I hope this may be more helpful in the understanding of my thought process of, Where did dogs really come from! First, let me make this as crystal clear as I can, I in NO way indorse the breeding of the wolf by persons for none scientific reasons!! The keeping of the wolf as a pet, Has and is leading to the death or a horrendous life of misery for the animals. 1.”The problems come at the crucial stage of taking a male and female wolf and getting them to produce a subspecies (assuming you could tame and interact with them at all). Let us take this one step further by returning to our original question, what is a dog? A dog is a mutated wolf “ Demonstration of Interaction. Welcome to our latest Newsletter from our accommodation at Combe Martin Dinosaur and Wildlife Park. http://wolf.cinimod.co.uk/WolfPackManagement/ For those of you that don’t know us, Wolf Pack Management is a self funding voluntary organization dedicated to the conservation and preservation of captive and wild wolves. We have worked with wolves and canids all over the world, learning and researching their intricate language. Our extensive research involves the study of various sub species of wolves, coyotes, foxes and dogs. Under the guidance of the native American Indian biologists, we have had the opportunity to live and learn from the wolves themselves. (There is *no* assuming as to taming and or interacting with the wolf, it has been and is being done every day! This is documented and for my part eyes and hands on, the interaction enjoyed. The animals, hand reared and socialized. A knowledgeable human can not only interact, but also guide the breeding process. This insuring the human making the decision as to what animals breed to each other, i.e. Selective breeding leading to a domesticated animal. Wolf to Dog “For example, in becoming domesticated, animals have undergone a host of changes in morphology, physiology and behavior. What do those changes have in common? Do they stem from a single cause, and if so, what is it? In the case of the dog, Morey identifies one common factor as pedomorphosis,the retention of juvenile traits by adults. Those traits include both morphological ones, such as skulls that are unusually broad for their length, and behavioral ones, such as whining, barking and submissiveness — all characteristics that wolves outgrow but that dogs do not. Morey considers pedomorphosis in dogs a byproduct of natural selection for earlier sexual maturity and smaller body size, features that, according to evolutionary theory, ought to increase the fitness of animals engaged in colonizing a new ecological niche.” Article by Lyudmila N. Trut, Ph.D. “Living with humans for hundreds of generations has altered the cognitive abilities of domesticated dogs, according to new research by Harvard University anthropologist Brian Hare. He reported these findings in Seattle last week at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.” Living with humans for hundreds of generations has altered the cognitive abilities of domesticated dogs, according to new research by Harvard University anthropologist Brian Hare. Humans served as a selective factor in canine evolution. "Our new work provides direct evidence that dogs' lengthy contact with humans has served as a selection factor, leading to distinct evolutionary changes," says Hare, who recently completed his Ph.D. in anthropology in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. "This is the first demonstration that humans play an ongoing role in the evolution of canine cognition." 2. “Now, if our Paleolithic ancestors could have pulled off this feat, and the actual challenges posed by the process are far more taxing, then wolf/dog breeders today certainly should have no problem duplicating it. But like the Great Pyramid, that does not seem to be the case.” “To test his hypothesis, Belyaev decided to turn back the clock to the point at which animals received the first challenge of domestication. By replaying the process, he would be able to see how changes in behavior, physiology and morphology first came about. Of course, reproducing the ways and means of those ancient transformations, even in the roughest outlines, would be a formidable task. To keep things as clear and simple as possible, Belyaev designed a selective-breeding program to reproduce a single major factor, a strong selection pressure for tamability. He chose as his experimental model a species taxonomically close to the dog but never before domesticated: Vulpes vulpes, the silver fox. Belyaev's fox-breeding experiment occupied the last 26 years of his life. Today, 14 years after his death, it is still in progress. Through genetic selection alone, our research group has created a population of tame foxes fundamentally different in temperament and behavior from their wild forebears. In the process we have observed some striking changes in physiology, morphology and behavior, which mirror the changes known in other domestic animals and bear out many of Belyaev's ideas.” 3. “The evolution of the domesticated dog from a wild pack animal appears to be a miracle! It should not have happened. This is another unexplained enigma” A miracle, no, change brought on to accommodate domestication, advanced evolution. The human using selective breeding to shorten the time factor needed to accommodate the animal to its new environment. 4. “So what you're syaing is that given enough time in human company, wolf DNA will change into dog DNA..si that it...that introducing wolves to dogs and keeping th em captive for a few generations allows them to 'evolve' into dogs.at which point we cross breed or inbreed to get diverse pedigrees?” “Early in the process of domestication, Belyaev noted, most domestic animals had undergone the same basic morphological and physiological changes. Their bodies changed in size and proportions, leading to the appearance of dwarf and giant breeds. The normal pattern of coat color that had evolved as camouflage in the wild altered as well. Many domesticated animals are piebald, completely lacking pigmentation in specific body areas. Hair turned wavy or curly, as it has done in Astrakhan sheep, poodles, domestic donkeys, horses, pigs, goats and even laboratory mice and guinea pigs. Some animals' hair also became longer (Angora type) or shorter (rex type). Tails changed, too. Many breeds of dogs and pigs carry their tails curled up in a circle or semicircle. Some dogs, cats and sheep have short tails resulting from a decrease in the number of tail vertebrae. Ears became floppy. As Darwin noted in chapter 1 of On the Origin of Species, "not a single domestic animal can be named which has not in some country drooping ears" — a feature not found in any wild animal except the elephant. Another major evolutionary consequence of domestication is loss of the seasonal rhythm of reproduction. Most wild animals in middle latitudes are genetically programmed to mate once a year, during mating seasons cued by changes in daylight. Domestic animals at the same latitudes, however, now can mate and bear young more than once a year and in any season. Belyaev believed that similarity in the patterns of these traits was the result of selection for amenability to domestication. Behavioral responses, he reasoned, are regulated by a fine balance between neurotransmitters and hormones at the level of the whole organism. The genes that control that balance occupy a high level in the hierarchical system of the genome. Even slight alterations in those regulatory genes can give rise to a wide network of changes in the developmental processes they govern. Thus, selecting animals for behavior may lead to other, far-reaching changes in the animals' development. Because mammals from widely different taxonomic groups share similar regulatory mechanisms for hormones and neurochemistry, it is reasonable to believe that selecting them for similar behavior — tameness — should alter those mechanisms, and the developmental pathways they govern, in similar ways. For Belyaev's hypothesis to make evolutionary sense, two more things must be true. Variations in tamability must be determined at least partly by an animal's genes, and domestication must place that animal under strong selective pressure. We have looked into both questions. In the early 1960s our team studied the patterns and nature of tamability in populations of farm foxes. We cross-bred foxes of different behavior, cross-fostered newborns and even transplanted embryos between donor and host mothers known to react differently to human beings. Our studies showed that about 35 percent of the variations in the foxes' defense response to the experimenter are genetically determined. To get some idea of how powerful the selective pressures on those genes might have been, our group has domesticated other animals, including river otters (Lutra lutra) and gray rats (Rattus norvegicus) caught in the wild. Out of 50 otters caught during recent years, only eight of them (16 percent) showing weak defensive behavior made a genetic contribution to the next generation. Among the gray rats, only 14 percent of the wild-caught yielded offspring living to adulthood. If our numbers are typical, it is clear that domestication must place wild animals under extreme stress and severe selective pressure.” Here I concur, the 16% and 14% are difficult numbers yes, but sufficient for breeding. Here you must concur, "the Even slight alterations in those regulatory genes can give rise to a wide network of changes in the developmental processes they govern. Thus, selecting animals for behavior may lead to other, far-reaching changes in the animals' development. Because mammals from widely different taxonomic groups share similar regulatory mechanisms for hormones and neurochemistry, it is reasonable to believe that selecting them for similar behavior — tameness — should alter those mechanisms, and the developmental" I.E. change in DNA, to pass on the changes to the next generation. 5. “Humans domesticated dogs is not eh same as saying humans domesticated wolves from which dogs descended..nor is it saying dogs came from wolves. If indeed dogs and wolves share a common ancestor then by that statemnent alone it should be obvious that dogs did not descend from wolves, that dogs descended from an older relative, now extinct, one less wolf-like but just as loyal and occasionally fierce, one of different physical characteristsics..one not found in the fossil record...and one from which all the current varieties of dog could eventually be traced back to....and these qualites would have been there long before humans ever got their hands on them....in other words they were 'domestic' before being domesticated.” This may or may not work if the dog and the wolf were not so direct in line with each other. Again, one of the prominent ideas or denials of domestication is the temperament of the wolf. The thought that the human can not interact or cohabit with the animal, I think it has been proven in a scientific manner with evidence of interaction, cohabitation, and selective breeding, change of body size and temperament (i.e. the experiments in cohabitation and breeding)). Also for good measure! It is official! Dogs are now a variety of wolf. Until recently zoologists classified dogs and wolves as separate species; now these scientists have managed a taxonomic merger and proclaimed the two animals to be the same species. The scientific name of the wolf is Canis lupus, and the dog used to be Canis familiaris; they are now both Canis lupus. The dog's specific race of wolf is Canis lupus familiaris just as the arctic wolf's specific race is Canis lupus arctos. This change was formalized by the 1993 publication of Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference, edited by D.E. Wilson and D.A.M. Reeder. Published by the Smithsonian Institution in association with the American Society of Mammalogists, this reference book is the final authority of the scientific community on mammal classification. It has long been known that dogs were domesticated from wolves, and many scientists considered the dog a variety of wolf. Dogs and wolves can interbreed and produce fertile offspring (the classical definition of a species is a group of organisms capable of reproducing within itself), and dog and wolf behavior is strikingly similar. For a while, some zoologists thought dogs might have arisen from jackals, but that idea has been discredited, especially by new molecular genetic analysis. No doubt these considerations led to this new classification and to the sudden realization by millions of people around the world that they are pack-mates to the wolves fetching their slippers. OAE :)
