Evolution of Wolf to Canine
There are several contributing factors as to why we have such problems and one of the key issues is that we often fail to understand exactly what a dog is. We know it’s that wonderful, loyal, faithful companion that we all know and love and, despite the fact it will insist on eating anything foul or rancid it can find, we will always forgive it because we love it so much. But the very reason it insists on eating and enjoying such repulsive ‘treats’ is why we should all try just that bit harder to understand his background and push our own more human thoughts into our background until we can see him for what he really is. Yes he is a sweet wonderful, loyal, faithful companion but he is first and foremost – a dog!
Dogs – all dogs – are derived from wolf and although we have been brought up on the Red Riding Hood story and the horror of werewolves, wolves are actually kind and gentle creatures, just like our dogs, but they are also hunters, they know how to survive in the wild and they kill other animals for their food – just like our dogs would if we didn’t feed them. Mankind has changed through evolution, we are no longer nomadic tribes, we don’t go out hunting for food and we are more domesticated but we still have a strong survival instinct and we still revert back many times to our basic instincts. Yes we are now educated, domesticated and less feudal but ancient man is still there inside each one of us just as wolf is still there in each and every dog.
Through evolution dogs have been revered and even thought to have mystical powers. One of the tribes in Papau New Guinea has a hunting dog (it almost resembles a kelpie in appearance) that doesn’t bark but howls like a wolf and they believe it warns them if evil spirits are around. They revere their hunting dogs for without them they could not survive and after each hunt the dogs are thoroughly examined to make sure they have no injuries. Through the ages dogs have changed human life around the world being used for guarding, hunting, herding, tracking, scenting, vermin catching, in fact there isn’t much that dogs haven’t been able to help man with yet it seems that our modern world often sees dogs in an entirely different light. We still have dogs that are bred for work but many dogs never have to earn a living, they are given ‘pet’ status living with families and having fun until some of them remember their basic instincts and become ‘troublesome pets’. The instincts that tell a dog how to survive in the wild is there inside each dog and whether he is employed or is a family pet those instincts need harnessing to work for us rather than against us.
Evolution from wolf to dog
To understand our dogs a little better we need to travel back in time to find out how they first came into our lives. History tells us that dogs entered our lives quite suddenly thus ruling out the theory of orphaned wolf cubs being reared. It would have taken far more than one life-time for dogs to have developed from cubs in this way and the gene pool of the orphans would have been very mixed. Factual evidence suggests a far more realistic explanation – fight and flight distance. Wherever there are humans there is waste and our ancient ancestors didn’t have the luxury of bin-men and tips, the left-over food and other waste would have provided an ideal scavenging ground for wolves, in fact it would have been ‘easy pickings’. But if we look at modern dogs we know that some of them will be more wary of people than others, because they have a greater fight and flight distance. The wolves with the greater fight and flight would have kept their distance from man whereas the ones with the lesser fight and flight would not have felt as intimidated and would have approached close enough to enjoy any social scavenging. Now we get to not only how we came to have dogs but also to have a better understanding of them. The wolves with the lesser fight and flight would form a pack and they would breed, breeding ‘like to like’ would result in off-spring with even less fight and flight until eventually integration took place with wolf becoming tamer and man seeing the benefit in a resident hoover with the potential to guard and hunt. As the dog developed from the wolf it underwent some physical changes, as it began to work with man it shared its thinking load resulting in its brain becoming slightly smaller, it no longer needed to kill for survival so its snout became shorter and its jaw reduced hence wolf became dog but in a relatively short period of time.
In Siberia in the 1950’s some experiments were done on a fox farm based on the theory of breeding like to like. The foxes were being bred for their fur but as wild foxes they were nervous and could be aggressive, the foxes with the greater fight and flight were taken out of the gene pool and the breeding was done with foxes with a lesser fight and flight. The result was foxes that were of a calm temperament their colouring was varied, they became playful and were happy to run loose in the grounds reducing the need to keep them in pens. This transformation took place in a ten year period!
Less than two hundred years ago there were just forty recognised breeds of dog, today there are over four hundred! The forty different breeds had all been bred to do a specific job, for example how many people know that the Saluki was bred by the Bedouins for hunting hare and gazelle. They hunt by sight rather than scent and are capable of speeds of up to 45mph and can sprint for twice as long as a greyhound. The Bedouins used selective breeding similar to that used with the foxes to produce the Saluki, breeding for speed, stamina and a soft mouth. The result is a breed of dog that is still used today in the desert, hunting in pairs they will chase a hare and hold it between their noses until their masters can relieve them of their prey.
Dogs have evolved from wolves, man recognised the value of a hunter with keen senses who could also guard and sense intruders from a great distance but also saw other potential, so by man using selective breeding, working dogs evolved. Working dogs were not just workers, they were companions, we only have to look at the ‘singing dogs’ of Papua New Guinea and the Salukis to know that man did, and still does, recognise the value of a good dog, spending every waking moment living with and working with their dogs. So how do we come to have so many varied breeds now and how have they evolved?
The lion dog
It may surprise you to know that the first breed standard was not developed by the Kennel Club but by a Chinese Empress over 2000 years ago! Buddhism spread into China taking with it the sacred symbol of the lion, the belief being that Buddha tamed the lion and the lion became the symbol of human passion. Buddhism might have made it to China but the lion hadn’t so the Empress set her standard – the dog had to be small, hairy, with a dark face, a short nose and bowed front legs to discourage it from escaping. So selective breeding took place with small hairy dogs but only ones with dark faces and short noses and after a number of years the Pekingese evolved. This early breeding and the standard set by the Empress Dowager was so successful that the breed became a sacred symbol owned exclusively by the royal palace. In 1860 the allied troops of Great Britain and France stormed the palace burning it to the ground, the dogs were destroyed before the troops arrived so they didn’t fall into enemy hands but five of them escaped and they were brought back to the UK where one was given to Queen Victoria who was so taken with her little lion dog that she had a portrait painted with the dog on her lap.
Breeding to standard
Queen Victoria’s love of her small dog started a new fashion called the Dog Fancy and suddenly the trend shifted to dogs being bred for looks rather than for what they could do and in 1873 the Kennel Club was formed. The Kennel Club became the headquarters for the Dog Fancy, standards were set for every different breed and dog shows became popular for owners to show off their latest creation.
We know that breeding ‘like to like’ will produce a particular gene line but when this has been done to produce a working breed it has been done with careful attention to keeping faults out of the gene pool. For example, the breeding of the Saluki was not done in just one or two conceptions it was done gradually and selectively, taking speed to speed and then any with faults would have been removed from the gene pool and the breeding for stamina would have been done with dogs that didn’t carry a recessive or negative gene. When breeding for work, whether it be for a hunting dog, a herding dog, a guarding dog there is no room for defects, the breed must be sound and this requires careful breeding with selective lines. When breeding for design the gene pool can become less selective as appearance takes precedence, the results can be dogs that are not capable of doing the jobs they were originally bred for and, more importantly, dogs with joint and health defects. Two classic examples are the Bulldog, originally bred as a butcher’s dog to assist in the slaughter-house, and the Shar Pei, originally a guard dog. The Bulldog could no longer dog the job it was bred to do but it also has defects in the breed in many cases with the snout too recessed and undershot. The Shar Pei is born with an abundance of skin which it grows into but as the trend for them to have more wrinkles increased the breeding became more selective for design rather than proficiency with an end result of some dogs having so much skin that, were it loose, they could turn round in it, and eye defects.
Wolves still exist today and, thankfully, they have retained their pure lines and their dignity – although human meddling has tried to re-create them for their own ‘fancy’ fortunately with little success. Our dogs have evolved from wolves and through breeding we have changed the appearance, added and subtracted until some of them bare little, if any resemblance to their forefathers. BUT for all the breeding may have changed the appearance, it may have improved and it may have introduced faults there is one thing that is so deep down and so instinctive that is still there in every dog today – every dog still has a little bit of wolf inside him. The will to survive is strong and dogs will survive by whatever means if they are left to do so, they will protect themselves and they will make decisions about their own welfare and safety if it appears no one else is going to make a decision for them. The wolf lives on every dog we have and this needs to be recognised if we are to stop the downward spiral of aggressive behaviour which is threatening every dog and every breed. Careful breeding can harness defective genes but only careful understanding can harness our dogs’ natural instincts.
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