In short, biologist Raymond Coppinger says that wolves( with lower flight distance) hanging around dumps in China or thereabouts, 15,000 years ago fed off the refuse freshly dumped before the other much further away wolves got a chance and interbred with each other resulting in dramatic different behaviors and morphological expression, particularly barking which became an asset for the village and the first working assignment inducing humans to look after them.
Coppinger has done genetic studies indicating higher genetic diversity in the far east than elsewhere. There’s more study to come but he thinks that the transformation occured over a human lifetime maybe 15,000 years ago.
Coppinger refers to the 50 year Russian study by Dmitri Belyaev, where foxes were bred based on lower fear and tamability. The results were incredible and there is now a population of tame foxes showing genetic, behavioral, and morphological differences.
Coppinger suggests that no one has ever tamed a wolf older than 19 days, and says mesolithic man just wouldn’t have the time or means to take care of the pups.
I’m pretty well buying Coppinger’s theory. I saw those cute foxes.
We learned about this in my domestication of animals class in college. I remember our prof saying it wouldn’t have made sense that humans just randomly took wolf pups home to take care of–because where would their motivation be. The scavenging theory makes a lot more sense to me, as well.
I’ve long read that it’s more like humans and dogs domesticated each other. Several influential scientists have long since suggested that dogs made us human. Check out “Animals in Translation” by Tample Grandin.
I’ve read that too. I don’t know how much weight the theory carries, but I read one study which suggested that dogs have been with us for over 100,000 years, and in fact Homo Sapiens out-competed Neanderthal, despite Neanderthal having several evolutionary advantages, because we were actually a human/dog symbiotic pair. Dog’s advanced hearing and smell freed up our brains to evolve into complex thinking and socialization, etc.
I can’t remember where I read that, so I don’t know if it’s a fringe idea or something that is plausible.
I saw that show too.
I always knew domestication was from selective breeding, but seeing such quick and dramatic results with those foxes just blew me away.
This reminds me of that thread on wolf-dogs a while back.
This overlooks the fact that humans have a long history of making pets of every sort of random animal/bird/insect they possibly can. Dogs were genetically and behaviourally pre-disposed to move from random pethood to full-blown domestication. (While humans have made pets of, and tamed, wild carnivores of pretty much every species from cats to hyenas to cheetahs to bears, I believe only dogs, cats, and ferrets have been actually domesticated - and there’s room to argue about cats .)
In how many of those predator species did anyone implement the multigenerational selective breeding that Belyaev did?
If the wolves hadn’t kick-started they process themselves would humans have bothered to finish it?
I’d read about Belyaev’s work with foxes several years ago in American Scientist. But one aspect of his work that hasn’t gotten as much press is that, in addition to breeding domesticated versions of species, he’s also been able to breed striking more aggression and downright mean versions as well. It appeared in a New York Times article over a year ago:
Actually, it should remind you of him. My aunt gave me a horror anthology (Stalkers) 15 years ago that contained a Dean Koontz novella about super smart, super hatedful rats that try to murder a woman and her small son. It’s called Trapped. Apparently he also released it as a graphic novel. I can easily see it turned into a movie.
The same reaction as many Stone Age hunters . Making pets of young animals seems to be a standard human behaviour. When the young animal grows up into an adult with a set of physical and behavioral characteristics which make them suitable for domestication, we eventually end up with a new domesticated animal.
Well, in class, the argument was that why would hunters take time off from their busy lives all of a sudden to do this? Plus, there’s fact that to actually domesticate a wild animal like a wolf takes several generations of breeding. The scavenging theory makes a lot more sense in this regard.
I thought that hunter gatherers had much more leisure time that we do. I remember reading that studies of current hunter gatherers found out that they basically work about 4 or 5 hours a day.
.)
. Making pets of young animals seems to be a standard human behaviour. When the young animal grows up into an adult with a set of physical and behavioral characteristics which make them suitable for domestication, we eventually end up with a new domesticated animal.