Critters 101: The Human-Dog Connection
About 12,000 years ago hunter-gatherers in what is now Israel placed a body in a grave with its
hand cradling a puppy. Whether it was a dog or wolf cannot be known. Either way, the burial is
among the earliest fossil evidence of the dog’s domestication. Scientists know the process was
under way by about 14,000 years ago but do not agree on why. Some argue that humans adopted
wolf pups and that natural selection favored those less aggressive and better at begging for food.
Others say dogs domesticated themselves by adapting to a new niche – human refuse dumps.
Scavenging canids that were less likely to flee from people survived in this niche, and succeeding
generations became increasingly tame. According to biologist Raymond Coppinger: “All that was
selected for was that one trait – the ability to eat in proximity to people.” At the molecular level not
much changed at all. The DNA makeup of wolves and dogs is almost identical. A Poodle or
Dachshund is as closely related to a wolf as each other.
The dog evolved in the company of humans and cannot exist without them. Even the dogs living
“wild” depend on proximity to humans. The human-dog relationship has become so intimate that
biologist James Serpell writes “The domestic dog exists precariously in the no-man’s-land
between the human and nonhuman . . . neither person nor beast.”
Have you ever felt totally “in tune” with your dog? Well, scientifically speaking, you are.