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How Wolves Turned Into Dogs And How Dogs Are Valuable In Meeting Human Social Needs, Kurt Kotrschal
How Wolves Turned Into Dogs And How Dogs Are Valuable In Meeting Human Social Needs, Kurt Kotrschal
People and Animals: The International Journal of Research and Practice
A wealth of recent behavioral, neurobiological, and genetic results allows us to draw a new, comprehensive picture of the human-wolf- dog relationship. Dogs originated from wolves 35,000 years ago, mainly via selection for tameness. Wolves were probably spiritual partners and hunting buddies of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers over wide areas of Eurasia. Coming together and staying together was probably facilitated by the close ecological and social match between wolves and humans. Both are cursorial hunters and scavengers living in cooperative but relatively closed family groups, which selected for very similar mentalities.
Parallel selection for tameness (i.e., being “nice”) in dogs and humans …