Natural History

This plate comes from The Animal Kingdom (1897) by Hugh Craig.

Today, we’d laugh at such classification.  We know know dholes are far too distantly related to dogs to have even been considered a possible ancestor.

If one thinks about it, dholes, dingoes, and certain South Asian pariah dogs are similar in appearance. They roughly the size of a mid-sized Western domestic dog, and the dholes, dingoes, and many pariahs from that part of the world are golden red in color.

In light of a similar appearance, one can see how easy it would be classify them all together.

There were even some early theorists on the origins of the domestic dog who thought the dhole had to have been the sole wild ancestor. While living  in Nepal in 1833, the British ethnographer Brian Houghton Hodgson was able to raise a dhole from a tiny pup, where it grew up as friendly and docile as any dog. Based upon his observations of this tame dhole, he deemed the species Canis primaevus– the primeval dog. He also contended that with the exception of the dhole’s lower post-carnassial molars, the dhole skull was quite similar to a dingo or pariah dog, and because the dhole is more socially tolerant than the wolf, even sharing its kills with jackals and pariah dogs, it might be more easy for ancient humans to habituate them to their presence.

I think it is interesting that man has never domesticated the dhole. It seems to have traits that would have made it a better choice for domestication than other wild dog species than have been domesticated. An attempt to domesticate the red fox occurred in Jordan 14,000 years ago, and the Yaghan people of Tierra del Fuego had fully domesticated “otter hounds” that were derived from the culpeo. (Domestic dogs are older than the Natufian, so just ignore that hype about the red fox being domesticated before the dog. It just isn’t so.)

The dhole has never been among the ranks of the domesticated.

And these attempted domestication-attempts were ultimate failures. Only the domesticated wolf ever proved to be successful.

We now have conclusive evidence that all dogs that exist today are derived from wolves. In fact, it many not even be accurate to refer to dogs as their own species– I certainly don’t.  Dogs are nothing more than a form of wolf that has evolved to live with man, and both natural and artificial selection have acted upon it to reach this end.

My only question is why the wolf was successfully domesticated and not other social wild dogs.

Why the wolf and not the dhole?