Dog domestication

Yitzhak Rabin

I'll add more to this discussion later, but first here's a very interesting video about research into dog domestication.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbcwDXhugjw

Anyone else have any ideas how early humans managed to do essentially what an intensive russian experiment over 50 years took to do?

Not just with dogs, but other wild animals such as bovines and equines?

Mickeroo

Thats pretty interesting stuff yekahS! Really fascinating how the morphilogical traits started to manifest seemingly of their own accord.

I don't know much about the history of animal domestication at all, but ( straying into paleotology/anthropology territory slightly) I read recently that they found evidence of domestication stretching back much earlier than previously thought.

The article is here: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-10-evidence-domestication-dogs-paleolithic-period.html

Yitzhak Rabin

Another possibility I read about with dog domestication is that humans didn't so much domesticate the dog, as the dogs self selected it.

In that Russian experiment, they picked 2 traits that they wanted the foxes to have one was tameness, and the others was a lack of fear of humans. So one theory suggests that wolves that didn't fear humans, managed to follow groups of humans around and live off their waste. Over generations the wolves became more and more comfortable around humans, and with humans obviously only tolerating the least aggressive ones for company. So both the traits in the Russian experiment would have been selected naturally. So that could explain how humans managed to domesticate wild dogs.

Something that really perplexes me though is how humans could have figured out how to domesticate something like wild buffalo which are very dangerous and aggressive animals into docile bovines. At least with the dog example there is a method whereby the animal takes part in the domestication themselves, and its a much more natural process. Whereas with buffalos it would require humans to have a very good understanding of how traits are passed from one generation to the next, and how to exploit that. Same goes for stuff like turning wild grasses into wheat ect.

Mickeroo

yekahS wrote: »

Another possibility I read about with dog domestication is that humans didn't so much domesticate the dog, as the dogs self selected it.

In that Russian experiment, they picked 2 traits that they wanted the foxes to have one was tameness, and the others was a lack of fear of humans. So one theory suggests that wolves that didn't fear humans, managed to follow groups of humans around and live off their waste. Over generations the wolves became more and more comfortable around humans, and with humans obviously only tolerating the least aggressive ones for company. So both the traits in the Russian experiment would have been selected naturally. So that could explain how humans managed to domesticate wild dogs.

That would make sense alright. A partnership forming naturally over time.

yekahS wrote: »

Something that really perplexes me though is how humans could have figured out how to domesticate something like wild buffalo which are very dangerous and aggressive animals into docile bovines. At least with the dog example there is a method whereby the animal takes part in the domestication themselves, and its a much more natural process. Whereas with buffalos it would require humans to have a very good understanding of how traits are passed from one generation to the next, and how to exploit that. Same goes for stuff like turning wild grasses into wheat ect.

Yea its a strange one alright. Is it known whether crop growing came before the domestication of farm animals? If it did perhaps the wild bovine et al were attracted by the grazing in the crop fields and the humans realised that if they provided grazing they could lure the animals to them rather than having to hunt, which would have lead to making enclosures with grazing so the animals could not escape then once they had a group trapped the selective breeding would have commenced.

Could be way off but just a thought.

Sid_Justice

It is interesting how a symbiotic relationship developed between wolves and humans.

Generally speaking, wolves hunt in packs and chase animals like deer down over large distances before finally capturing and killing them. Contrast this to how cheetah's might silently stalk prey and then chase them down over a short distance. I think human's practised a method of ambush more similar to the cheetah than the wolf. Although I'm sure there is much variation amongst tribes (I know there is a extant African human tribe that chase their prey to exhaustion rather than ambush them). Obviously with the advent of weapons and traps, human hunting methods are diverse.

So while humans and wolves may eat the same animals, they probably hunt them quite differently so there isn't a huge amount of competition between them. As well as humans being more omnivorous than wolves.

While wolves and other canids are good hunters, they will happily take a scavenged meal if available. Wolves in america will try and nick kills from bears etc. Thus, we can see the benefit of wolves following nomadic humans around as they may get some scraps.

We could also say, without guns and cars, it would be quite difficult for humans to successfully _hunt_ wolves. They could well kill them with primitive weapons in a confrontation, but one would imagine that the wolves would always retreat. If they did, human's would have little success in tracking them (it certainly wouldn't be worth their while).

However, wolf bitches may leave their pack to have their pups. You can imagine a human would take this opportunity to kill the wolf here for food or just to remove a rival. At the same time, you can see the opportunity to steal the pups.

As already mentioned, the key to wolf domestication has been their receptiveness to leadership. Wolves are social animals, and will submit to new alphas. Thus abandoned or orphaned pups could, cautiously, be incorporated into a human tribe.

But again, what was the benefit for humans? Guard dogs? Retrievers? Chasers? Trackers? All sound plausible to me.

With regard to buffalo or bison or what ever the wild cattle relatives were. I would imagine it incorporates the same themes. Stealing calves, ideally more female rather than male. Giving them ample food source and some fencing. Through a few generations of artificial generation weed out the extremely dangerous and keep the docile.

Also worth noting about distribution. The wolf is a very successful apex predator, and at it peak had spread across many continents. There has always been a evolutionary relationship between prey (cattle) and predator (wolf) and thus, cattle had learned innate weariness to wolfs.

Humans on the other hand, exploded across the continents. Colonising masses were no previous ape had visited. The ancient cattle, deer etc.. probably, didn't have such a strong evolutionary driven innate fear of people and not have had a strong urge to bolt to over come.

Putting in any old dog with sheep demonstrates their innate aversion to wolf like creatures.

Mickeroo

Good post Sid. I hadn't thought of animals not being naturally weary of humans, but would humans not have been hunting for centuries or even millenia in the areas they went on to domesticate the animals? Surely this would have bred some sort of innate fear? Maybe not to the extent of wolves I suppose.

Kadongy

That clip is from The Secret Life of the Dog. It's a BBC documentary that deals with this subject. It is very good, and I recommend you watch it if you can. It says that the domestication of dogs played a huge part in the development of civilization.

There's also a chapter (at least) on this subject in the book Almost Like a Whale: The Origin of the Species Updated, which is also very interesting. It says in that that pet dogs are psychologically kept in a state of infancy. In wild canine packs, the behaviour of licking the way pets do is only manifested in pups begging adults for food. Sheep dogs are allowed progress to adolescence psychologically - their behaviour of harrying sheep occurs in adolescent wild canines.

Another interesting assertion in that book is that all species of domestic dog are directly descended from wolves. It discusses breeding traits in and out of dogs also. Apparently a few generations ago bulldogs were typically fierce and used mainly for bull-baiting - the shape of their jaw was bred in to allow them to lock onto a bull's nose. Now selective breeding has resulted in them typically being fairly placid animals.

edit: It appears the whole of the documentary is available on youtube . Definitelty worth a watch!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJQdYG2WHoE

dodderangler

t i think happened was humans and wolves lived in same areas and when humans killed an animal theyd cook it and the wolves would be attracted to it so humans gave them the scraps and over time the wolves became so docile as to come onto camp from time to time even to sit by fireside and humans gained their trust took the wolf cubs and trained them to hunt and so forth there is a fox near my nannies house that has been there years and neighbours feed him scraps every day beside the house so thats proof there that any animal can be tamed to a certain extent

Sid_Justice

dodderangler wrote: »

t i think happened was humans and wolves lived in same areas and when humans killed an animal theyd cook it and the wolves would be attracted to it so humans gave them the scraps and over time the wolves became so docile as to come onto camp from time to time even to sit by fireside and humans gained their trust took the wolf cubs and trained them to hunt and so forth there is a fox near my nannies house that has been there years and neighbours feed him scraps every day beside the house so thats proof there that any animal can be tamed to a certain extent

Why would humans give them scraps? Why?
Have you ever seen videos of wild wolves? They're man eaters. It's a long way from scraps to docility.

Mickeroo

Sid_Justice wrote: »

Why would humans give them scraps? Why?
Have you ever seen videos of wild wolves? They're man eaters. It's a long way from scraps to docility.

I saw a documentary a couple of years ago, a couple of scientists were monitoring the same pack of wolves for about a year, maybe more, by the end of the two years most of the wolves would let them pet them, lick the peoples faces and allow them to rub their tummies. When the study was over the scientists left, 2 years later they returned and the wolves ran up to them like dogs who hadn't seen their owners over the weekend. Remarkable stuff.

They could have gotten lucky with regards docility in that particular pack. Plenty of othe people weren't so lucky when encountering wolves.

Mickeroo

I thought this ight be relevant to this thread. A study has found wolves were first, possibly only domesticated in South East Asia:

A new study confirms that an Asian region south of the Yangtze River in China, was the principal and probably sole area where wolves were domesticated by humans.

Data on genetics, morphology and behaviour show clearly that dogs are descended from wolves, but there’s never been scientific consensus on where in the world the domestication process began. “Our analysis of Y-chromosomal DNA now confirms that wolves were first domesticated in Asia south of Yangtze River — we call it the ASY region — in southern China or Southeast Asia”, says Dr Peter Savolainen, KTH researcher in evolutionary genetics.

The Y data supports previous evidence from mitochondrial DNA. “Taken together, the two studies provide very strong evidence that dogs originated in the ASY region”, Savolainen says.

Archaeological data and a genetic study recently published in Nature suggest that dogs originate from the Middle East. But Savolainen rejects that view. “Because none of these studies included samples from the ASY region, evidence from ASY has been overlooked,” he says.

If anyone wants to read the academic article they published you can find it here: http://www.nature.com/hdy/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/hdy2011114a.html