Okay, I know I’ve touched on this before.
But I think I’ll go ahead with another post on this topic.
Dogs are wolves. They differ at most 0.2 percent from wild wolves in their MtDNA sequence. I needed to italicize that “at most” because it is very common to see it written that dogs differ 0.2 percent from their MtDNA sequence. That means the maximal difference between dogs and wolves in their MtDNA sequence is 0.2 percent.
Historically, they did interbreed quite a bit. Accounts exist of settlers on the American frontier using bitches in heat to bring in the dog wolves, which would mate with them. Because dogs remain tied together after mating, it was easy to dispatch the copulating wolf with an axe.
This interbreeding has caused a great deal of genetic pollution in the European wolf population, leading to unusually colored wolves and wolves with dewclaws on the hind legs. We also have evidence that the black coloration in wolves in North America came from cross-breeding with dogs.
Now, a dog is a wolf that has adapted to a particular environment. It is just like the Arabian wolf is adapted to the deserts and the Arctic wolf is adapted to the frigid wastes. Neither animal could live in the other’s environment, yet they are of the same species.
A dog is simply a wolf that can live safely with people. It can read people better than the wolf can, and as a result, it is better able to learn from people than virtually any other non-primate species.
To me, it makes sense to call dogs Canis lupus familiaris. It makes as much sense as calling the Arabian wolf Canis lupus arabs or the Arctic wolf Canis lupus arctos.
Now, there are three groups of people who don’t like to call dogs wolves.
One of these groups are the people who hate wolves and like to talk about the negative aspects of their behaviors. They don’t want them to be associated with the domestic dog, an animal that most people like.
Another group is the people who don’t want people owning wolves. If dogs and wolves are the same species, shouldn’t we be able to keep a wolf like a dog? The answer is no. Wolves are too reactive and powerful for the average person to own. Their predatory behavior can be easily stimulated, which means that children and other domestic animals could be at risk from these animals.
However, I should also say that there are domestic dog for which this same caveat applies. And there are wolves that are very dog-like and not even remotely reactive or nervous (like this one.) But most dogs behave like dogs, and most wolves behave like wolves.
The other group that would rather I not call dogs wolves are the positive reinforcement dog trainers. After all, the training methods they hate are based upon an assumption that dogs are wolves, and wolves form packs that are ruled by a tyrannical alpha. If dogs are not wolves, then their behavior is very different, and thus, we can get away with training them using other methods.
Now, I do have an answer for this one.
The studies that determined that wolves live in packs like this have their roots in Switzerland. Rudolf Schenkel studied captive wolf packs in the Basel Zoo in the middle part of the twentieth century. These wolves were unrelated animals and were kept in close confinement together. To prevent fights, they formed a really strict hierarchy, and Schenkel assumed that this type of pack behavior was indicative of how wolves behaved in the wild.
Of course, we have since found out that wolf packs in the wild are much more libertarian organizations. They are nothing more than family groups, and if one wolf gets ticked off at another, it disperses. Indeed, virtually all wolves disperse from their natal packs to form their own families.
But even these pack forming behaviors are not absolute with wolves. Sometimes they form super packs in which several breeding pairs and their offspring live as a single group. And some wolves never form packs larger than the mated pair, particularly in the Arabian and Indian wolf subspecies.
Moreover, the most studied wolves are the big game hunting wolves that live in northern Eurasia or northern North America. These are actually quite specialized wolves.
To assume that these wolves can tell us anything about dog behavior is a bit of a stretch, but what it says to the positive reinforcement crowd is that wolves have always had variable behavior in the wild. Dogs are not set in stone to follow leaders any more than wolves are. Dogs and wolves are both intelligent animals that have always adjusted their behavior to fit their circumstances. That is why the species was so successful. Indeed, it still is successful, because some individuals figured out how to live with the naked apes that would later claim dominion over the whole planet.
I do recognize dogs to be a subspecies of wolf. However, I am not denying that there are differences. However, this species is already diverse in terms of behavior and phenotype in its wild form. Shouldn’t we also expect a lot of diversity in its domesticated form?
A Pug, for example, looks way more than 0.2% different than a wolf. To my mind, if the outward appearance of domesticated dogs has been changed so much, how do we know other aspects of the dog have not been changed/evolved as well? That is, while a genetic test may say a pet dog and a wolf are nearly identical gene-wise, perhaps the pet dog’s digestive system (again, example) has evolved to function differently from the wolf’s. It seems plausible to me that there are other significant changes in the pet dog besides physical appearance, even if they do not show up genetically.
Yes, and pouter pigeons look nothing like wild rock doves.
The digestive system differences may have something to do with a different diet, as in it develops differently because they are on a different diet from the wild animals.
Pugs are not more than 0.2 percent different from the wolf. The reason why they look so different is because of tandem repeats: http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/17/4/474
Arabian wolves can be as small as 25 pounds, and the Shamanu or Honshu wolf was even smaller: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honsh%C5%AB_Wolf
The largest wolves live in Alaska, and they often exceed 150 pounds in weight.
Thus, the difference in the wild animal is mirrored and exaggerated in the domestic animal, which is not subject to natural selection.
Maybe I chose my words poorly. I meant that a Pug LOOKS way more than .2% different than a wolf. My broader point was intended to be that possibly other changes besides outward appearance have occurred in the domestic dog, even if they don’t register as genetically different from the wolf.
The example of the digestive tract – I agree that pet dogs may have evolved over time to become accustomed to and in fact thrive on a diet of human “table scraps”. This is an area where they diverged from wolves. But it may not show up as a genetic difference.
I’m sure we’ve all read the many posts from people who quip “Do you ever see a wolf harvesting oats from a field and cooking them over a fire?”. My response is that I do not feed wolves, I feed dogs.
Yes. Dogs do have a slightly different digestive system from the wolf, and no one has found a gene or genes to suggest why this is so.
It may be that as dogs are raised on a cooked diet that their digestive system develops. It may be both.
I would be interested in seeing what a raw fed dog’s digestive system would look like.
I find that there is very little science that goes on in discussions of dog diet. The truth is they can do okay on a diet of human feces and cast off bones.
My dogs eat both raw (meat, bones) and cooked (grains, vegetables) foods. Studies show that the dog’s pancreas adapts it’s output to the diet fed. That’s in normal dogs. Dogs that must have certain meats, grain free, particular nit-picky extra super special diets are not good examples of how adaptive dogs really are.
I’m sure we’ve all read the many posts from people who quip “Do you ever see a wolf harvesting oats from a field and cooking them over a fire?”. My response is that I do not feed wolves, I feed dogs.
Every single freakin’ time I read stupid comments like that, I want to reach through my monitor and smack the person who wrote them. First off, dogs might be descended from wolves, but what was that, 15,000 years ago? You think maybe one or two things might have changed since then, like, oh, their adapting to a diet provided by humans?
Secondly, I have a friend who was a zookeeper at the Toronto Zoo, working with wolves. She says that the most striking difference between many dog breeds and wolves are the differences in their jaws and teeth – that no way could most domestic dogs compare to wolves in terms of crushing/tearing power. I think of this fact every time I read some raw feeding list nitwit blathering on about how grinding bones is ‘bad’, because wolves don’t eat ground bones. I know of Frenchies that have choked to death on intact bones, because their owners believed all this “wolves don’t eat ground bones” bs.
Well, dogs have evolved to eat a diet based upon our agrarian economy, which began 12,000 years ago and then became really important 10,000 years ago. Proto-dog wolves may have been with us for even longer than that– maybe 50,000 or even 100,000 years ago. Of course, they were eating big game, because that’s what humans were eating.
The wolves usually kept at zoos are big game hunting wolves from the northern part of the Northern Hemisphere. They are actually quite specialized in their diet, and to make assumptions about domestic dogs from those animals is a logical fallacy. The jaws on an Arabian wolf or Indian wolf are nothing like these animals, and domestic dogs have even weaker jaws.
Never mind that French bulldogs don’t even have teeth or jaws like a wolf or even a feral dog.
Dog diets can evolve rather quickly. There was a dog breed in Hawaii that evolved to eat poi. It had a very tiny brain and very weak jaws. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_Poi_Dog
If we fed our dogs that alone, they would die of malnutrition.
My advice: stay away from the “dog foodies.”
It’s not that their diets don’t work; it’s that they make claims that have not be been scientifically verified.
They have a bunch of theories and hypotheses, but for some reason– I don’t know– there are no clinical trials.
I would like it if they did some. Of course, when you suggest that, you get the old Pottenger’s cat study.
I try to stay out of the dog food arguments, for the very simple reason that I don’t have all the evidence.
Dogs are so flexible in their dietary demands as a species, but as individual animals, some dogs do well on certain diets and others don’t.
If people want to feed raw, I say go ahead.
If you want feed kibble, I say go ahead.
Just understand that there are consequences and risks for each diet.
Dogs and have the internal anatomy and physiology of a carnivore (Feldhamer, G.A. 1999. Mammology: Adaptation, Diversity, and Ecology. McGraw-Hill. pg 260.).
They have a highly elastic stomach designed to hold large quantities of meat, bone, organs, and hide. Their stomachs are simple, with an undeveloped caecum (Feldhamer, G.A. 1999. Mammology: Adaptation, Diversity, and Ecology. McGraw-Hill. pg 260.).
They have a relatively short foregut and a short, smooth, unsacculated colon. This means food passes through quickly. Vegetable and plant matter, however, needs time to sit and ferment. This equates to longer, sacculated colons, larger and longer small intestines, and occasionally the presence of a caecum. Dogs have none of these, but have the shorter foregut and hindgut consistent with carnivorous animals. This explains why plant matter comes out the same way it came in; there was no time for it to be broken down and digested (among other things). People know this; this is why they tell you that vegetables and grains have to be preprocessed for your dog to get anything out of them. But even then, feeding vegetables and grains to a carnivorous animal is a questionable practice.
Take a look:
[http://rawfed.com/myths/omnivores.html]
Oh those trixie dogs with their ridiculously elastic genes and crazy phenotypes. I remember hearing arguments about this in multiple classes while I was getting my bio degree.
There are many definitions of “species”. Generally, you can say that species are separate when there is some kind of barrier to mating. Genetics make this both easier and harder. If it can’t produce fertile offspring, then it’s not a species! Done! OK. But…
Organisims could be closely related genetically are still considered separate if they have an environmental or behavioral boundary to mating (which dogs and wolves certainly have). For example, Chimpanzees and Bonobos differ by only 0.7% (total nuclear DNA), and can produce fertile offspring in captivity, yet are considered separate species.
There are a lot of other examples in plants and arthropods, but this blog is about the vertebrates, so I’ll skip those. I have two words for you though: fruit flies. :)
I personally think it’s more useful to categorize dogs as a separate species from wolves.
But, in the end, I just can’t bring myself to care that much. Species, sub-species, they’re just categories. The Tree of Life (of which we’re arguing about the tip of a tiny twig) says NOTHING about the practicalities of training/feeding our pets. Everyone agrees that dogs and wolves are DIFFERENT, so why do people keep trying to prove their agendas about DOGS by looking at WOLVES (and often misinterpreting what they’re seeing, to boot)?
I actually don’t think chimps and bonobos should be considered separate species. Chimps vary a lot. Some of them are huge:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/04/0414_030314_strangeape.html
Bonobos and Chimps are about as different as dogs and wolves. I’ll give you that.
But I don’t think either deserves separate species status.
We always look at animals from our perspective. We aren’t that genetically diverse, and all of this racism crap that we have somehow developed is utter nonsense. There are very, very few differences between people from different parts of the world. Most other wide-ranging species have really amazing diversity that we just don’t have. That’s because humans 1. Aren’t that old and 2 . nearly became extinct at one point: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/166869.stm
I know there are behavioral differences between chimps and bonobos, but there are behavioral differences between subspecies and various of chimps. The difference between the two is partially exactly the same as the difference between dogs and wolves– neoteny.
Indeed, bonobos can be worked with for most of their lives, while chimps either become murderers or rapists (at least in most populations).
Actually, the difference between us and Homo neanderthalis is also thought to have been that same thing.
I don’t regard bonobos as a separate species. Indeed, I’m right now having a hard time classifying the polar bear as separate from Ursus arctos.
I’m a lumper.
LOL, and I’m totally a splitter. My brain just prefers it that way.
As for you last point, people fundamentally don’t get Darwin. To have a common ancestor does not mean that you are exactly like the animal with which you share a common ancestor, although it wouldn’t be bad being an neotenous chimp from the Congo basin, also known as the Bonobo.
Also, people don’t do nuance and maybe are incapable of seeing similarities and differences.
I’ve known very wolf-like dogs, and my grandpa’s favorite hunting dog was half Norwegian elkhound/half “dwarf collie” (the non-show version of the Sheltie). Unlike both of his parents, he never barked. He killed raccoons on the ground on his own (something only wolves and very, very few coonhounds can do). He also would lie in wait at a groundhog hole, and then pounce on it when it came out too far to make it back. (I have never seen a domestic dog do that). I’ve seen photos of him. He looked like a large coyote with a ring of white around his neck. (And he wasn’t part coyote, because coyotes weren’t here in the 1970’s).
Well, Darwin didn’t know about genetics, but he still got the important things right.
He understood very well the difference of variation within species – that’s what lead him to the details of his theory in the first place (barnacles and pigeons! Woo!).
I still say Bonobos should be a separate species.
I’m still in love with the old Ernst Mayr definition of species.
Then I’m sure your next question is, why do I think coyotes are a different species?
Well, they do differ from dogs and wolves quite a bit. Not all coydogs or wolf/coyote crosses are fertile. Some are; some aren’t. And if you breed the hybrids for together for several generations, you’ll hit a generation where they are all sterile. Now in the wild, you might get occasional cross-breedings that then breed back to a parent species. Neither all wolves that have lived east of the Mississippi have had some of this happen, which is why it is now suggested that coyotes were here when Europeans arrived. They were extirpated with the wolves, and then came back from the West. I have read accounts of small wolves around Jamestown, which sound more like coyotes than wolves.
I believe the difference between the two in MtDNA is 4 percent, but in nuclear, it is a bit lower, because of the hybridization. This difference would get smaller if red wolves and Eastern North American wolves were added to the samples (they have a lot of coyote in them).
Your “quite a bit” is another person’s “only a little”. Which I suppose is why taxonomist take it one species at a time and don’t actually have any hard and fast rules.
Some people are STILL arguing that African bush elephants are the same species as African forest elephants, even though they differ greatly genetically, behaviorally, and phenotypically.
Now, forest and savanna elephants are separate species. I’m also certain that more than one species of giraffe exists.
I found this book the other day, it looks interesting: http://www.amazon.com/Naming-Nature-Between-Instinct-Science/dp/0393061973
Interesting discussion (also, as the owner of a something-elkhound mix, I love all the asides in this blog mentioning them – they’re not all that common ‘round here and it’s always neat to read an observation and think, “aha, that behavior’s not just my fuzzy beast”. Or to hear about what they do when they’re working dogs.) Someone made a remark further up-thread about less visible/nonphenotypic differences between dogs and wolves, which reminded me of a neat series of lectures I heard once. Evolutionary psychologists are, apparently, rather interested in the impact that domestication had on cognitive processes in animals, because they’d be such a good, concrete example, of psychological and cognitive adaptation (rather than just learned behaviors) to specific environmental changes. This guy gave a talk once that I thought was really interesting that did, indeed, focus on differences in cognitive skills between dogs and wolves and had highlighted some very interesting findings, mostly to do with ways that dogs’ cognition has changed to allow them to partner with humans – and these are cognitive skills that wolves don’t posses. So, interbreeding potential or not, there’s been some pretty significant evolutionary change between dogs and wolves.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VH9-4GSJRDR-1&_user=720514&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1030092889&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000040236&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=720514&md5=7efbe6a6d2315107fac71354eee0bbea
But there is also another study in which some wolves outperformed dogs:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14798-wolves-make-dogs-dinner-out-of-domestication-theory-.html
It’s the only one that has ever suggested that wolves are better at this than dogs.
And what’s more the Hungarians did raise wolves in their study just like dogs. It’s a very poor study.
But because it’s out there, we have to look at it.
I think that an Arabian wolf would have hard time figuring out how to hunt muskoxen. Arctic wolves are experts at hunting this species. Perhaps, the Arctic wolves have evolved some way of reading muskoxen in the same way that dogs evolved to read us. Muskoxen are strange in that they don’t run from predators, they make a wagon formation and face outward, while the calves run on the inside. How these wolves figure out how to penetrate that formation is really interesting, but they do it all the time (well, at least enough to eat muskoxen calves).
Here’s a broader statement of their pretty cool research.
http://www.eva.mpg.de/psycho/dogs/dogs_research.html
(I recall thinking that one of the interesting bits in the lecture was how dogs also outperformed chimps and other animals presumed to be evolutionarily and genetically closer to humans in various regards.)
Yeah, I’ve looked at that stuff quite bit, but because people and dogs evolved together, we can communicate with each other.
Have you read Raymond Coppingers book “A new understanding of canine origin, behaviour, and evolution”?
He gives quite a fascinating account of how he believes dogs evolved and how human canine relationships developed. With an interesting focus on how to define our relationships with dogs today, are we mutually beneficial etc
I have it, but I have some disagreements with him.
Mark Der has a good critique here: http://www.thebark.com/content/wolf-who-stayed
I agree that there is something there, and it’s worth looking at.
Does it make them separate species?
I still don’t think so.
This same experiment was performed on the Belyaev foxes, and they outperformed normal silver foxes.
I don’t think people think that the Belyaev foxes are a separate species.
I do agree what Ret.man said about the “doggy foody” and diets.
And what comes to that “wolves have much more powerful jaws than dogs” – argument, it’s partly true due to their bigger skull, and partly due to the fact that they never ever get to eat the “doggy foodies”.
I have the opinion, that if one has a dog of a sized breed, and one starts to feed him with the natural pray animals & things from the early age, it’s no wrong thing to do.
It was just about 30 years ago, when no doggy food was found in many shops. So dog ate the bones and the “rubbish” of the fish crop, hunted game and slaughtered domestic animals.
I think it’s a false analogy to compare dogs, which have adapted to our diet, to big game hunting wolves from the Northern reaches of the Northern Hemisphere.
I think why the erect, bushy tail developed on many northern breeds: it was a good mark to make differnece between a dangerous arctic wolf and a dog.
Even today it may be very difficult to state if someone has seen a wolf or a dog in the foggy landscape.
W. Wood writes about the wolves of New England:
“They be made much like a mongrel, big bones, lank paunched, deep breasted, having a thick neck and head, prick ears, long snout, with dangerous teeth, long-staring hair, and a great bush tail.”
Wood, William: New England’s Prospect, 1635 (chap. 6, p. 45)
I don’t what actually means that “long-staring hair”, and “a great bush tail” brings my mind the tails of the inuit dogs.
What kind of wolves do you think they were in that description?
Most likely Canis lupus lyacon, the Eastern North American wolf.
There’s also a honey wolf (canus lupus lycaon rutilus dulcis)
http://www.newenglandartwork.com/TheHoneyWolf.htm
(Is my re-act to your attitude that goldens are most wolfish retrievers.)
My gosh that is excellent. I’m going to have to link to it!
And further, touching the very same theme -a dog or a wolf:
James P. Howley on Nothern States and Newfoundlandian wolves / dogs:
” – – the natives there not only with those who live in the north and westward parts of Newfoundland, but also with those which border on the main continent of America, near thereunto. For it is well known that they are a very ongenious and subtile kind of people (as it hath often appeared in divers things), so likewise are they tractable, as hath been well approved, when they have been gently and politically dealt withall; also they are a people who will seek to revenge any wrongs done unto them, or their wolves, as hath often appeared. For they mark their wolves in the ears, with several marks, as is used here in England on sheep, and other beasts, which hath been likewise well approved; for the wolves in these parts are not so violent and devouring as those in other countries – – – ”
(Actually I’m not sure whether this should be posted here or to comment the Ret.man’s newest writing about the history of retrievers..? Maybe no.).
Is this in Newfoundland or eastern Canada/New England?
James P. Howley travelled both. It is a bit obscure part of the text, but as such, it’s taken from:
http://www.mun.ca/rels/native/beothuk/beo2gifs/texts/howley17.html#caprich
I’m not sure if it comes any clearer.
Also Howley travelled and experienced that quite late.
The Beothuck didn’t have dogs.
http://books.google.com/books?id=ckOav3Szu7oC&lpg=PA405&ots=Vn2yGRlBRx&dq=beothuk%20dogs&pg=PA332#v=onepage&q=dog&f=false
But dogs and wolves were chummy in the days of early settlement. In fact, more than chummy, if you get what I mean.
I read lots of accounts of dogs and wolves eating from the same bison carcasses, and of wolves so tame and docile that you can kill them with knives. Which, of course, tells you what we European people thought of wolves.
Sure I get it, I’m not that stupid girl ;)
Red Indian is a name for the Beothuck. That’s because they painted themselves in ochre.
Now, that’s really interesting.
These people didn’t keep dogs at all.
They must have had the hunter-gatherer relationship with wolves.
And that explains why you find some accounts of them with “dogs,” but these were actually wolves!
That’s really quite a find!
Wouldn’t it be quite weird, if a nature people like the Red Indians, who’s been living around there thousands of years, wouldn’t know dogs, – er wolfes very well.
I think it would.
The picture has been given from that nation without no dog / wolf – relationship. It’s a picture of a people, who were weak, and maybe for some odd religional reason didn’t mention a word “wolf”.
Is it true??
Anyway, professor Tuck from Memorial University in Newfoundland has found two very ancient dog’s graves.
Maybe we have to ask him.
I have no idea.
However, this is an interesting hypothesis, if it could ever be tested or proven:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.html?curid=1766749
If so, our theory of origin of the dog becomes again a bit more comlplicated.
I bet there are already reseachers going for to see the Mowat’s foundings, the “low stone walls”.
There’s a book called “Neither Wolf Nor Dog: American Indians, Environment, & Agrarian Change”
I think the author is indian. Good name, ain’t it.
There’s also a book “Dog People”, native American folklore stories.
I made a g-search on it, but all I got was
memory.loc.gov/ndlpcoop/nicmoas/livn-1/livn0106.sgm –
And I don’t trust to open it on my comp.
It actually strengthens my theory.
If this is what wolves were like in a place where they weren’t persecuted, domestication had to have been absolutely total cake.
To steal from the Geico commercials, it was so easy that a caveman could do it.
The bear was the mysterious king in the ancient Finnish culture. Wolfes, elks, wood grouse – of course all were “saint” in their own way. But they could be easily taken in use.
But the bear was the biggest of all.
And why mystical? Pre-historian human couldn’t figure out any practical use for a bear. The bear couldn’t be integrated in there, to earn the everyday living.
Bears stand on their hind legs, and when skinned, they look like humans underneath.
Most modern people don’t that, but all the acient people did.
This is a fake mythology of a fake ancient population.
It doesn’t really create an autenthic feeling of an ancient time, if one writes with a style like that!
Too many words, too defining and so. It really is a book about the romantism of our time.
I don’t know of anyone who takes Mowat’s theory about the Albans seriously. There’s something there, but it’s so hard to find evidence for it.
Basically, I will say this.
Dog domestication is nebulous– the when, the why, the how, and the where are in flux right now.
We once had a very clear theory from a researched named Peter Savolainen, but that theory is going through some really major challenges right now.
Surely, Peter Savolainen (Peter Welshman, if had to translated) will turn over.
I would never believe there’s just a one place where it all strated out. It never is.
He made an even more audacious claim last month: http://www.silobreaker.com/dogs-descended-from-wolf-pack-on-yangtze-river-5_2262571400537571351
Wolves barely lived in southern China, so I’m very, very skeptical.
It is amazing now-a-days how everything seems have China origins!
Wolves, fire works, even my clothes??
So they say it was 16 000 years ago the wolf was taimed in China.
I’m not a historian, so I can’t argue to that, cause I don’t know what was going on in the meantime in Eurasia and America.
You can.
We do know that dogs come from some form of Eurasian wolf, not the North American wolf.
What people were there living about 15 – 20 000 year ago in Eurasia? Must have been few?
Nebulous. If we can see the farest galaxys, what makes it so hard to see tens of thousands of years backwards in the dog / human history.
There will be better theories I bet too.
Er. Pre-history of course.
It was Sitting Bull who once said that modern indians’ situation (in the 1880s) is like being neither dog nor a wolf.
It sounds if he very well knew, what is that link between!
Laikas and Canis lupus commuunis look relatively same:
http://karvainenkirja.blogspot.com/2008/02/laikat-vhn-historiaa.html
The many Russian, especially Siberian people lived quite isolated life,
and that thing kept their dogs pure for thousands of years.
Here most be another cluster of the dog origin.
Originally there were ab. 30 different laika types.
Most of them are gone by now, but there’s at least a Nenets Herding Laika and a draft dog, Yakutian Laika:
http://www.nic.fi/~hra/laika.htm
In Japan, there is Shikoku, primitive looking and behaving dog:
The Akita dog is the biggest of these type of dogs. Across northern Eurasia from Japan to Norway. there are these spitz-type hunting dogs. The Finnish version is called in English the Karelian Bear Dog. I need to write about these dogs at some point. The Siberian husky is derived from a hauling version of the East Siberian Laika, which was used to hunt tigers in the Russian Far East.
In the North of North America, we have the big hauling spitz-type, which is similar but has some clear differences.
There are also herding spitzes, like the Norwegian buhund, the German spitzes, and the various reindeer herders that exist from the Sami regions of Scandinavia to the middle of Russia.
Please write.
I’ll be a hit.
If I were a researcher, I’d go after those dogs to get DNA, then compare it with the DNA of wolves of the same regions.
The Newfoundland wolf went extinct really early on.
I was just thinking ’bout it too.
“Canis lupus beothucus – Newfoundland wolf, a white wolf now extinct and known only from four skulls and a single skin”
The people and the wolf had the same name, and both are gone. And yet they say, they hardly knew each other.
The wolf vanished leaving oddly very little evidence.
I see now J.P. Howley was a real Beothuck-expert. There may be more about those wolves in his Reminiscences-book.
Richard Whitbourne, who had an English mastiff himself, writes about the meet of the “wolves” and his dog(ab. y. 1621):
“Speaking of the friendship of their wolves and his Mastiff dog, he adds, “Surely much rather the people by our discreet and gentle usage, may be brought to society, being already naturally inclined thereunto.”
And that text far below, what describes the wolves’ cut-marked ears, must be from him, not from Howley!! Sorry, computerworld is like this.
So they clearly have dogs, the aboriginals.
I sent you another source.
The problem is that no dogs appear in the archeological record of the Beothuck sites, although some earlier dogs have definitely been found, associated with people who came before the Beothuck.
It’s true. Dogs are a subspecies of wolf, Canis lupus familiaris. There are plenty of differences though. This blog looks great. Visit http://www.howlofthewolf.wordpress.com for more on wolves.
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Ah the good old “dog is a wolf” argument which I allowed myself to get sucked into on another forum today. One thing became abundantly clear very fast. It doesn’t matter how many points you put forward and back up with some proven fact or personal experience, you will always get the types of people you mentioned, among others, who refuse to believe anything of the sort. Mention how well most dogs do on a pure meat and bone diet and they just don’t want to know, tell them about species breeding fertile offspring and they start talking about breeding cycles and other behavioural differences, and from there it just gets down to petty semantics, and they then have the nerve to say “Go do some research or keep your opinions to your self.”
Some people just love to argue the point, some truly believe there is a massive difference you fill a black hole with, and then you get others who have done research of their own and get fixated on out dated or even falsified research.
Does it not just make you want to sit some of these people in a room full of starving dogs and wolves and ask them if they still feel so deeply about the differences?
Anyway, I agree with my vet’s assessment, which is much in line with your’s, we need to stop over-humanising these animals and look at them for what they are and that is modified house wolves.
Wonderfully written article. I agree with you, dogs are basically a subspecies of grey wolf, which is where all their behaviour comes from. Dogs act like adolescent wolves – dependent on their ‘parents’ to provide food, shelter and security, and to teach them how to behave. Dogs never grow up to the point where they would naturally disperse, and thus they stay with us into old age. Their bodies do not physically mature either, they retain small skulls, teeth and brains. They reproduce despite not fully maturing which is an example of neotany (something that can occur naturally in the wild as well as through domestication). In terms of behaviour, dogs are wolf children – and it does neither them nor us any favours to treat them like adult wolves.
Positive reinforcement folks tend to treat ther dogs like very young human children who need to be trained in a structured, simple way (it’s basically Pavlovian conditioning) which is more natural and closer to how wolf parents would treat their cubs than the alpha dominance theories some trainers advocate.
I do think of my dog as a wolf, I even call him Wolfe as a nickname (he seems to like it better than his real name) and jokingly refer to him as “the wolf in sheepdogs clothing” (he’s a border collie).
I don’t think people should get ‘tame’ wild wolves as pets (they are really not good pets) when there are so many domesticated wolves needing homes in shelters across the world.
If you don’t think a dog is related to a wolf. Keep feeding it grains and other high glycemic index foods that a wolf would never eat in the wild. Then keep wondering why my dog has every inflammatory disease known to man and dog alike including diabetes, arthritis and so on. Keep wondering are this grains and high glycemic index foods shooting the dogs blood sugar levels way up and the insulin slamming it down over and over again. Enjoy the Blog.