which domestic dog puppies adopt a dual identity, something todayâs wolf cubs seem incapable of. This capacity for the dog to adopt a dual identityâpart human and part wolfâis essential in accounting for the transition from primitive pet to truly domesticated animal. Perhaps it is the key attribute that singled out the grey wolf, from all the other possible candidates among the canids, for successful domestication. Perhaps its unique transformation to domestic animal has little to do with its ability to form packs or to communicate by body language (neither of which, as we have already seen, are traits unique to the grey wolf). Perhaps the grey wolf was simply able to form social bonds with humans, whereas other canids were not.
It is entirely possible that some accident of geneticsâsome sort of mutationâgave a few wolves the ability to socialize to two species simultaneously, to direct their social behavior to mankind and to other wolves, while their sexual preferences remained steadfastly directed at their own species. Until man came along, this hereditary change would have been of no advantage (or disadvantage) to the wolves that carried it. But as hunter-gatherer societies in places where there were also wolves developed to the point where the âpetâ-keeping habit became established, those local wolves with the altered socialization mechanism would have been pre-adapted for coexistence with mankind. On the one hand, then, societies that serendipitously happened to adopt wolves in the locations where their socialization mechanisms had been altered were presented with animals that could breed successfully within a man-made environment. On the other hand, societies that fixed on canids such as the golden jackal as their prototype pet of choice could tame them as individuals but could never succeed in breeding them, because their socialization mechanisms were still suited only to their original wild lifestyle.
What evidence is there for the existence of these special, easily socialized wolves? Simple: It is all around us, in the form of modern dogs.They are the only living descendants of the socializable wolves that, I suspect, existed twenty thousand years ago. Modern wolves are, of course, quite different from the earlier wolves Iâm describing; todayâs grey wolves are very difficult to tame, let alone socialize to people. Even tame wolves do not seem to form specific attachments to individual humans. Modern wolves, however, are not the descendants of the wolves that became dogs.
Todayâs dogs are, if my hypothesis is correct, the descendants of a small fraction of the original wolf population, products of a mutation that separated these wolves from the majority of their species by allowing them to socialize with both humans and other wolves. While this small fraction of wolves went on to live among humans and eventually turned into dogs, most wolves could never follow this path, because they displayed a natural wariness of man. In essence, what I am suggesting is that this ability to socialize to humans is not, as it is usually assumed, a consequence of domestication. Instead, I conceive it as the crucial, if accidental, pre-adaptation that opened the door to domestication in the first place.
The key difference between a dog and a wolf is not what it looks like but how it behaves, and especially how it behaves toward people. DNA and bones cannot tell us how these early dogs behaved or what their everyday interactions with people were actually like. Domestication affects outward appearance, for sure, but at the very earliest stages this is incidental. What defines an animal such as a dog is what goes on under the skinâspecifically, how the behavior of its ancestors has been altered to enable it to live comfortably in man-made environments.
Although we know a great deal about the behavior of todayâs American timber wolves and an increasing amount about the relict
It is entirely possible that some accident of geneticsâsome sort of mutationâgave a few wolves the ability to socialize to two species simultaneously, to direct their social behavior to mankind and to other wolves, while their sexual preferences remained steadfastly directed at their own species. Until man came along, this hereditary change would have been of no advantage (or disadvantage) to the wolves that carried it. But as hunter-gatherer societies in places where there were also wolves developed to the point where the âpetâ-keeping habit became established, those local wolves with the altered socialization mechanism would have been pre-adapted for coexistence with mankind. On the one hand, then, societies that serendipitously happened to adopt wolves in the locations where their socialization mechanisms had been altered were presented with animals that could breed successfully within a man-made environment. On the other hand, societies that fixed on canids such as the golden jackal as their prototype pet of choice could tame them as individuals but could never succeed in breeding them, because their socialization mechanisms were still suited only to their original wild lifestyle.
What evidence is there for the existence of these special, easily socialized wolves? Simple: It is all around us, in the form of modern dogs.They are the only living descendants of the socializable wolves that, I suspect, existed twenty thousand years ago. Modern wolves are, of course, quite different from the earlier wolves Iâm describing; todayâs grey wolves are very difficult to tame, let alone socialize to people. Even tame wolves do not seem to form specific attachments to individual humans. Modern wolves, however, are not the descendants of the wolves that became dogs.
Todayâs dogs are, if my hypothesis is correct, the descendants of a small fraction of the original wolf population, products of a mutation that separated these wolves from the majority of their species by allowing them to socialize with both humans and other wolves. While this small fraction of wolves went on to live among humans and eventually turned into dogs, most wolves could never follow this path, because they displayed a natural wariness of man. In essence, what I am suggesting is that this ability to socialize to humans is not, as it is usually assumed, a consequence of domestication. Instead, I conceive it as the crucial, if accidental, pre-adaptation that opened the door to domestication in the first place.
The key difference between a dog and a wolf is not what it looks like but how it behaves, and especially how it behaves toward people. DNA and bones cannot tell us how these early dogs behaved or what their everyday interactions with people were actually like. Domestication affects outward appearance, for sure, but at the very earliest stages this is incidental. What defines an animal such as a dog is what goes on under the skinâspecifically, how the behavior of its ancestors has been altered to enable it to live comfortably in man-made environments.
Although we know a great deal about the behavior of todayâs American timber wolves and an increasing amount about the relict
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