Natural Science Forum / Biology / Biology / February 2004

A few days ago I watched a NOVA program on the variety of dogs with
talk of their evolution from that of wolves. Quite an interesting
program. However there are very many gaps of logic in the discussion
of how dogs came from wolves.

There was proffered the usual old theory that wolf babies make nice
pets and hominids would have come upon wolf babies and raised them in
their living camps.

Then there was a scientist who proffered a different theory suggesting
that dumpsites of early humans was a place to pick up easy food for
those wolves tolerant of human nearby prescence.

I am going to offer a third theory which sort of incorporates the
above two. Let me call the above by their main mechanism. The first is
that of "Baby Pet" theory
and the second would be called the "Dumpsite" theory.

My theory would be called the "First Domesticated Farm Animal" theory.

The logical gap in theories one and two is that they confer little to
no advantage to the hominids or early humans involved, unless you want
to say that having a pet confers advantage over disadvantage of the
time spent on the pet, or as in the dumpsite theory that of the
spectacle of semiwolves near camp is some sort of advantage.

My theory of "First Domesticated Animal" as the mechanism of how dogs
evolved from wolves makes the most sense because it confers the most
advantage to hominids or early humans. Here is how it works. Hominids
or Early Humans found wolf babies and would take them back to their
camp. They are too little and young to eat now but as they grow older
fed from the snacks around the campsite (the dump) then they would be
large enough for food to eat.

Here I would have to research as to how easy or hard it would be to
have sheep or cattle hang around close to the campsite so that when
they got large enough they would be dinner. You see, I have the
suspicion that wild wolf babies are the animal that has the greatest
tendency to hang around the campsite than any other wild animal baby.
And thus, wolves would have been the first domesticated animal which
is rather surprizing because they are carnivours and most of us would
guess that the first domesticated animal would have been a herbivore.
But I doubt that any baby herbivore would have stayed around the human
campsite as steadfast as a pet baby wolf until it grows to enough size
to eat.

Remember we are talking of primitive and savage hominids and early
humans who when looking at pets see them more as future food.

Which brings up very many good questions. Was the Dog the first
domesticated animal? I think it was. I say this because the wild wolf
baby imprints on a human better than a wild-any-other-animal. And
because of this imprinting the baby wolf would have stayed nearby the
humans until it grew of a size wherein one of the hungry hominids or
early humans ate the pet for dinner.

The Dump theory is okay in that the baby wolf would have wandered no
further away than the dump. And when the wolf was of a eatable size
would have been enticed by some scrap food bones and then killed and
eaten. Sounds gory and awful but that is probably the true sequence of
events that lead from wolves to the evolution of dog. And as this
relationship continued, the semiwild wolf or dog had ears that drooped
and had a disposition to not run away.

We can measure the drooping ears of cattle or other domesticated
animals compared to their wild counterparts. As early man ate more and
more dogs for their dinners they wanted dogs that would hang around
the dumps and had droopy ears and not prone to run away.

And after hominids or early humans domesticated the wolf by becoming
the dog, they then got the idea that other animals such as cattle or
sheep can be domesticated for future dinners as well as the dog.

Archimedes Plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom where dots
of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies