dingo usually returned to the wild when
reaching sexual maturity.
When the “new improved version” of the dog arrived it replaced the dingo.
Yes. That’s what the historical record has shown. Aboriginals are known to have lots of dogs. It’s one of the things that often causes conflict between native Australians and other Australians because the dogs are largely free-roaming.
Before Western dogs came into the country, those big packs of dogs were dingoes.
There was a great Norwegian ethnographer and naturalist named Carl Lumholtz who documented aboriginals in North Queensland keeping pet dingoes early 1880’s. They used them for hunting, but they would often run off during the mating season and then would be impossible to bring back into the fold.
To domesticate some thing you need genetic isolation in some way.
It just seams hard to domesticate wolfs if you live in area
with wild wolfs.There would probably be continuall genetic exchange between “camp wolfs”and wild ones.
I don’t agree with either shit-eater nor the hunters’ camp wolves theories. According to a book that I can’t remember but will eventually, dogs were domesticated from Omega wolves (sorry I still believe that long ago, wolves existed in much larger packs, and wolves at the bottom did exist), who first deserted their packs where they were constantly being picked at and then followed humans after the latter had made a successful kill to live off at the fringes of the human settlements (caves, camps, etc.) over discarded meat parts (certainly not shit). Over a time, these wolves formed a coalition with humans and then got domesticated. I think these original wolves were neither shit-eaters nor camp wolves. They simply saw in humans better pack-animals than their own kind. Otoh, humans saw in them hunting partners and even guards as these wolves must have started warn-howls if a marauder was round the corner.
On another note, in countries like India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, people still make pets out of feral / pie dogs, who, if kept off the leash, have a habit of wandering away, especially when feral females are in heat. Sometime they do come back to the owners after that cycle has passed. However, most of the time, they are just gone.
That’s fine, but that’s laced with the assumption the alpha theory is indeed true.
I was giving reference of a book. Personally, I am of the opinion that alpha theory by dominance did not exist. I believe that alpha theory existed because mom and pop wolves bred, older siblings were higher in hierarchy than younger siblings, not by dominance, but by submission via a respectful rollover. It is these submissive types who started with the humans on a friendlier note, but they were not garbage eaters.
An analogy can be found in todays stray dogs of Bangladeshi villages near Sunderbans National Park who exist at the fringe of human settlements, but have been trained to act in unison in case of Tigers intruding into the human dwellings by mistake.
http://www.zsl.org/conservation/news/dogs-step-in-to-help-protect-villagers-from-man-eating-tigers,555,NS.html
You can hold onto the alpha wolf nonsense if you want. I’m not.
No I am not pro or anti- alpha theory. I read a book and I like the argument out forward in it.
Let us not get upset on different theories being discussed here.
In India, wolves still kill children and eat them in remote places.
Doesn’t apply to wolves living in the mammoth steppe.
Those Indian wolves live in an ecologically depauperate land– very little prey. And the people aren’t armed or well schooled in dealing with wild animals at all.
The mammoth steppe was far more productive as an ecosystem. Wolves had no reason to hunt people.
Or if they did, it wasn’t significant enough a threat to cause problems.
Try this for an analogy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ha6dYkJFVZg
Wolves are the otters. Fish are the reindeer.
They’re on a harness. So are cormorants.
I prefer the raven and orca analogies instead.
An otter is hardly harmless. They can kill a good sized dog!
Cormorants also wear a band on their throats to keep them from swallowing the fish, because, unlike dogs, they cannot be taught not to eat the fish.
You can teach a wolf to leave something alone. Defenders of wildlife does it all the time. Wolves are perfectly trainable, but they aren’t like normal dogs.
And you must lively closely enough with the wolf to establish a teaching/learning relationship with it. I think you are deliberately missing my points on this.
So the otters are essentially under the control of the people. Unlike the wild wolves in your hunting mutualism.
But a wolf is a much smarter animal than an otter.
You still cannot compare animals acting as their own agents to one that is on a leash.
“Basically, the wolves learned how to drive prey into areas where people could kill a bunch of them. Whole populations of wolves figured out that people were smarter than they were, and over time they only hunted together. Human agency led to the mutualism getting to the level that it is, because they figured out that prey species were more willing to run from wolves into ambushes and killing pits than from humans. And the wolves obliged because they were able to have much more access to prey.”
That is conditioning. Wild animals can be conditioned. Bears in zoos can be conditioned through clicker training to allow a vein stick for collecting blood. The local coyotes are conditioned to hang about on chicken days so they can get the excess fat.
It doesn’t necessarily lead to domestication. And it is not the same as the relationship that makes dogs look to humans for direction, to want to stay with them. My dogs will stay in the house with me when it’s over a hundred F inside, rather than go outside where it’s cooler, because they want to be with me. How does driving game and eating excess food turn into enduring uncomfortable conditions to be with a human being?
Explain to me how this mutualism, which is still *not* the same as humans and wolves working side by side and wolves *taking direction* from the humans, aka hunting *together*, leads to animals that can be trusted not to eat the skin tents or the babies, and will get away from the meat that is roasting on the fire when told to. How does your scenario result in changes in the wolf that result in domestication?
If there is so very much food lying around, what is the motivation for wolves to develop a closer relationship with humans and go home with them? If humans use wolves in this way to their advantage, what is their motivation for turning the hunting/helper wolf into a camp wolf? Why and how does the relationship change to turn the wolf into the dog? The wolf must be *in* the camp to be a camp wolf. Otherwise, you simply have wild animals that take advantage of a very specific situation, then go on their merry way. Why would this translate into a full time relationship?
You say hunter/gatherers would have plenty of time to spend domesticating these wolves, but you are not explaining how we get from wolves following hunters to get excess kills, to wolves being in the camp to *be* domesticated and learning to refrain from treating toddlers like toys or to act cute to get a food scrap. You’re missing the essential step.
Two ways:
1. Actually leaving meat there for them to eat.
2. Taking in cubs and raising them.
2 is always discounted, but it has to be in there.
2 will create the bonds needed for that level of domestication.
But 2 would be facilitated by number 1.
I think these people were consciously trying to get wolves to live near them.
And the wolves themselves were figuring out that people would kill far more animals than they needed– just because they could. So they would figure out ways to chase prey into human ambushes and killing pits.
The only thing that is unusual about wolves and people is they share niches but didn’t kill each other off.
The reason why the other human species didn’t domesticate wolves is they probably didn’t have imagination enough to do so. That’s the part about our species that is different from those others.
People consciously raised wolves as pets. Maybe some ran back to the wild but others stayed, or maybe a lone bitch would have pups near people in hopes that she could have them without a breeding female killing them. (I think that may be what Suhail is aiming at).
Maybe a dispersing wolf would start following people and then become habituated to people– like the wolf in Dances with Wolves.
There were just so many ways, but it had to have involved many, many wolves and the whole of the Eurasian continent. The Middle East, for whatever reason, is the most important center for wolf domestication. Or the wolves from there were the most important in forming dogs.
There were many ways for this to happen, but it happened when humans were hunting.
Very good. But neither one or two prove your assertion of coevolution by hunting *together.* They could just as easily happened without any hunting *interaction* at all, wolves just hanging out to get the leftovers, following people back to camps, waiting for people to leave camps to go hunting and following to get leftovers, or pups being brought into camp as pets without the hunting angle.
Hoofbeats and zebras.
The reason why we say they were hunting together is there is evidence of wolves being injured while hunting prey they normally wouldn’t hunt (mammoths) in areas where mammoths were killed by humans.
Why would a wolf attack a mammoth?
It has to have know that that this was the place where the people killed them off.
I still think you have to have hunting mixed in there.
Because there are plenty of other offal eaters that can do the job better than wolves.
And you aren’t going to left offal and crap eaters live in the caves with you.
And the evidence of ancient wolves living in human occupied caves is so overwhelming that it cannot be a mere coincidence. And it’s not just with this species of human either.
You cannot answer why wolves and not black-backed jackals without a hunting component.
Scavenging may have been the initial attractant to wolves coming to visit people.
But the bulk of the evidence, which shall be revealed in due time (see your e-mail) clearly shows that humans hunted with wolves.
Here’s some good evidence that ancient hunting man hunted with wolves (scroll to ” The first dogs”):
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=I8HU_3ycrrEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA7&dq=wolves+as+hunting+dog&ots=Bb7yTFk7s1&sig=157P9Kt_Yr06ZoxkAwn4PgrRJSU#v=onepage&q&f=false