Imagine living back in ancient times and having the gray wolf as man’s best friend. The scientific community, using today’s technology, strongly indicates that all dogs can genetically be traced back to the gray wolf. Yes, from wild dog species to your little labradoodle, all bloodlines point to the fact that the gray wolf’s DNA fingerprint is within your dog’s biological makeup. How did it come to be that this domestication took place between man and beast? This article is just one theory as to how the gray wolf became man’s best friend, from domestication of the wild wolf to the many dog breeds of today.
Domestication of the Wild Gray Wolf
The story of wolf domestication could possibly date back to a single dwelling cave and a lone family hunting and gathering to simply stay alive. The common theory for domestication of the gray wolf is often linked to the human aspect of our character: a baby cub is abandoned by its mother and taken in and raised by humans. When a cub lacks a combination of instinct and learned behavior, the chances of it adhering to a new family ‘pack’ are greater as far as success rate is concerned.
The instinctual behavioral patterns of a wolf includes a “fight or flight” mechanism science has termed “flight distant.” This is how it works. Any given wolf pup around two weeks of age goes from being curious to being fearful. This fearfulness is the fight or flight response that even humans carry. The intensity of the fight or flight response is what scientists gauge as the flight distance. For instance a wolf is spooked by the snap of a tree limb in the woods. If he flinches and takes a few steps his flight distance is short and he holds more curiosity. But if the wolf flees 20 feet up the hill, his fight response is more intense, meaning he is triggered more by a skittish behavior than a curiosity to know more. This means that the abandoned pup, within two weeks of life is about to develop his own instinctual flight distance. A characteristic manipulated by man before artificial selection ( captive breeding). So regardless of the hospitality of this caveman family, this wolf is going to run, it’s in his DNA.
The more practical thinking is that a wolf is a pack animal, similar to humans. This means that humans and pack animals adapt well to community living. Popular theory suggests that when man started to co-adapt into tribes or communities the wolf packs learned to follow for easy access to scraps and human waste. Remember not all wild dogs have the same flight distance so some would remain isolated from humans while the more curious would linger. From this point the split in species begins because the more wild solitude animals would still breed within the pack (natural selection), while the more curious would start breeding closer to the human surroundings. This is where the split in species and behavior starts to domesticate. Some packs remain introverted while some evolve with a more trusting, extraverted temperament, so starts the evolution of the gray wolf becoming man’s best friend.
The Link Between the Gray Wolf & Dog Breeds of Today
Here comes the last piece to the domestication puzzle. How did that gray wolf transform into all the dog breeds of today? Back 30,000 to 40,000 years ago we see the instinctual ‘flight distance’ play a part in the wolf evolving into a less ferocious beast and into a more curious and trusting creature. The science proves that this quick genetic change happens within three generations of breeding. Scientists say Adrenaline, the fight or flight hormone, and melanin, the skin and fur hormone are chemically connected so they change together. This is why the entire physical characteristics changed so fast once the wolf became domesticated. It’s called Characteristic Response. Science proves this quick genetic change happens within three generations of breeding. That means once those curious wolves branch off from the pack and breed with similar temperament wolves, within the third generation those pups would be less wild and more tame in behavior, characteristics, size and shape.
If you look past the three generations and tally up what these breeding cycles would generate many years down the domestication path, this should start to paint a picture as to how the gray wolf became man’s best friend. When you look at the big picture, breeding a dog to establish new traits is a fairly fast transaction of genetics. Quick genetic changes evolve the dog towards a desired characteristic or behavior fairly quickly in the genetic manipulation process. So to answer the question, how did that gray wolf transform into all the dog breeds of today, science says through artificial selection and continuation of breeding in the desired trait.
From the great and powerful gray wolf, to the many breeds of today, the gray wolf became man’s best friend through an evolution of genetic circumstances. The more curious, opportunistic packs of gray wolves, would have lingered outside of tribal communities, adapting to opportunistic motives. The more flight distant, wild wolf would have remained distant and isolated away from human populations. Through natural breeding practices in the wild, and a relatively fast characteristic response, the gray wolf packs that adapted to human interaction, would evolve into a more domesticated wild dog. Then further into the process, with the help of human manipulation, the gray wolf gradually transformed into the breeds we know and love today.
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