The origin of the domestic dog has been a controversial topic for centuries, full of unknowns and false myths, although there are still doubts to be solved today, science offers very valuable answers that help to better understand why dogs are pets par excellence or why, unlike wolves or cats, this species is the most domesticated.
Have you ever wondered where the dogs come from?Discover in Animal Expert everything related to Canis lupus familiaris, starting with the first carnivores and ending with the large number of dog breeds that exist today, if you want to know in detail the origin of the dog, do not miss this opportunity to travel back in time and understand where and how it started.
- The first bone trail of a carnivorous animal dates back 50 million years in the Eocene.
- This first animal was arboreal.
- Fed hunting and hunted other animals smaller than him.
- Was similar to a marten.
- But with a short snout.
- Carnivorous animals were divided into two groups:.
These two groups differ fundamentally in the internal structure of the ear and in the teeth, the separation of these two groups was due to the diversification of the habitat, as the planet cooled, the mass of forests was lost and the meadows gained space.the feliforms remained in the trees and the caniforms began to specialize in hunting prairie prey, since the caniforms, with some exceptions, do not have retractable nails.
To know the origin of the dog, it is necessary to go back to the first canids that appeared in North America, since the first known canid is the Prohesperocyon, which inhabited the present area of Texas 40 million years ago.raccoon, but thinner and also had longer legs than its tree ancestors.
The most recognized canid was Epicyon, with a very strong head, it looked more like a lion or a hyena than a wolf, it is not known if it would be a butcher or a group of hunters, like the current wolf. to present-day North America and date from 20 to 5 million years ago, they have reached one and a half meters and 150 kilos.
25 million years ago, in North America, the group split, causing the oldest relatives of wolves, raccoons and jackals to appear.And with the continuous cooling of the planet, 8 million years ago, the Bering Strait Bridge appeared, allowing these groups to reach Eurasia, where they would reach their highest degree of diversification.In Eurasia, the first Canis lupus appeared only half a million years ago and, 250,000 years ago, returned to North America through the Bering Strait.
In 1871, Charles Darwin launched the theory of multiple ancestors, which proposed that the dog descend from coyotes, wolves and jackals; however, in 1954, Konrad Lorenz rejected the coyote as the origin of the dogs and proposed that the northern breeds descend from the wolf and that the rest descend from the jackal.
So the dog’s the wolf’s? Currently, through DNA sequencing, it has been found that dogs, wolves, coyotes and jackals share DNA sequences and that the most similar are those of dogs and wolves.A study published in 2014 [1] ensures that dogs and wolves belong to the same species, but are different subspecies.It is estimated that dogs and wolves may have a common ancestor, but there are no conclusive studies.
Find out which dogs look like wolves in this Animal Expert article
When 200,000 years ago, the first humans left Africa and arrived in Europe, the canids were already there.They lived together as competitors for a long time until they formed their association about 30,000 years ago.
Genetic studies date back to the first dogs 15,000 years ago, in the Asian area that corresponds to modern China, coinciding with the beginning of agriculture. Recent research from 2013 at the Swedish University of Uppsala [2] indicates that dog domestication was linked to genetic differences between wolves and dogs, associated with the development of the nervous system and starch metabolism.
When the first farmers settled, producing high-energy starched foods, opportunistic groups of canids approached human settlements, consuming starched plant residues.These early dogs were also less aggressive than wolves, which facilitated domestication.
The starch diet was fundamental to the development of the species, since the genetic variations experienced by these dogs made their survival unviable with the exclusively carnivorous diet of their ancestors.
The dog gardens obtained food from the village and, as a result, defended the territory of other animals, which benefited the human being, it could be said that this symbiosis allowed an approximation between the two species, which resulted in the domestication of the dog.
Coppinger’s theory indicates that 15,000 years ago, canids approached villages in search of easy food, so more docile and confident specimens may be more likely to access food than those who distrust humans.Thus, the most sociable and docile wild dogs have greater access to resources, leading to greater survival and involving new generations of docile dogs.This theory rejects the idea that it was the man who first approached the dog with the intention of domesticating it.
Today we know more than 300 breeds of dogs, some of which are standardized, because at the end of the 19th century Victorian England began to develop eugenics, a science that studies genetics and aims to improve species. [3] is as follows:
Fr.eugesia, and gr.??’well ‘and’ genesis ‘.’
1.f.Med.Study and application of biological inheritance laws to improve the human species.
Each breed has certain morphological characteristics that make it unique and it is the breeders who, throughout history, have combined behavioral and temperamental characteristics to develop new breeds that could provide humans with one or another utility.A genetic study of more than 161 breeds indicates that Basenji is the oldest dog in the world, of which all the dog breeds we know today have developed.
Eugenics, fashions and changes in the standards of different breeds have made beauty a determining factor in today’s dog breeds, leaving aside the consequences of well-being, health, character or morphology that may entail.
Discover in Animal Expert how dog breeds have changed with photos of before and today.
In Central Europe remains of dogs other than wolves have been found, belonging to fruitless attempts to tame wolves during the last ice age, 30 to 20,000 years ago, but it was only at the beginning of agriculture that the domestication of the first group of dogs became something really palpable.We hope this article provides interesting facts about the early origins of canids and early carnivores.
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