Our Impact on the Dog’s Evolution

While studying ancient human archeological sites, researchers have placed the earliest domesticated dogs at 10,000 – 14,000 years ago (Sorry for the paywall links. I bought the articles a few years ago, and cannot freely distribute them.)

In those 10,000-odd years we have had an enormous impact on the evolution of dogs. In the earliest days it may have been a matter of favoring one dog over another because of behavior or appearance. At some point in time we started working together on tasks like hunting and foraging for food, which would have lead to one dog sharing in the spoils and then being better able to reproduce.

This lead to deliberately breeding dogs for specific tasks, such as herding, carting, killing pests, and of course, hunting. Early breeding was most likely based on suitability to task: “My dog is great at scenting. Your dog can run faster. Let’s see what their offspring can do.”

Many of today’s breeding enthusiasts claim that their breed has its roots in dogs used by the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans or other ancient societies. While it’s virtually impossible to say whether or not any of the Pharaohs actually had Pharaoh hounds, there is plenty of evidence that all of these societies used dogs and had either formal or informal breeding programs.

About 100 years ago, breeding dogs became an end unto itself and we now have a worldwide industry with what many say (myself included) has too much of emphasis on appearance and too little on behavior and health. (I also say that behavior is really part of health, but that would be another article.)

We know that dogs can read our body language better than our closest ancestor. This is most likely the by-product of 10,000 or so years of selection by humans. But what about those shapes? How does a single species vary from as huge as a Great Dane to as tiny as a Chihuahua to as simultaneously large and short as a Basset Hound?

A recently released paper has an answer to at least part of that question. Apparently a single genetic event is responsible for the stubby legs on dogs like the dachshund and corgi, and this gene is closely tied to dwarfism in humans. This trait apparently manifested on its own (in one dog?), and then breeders maintained this trait and used it for various tasks that where having short, stubby legs was an advantage.

Very interesting stuff.

Related Posts

1. Dogs Understand Human Gestures As Well as Toddlers (and Better Than Chimps)
2. Evolution of the Dog (redux)
3. A Dog’s Life?