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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Dogs evolved due to thousands of years of selective breeding.
Genetic testing shows that dogs were domesticated by humans in two separate events at roughly the same time. Around 33,000 BC in East Asia and Western Europe.
There’s no way to know for certain, but it’s very possible that it started with humans raising some orphan wolf pups.
Around 18,000 years ago Dogs began to spread to human populations around the world possibly through trade. Once the Asian dog breeds reached Europe they entirely replaced the Western breeds implying the Asians did a far better job at dog breeding and domestication than the Europeans.
Dogs continued to breed randomly with wild wolves throughout this process occasionally re-injecting wolf DNA to certain breeds.
Dogs were bred to keep personality characteristics of Wolf puppies throughout their entire lives. This makes them far more docile and playful than Wolves.
Humans figured out that the children of wolves had the characteristics of their parents in the same way that human children reflect their own parents.
Ancient peoples likely abandoned or killed puppies from liters that showed negative characteristics so that only the desirable characteristics remained and bred. This may seem harsh by our standards today, but keep in mind these weren’t modern dogs. These were wild animals and the aggressive ones could attack and severely injure or kill humans and children.
Wolves are pack animals and we used this to our advantage by manipulating the dogs behavior for our benefit. They see humans as the leaders of the pack rather than a threat.
Most dog breeds we recognize didn’t even get bred until the Victorian era. During this era urbanization reduced the need for hunting and farm dogs while dog fighting was made illegal in England. This lead to a surplus of pup and dog shows and dog breeding became very common place.
So called ‘lap dogs’ were breed that were much smaller and better suited for living in an urban home.
One thing I don’t see answers going into that I am also curious about if anyone knows.. how did we start to get the level of differentiation between different breeds that we have today from wolves? I’m having a hard time understanding how selective breeding starts producing things like a pug or dachshund. Even a shepherd vs a lab, how do you really get that much of a difference over time?
Dogs have been with humans for longer than any other animal and we are both pack omnivores with similar social structures so we understand each other
Also whilst dogs have adapted to humans, we’ve also adapted to them. We act like canids more than we act like other primates
Along with what everyone else has said, we also have a lot of similarities. We wear our prey down, our facial emotions are pretty much the same so we understand what each other are feeling, we like small “dens”, live in groups, roam and hunt, then come back. They’re the closest animal of their “type” to us so we just naturally bonded over time.
Co-evolution. They made us what we are, socially. Without dogs we’d have primate social dynamics (which aren’t very cool)
Are there more dogs or wolves in the world? It’s been a VERY successful strategy from a Darwinian perspective. Same with chickens, sheep, and cows. Some unusually calm wild Dogs likely were allowed to hang around human camps for protection and warning but were selectively bred for loyalty and affection.
Dogs that were loyal and affectionate got protection, food, and care from humans. They had babies that reinforced those traits, through the generations. Those that didn’t, stayed wild as wolves.
That said, go say hi to a pack of rez dogs or similar and you’ll see that dogs are predisposed to be socialized to humans, but aren’t intrinsically and automatically socialized to humans.
Dogs are the earliest of all domesticated animals, beating goats by 5,000 years.
Probably in their nature.
Domestication happened in stages.
Step 1: Wolves. Wolves have natural social instincts that let them work together as a pack. They don’t easily extend this to non-family members unless it’s to take a mate.
Step 2: Scavenging. Just as foxes and raccoons take human scraps today, early dogs scavenged from human leftovers. Dogs that were too aggressive got killed because they were too much of a danger and dogs that were too timid missed out on potential food. The calm and confident dogs ate and thrived, slowly becoming more and more friendly towards humans.
Step 3: Early domestication. Some dogs became friendly enough to be useful. Useful dogs were intentionally fed and given shelter. These beloved companions often guarded the home and helped with the hunt. Being intentionally fed and sheltered gave these dogs a big advantage over their scavenging neighbors, so these most friendly and useful traits thrived in the dog population even though they weren’t being intentionally bred.
Step 4: Selective breeding. People figured out that the puppies of a good dog would be more likely to be good dogs. People started intentionally selecting which dogs they wanted to breed together to propagate useful qualities—breed together 2 great hunting dogs and raise the pups to be the next generation of hunting dogs. Breed together 2 watchful guardians to get pups to guard the family. Intentionally cross a fierce little dog with a strong digger to get a dog to dig out fox and badger burrows. Each generation, the best dogs for various purposes were bred together and had their puppies distributed. This eventually created dog breeds.
Fun fact: many dogs today never got that final step of selective breeding. These dogs, sometimes called village dogs or landrace dogs, still thrive in many parts of the world. They live as pets or street dogs, allowed to go where they wish and breed randomly.
Humans and dogs have been co-evolving together for like, a really really long time. We’re talking tens of thousands of years, since the Paleolithic era when humans were still cavemen chasing animals with sticks. Back then, a tentative alliance formed between some wolves, who realized they could get free food from the leftover scraps from human kills, and some humans, who realized that having the wolves hanging around gave an early warning system against approaching threats (because wolves would notice and growl).
Because the relationship was beneficial to both, it grew stronger over time, with the friendliest humans and wolves who were best able to work together flourishing. And because both of our species are social pack animals, we both already had a framework for working closely together as others; we just needed to learn to see each other as part of the same pack. Fast forward a couple thousand years, and you’ve got the makings of a great team: Humans (the brains of the operation) selectively breeding dogs for specific tasks and telling them what to do, and dogs (the nose and paws of the equation) hugely optimizing human hunting, herding, and guarding; the two species emotionally bonded together as family.
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