I would just like to understand why my dog seems to see me as her person and not another animal she must fight or escape from.
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Aggressive behavior towards humans was bred out of the animal along with other desired traits. This is done through animal husbandry and leads to domestication. A modern example is the Russian fox domestication experiment you can look up.
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We don’t know for sure, but I believe the most common theory is that they evolved from wolves that would at first hang around our hunter-gatherer ancestors waiting to finish up the scraps. Then this developed into a mutually beneficial arrangement with the wolves providing early warning of predators and hunting assist in exchange for food. Once you are at that stage it’s not hard to see how we got from that to what we have today.
Dogs evolved to live as pack animals. The pack would work together to hunt prey and it was important for the members of the pack to have strong bonds with each other in order to be effective and look out for each other. Humans are somewhat similar. Your dog sees you as the leader of her pack and as such develops a very strong emotional bond with you.
Selective breeding. Dogs started off as wolves who would approach human settlements and the people there would throw them scraps of food.
People began breeding them- selecting the ones that were most friendly and comfortable around humans. These traits were passed down and refined from generation to generation until they became completely domesticated. Furthermore they’d breed other traits they found useful which is why some breeds are suited to certain tasks- things like herding, hunting, retrieving, digging, etc.
Artificial selection. People kept friendly wolves as hunting assistants. By luck, the genes that determine friendliness happen to be heritable.
Hunters would prefer to keep the friendlier wolves as they are more useful. As the friendly wolves breed with each other, we artificially select the friendliness we have today
They didn’t evolve in the sense that they were naturally selected to be loyal and affectionate. They were unnaturally (artificially) selected by humans for generations for those qualities, and for other qualities. For example, the American Kennel Club has specific definitions of what a dog’s appearance and temperament are for them to be a member of a breed, like Golden Retriever, and if the dog doesn’t conform, it isn’t bred with other dogs of that breed.
In other words, dogs are loyal and affectionate because people made them that way over time, and humans have associated with dogs for about 30,000 years. What we have now is what 30,000 years of selective breeding can do to wolves.
Food! They know who feeds them and they’re nice to us humans because they want to keep it coming. That and they feel sorry for us.
Dogs are truly amazing. I love dogs!
The way I was taught is that there was early man and wolves. Both had similar prey and hunted in packs. Wolves that were aggressive to humans would be killed or pushed away. Wolves scared of humans would stay away. Wolves friendlier to humans might get close enough and not piss them off to the point of mutual benefits. The wolves get spare food and bones, security. The humans get cleaners, early detection, and could probably snag some scraps from the wolves too. Eventually this human wolf relationship caused a domestication and split in the species as desired traits were accepted and none desired traits wouldn’t become bred. Some what naturally at first, then accelerated by human action. I think dogs have been domesticated for 20k years or something. So that explains the further development of breeds and why they appear so different from wolves, in a way that only humans could do, with strict control over the lives of dogs, choosing who they mate with, and such.
Because humans have bred them that way. We don’t know exactly when dogs were domesticated by humans; we know that it happened at least 14,000 years ago, and some potential evidence showing over 30,000 years ago. Regardless, we have had dogs for millennia, since before we had written language. We have selected the attributes in dogs that are most compatible with us, like loyalty and affection, and have weaned out less desirable attributes. Sometimes this was deliberate, with dog breeders creating new breeds or specifically cultivating certain qualities. But a lot of this was humans just choosing dogs that were loyal and pleasant to be around. Dogs that are loyal and affectionate tend to be cared for by humans more, meaning they survive and have puppies, and that quality gets passed on.
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