Your Opinions...

[jackie_a1]

Ok so a friend sent me this link some time ago and I have been meaning to bring this up in this forum.

What do you think. Did dogs descend from wolves or does this person have the right theory?

I won't discuss my opinions just yet just want to see what you all think.

http://www.nonlineardogs.com/100MostSillyPart1.html

Be sure to read all of the information.

[Edslaine]

Thanks. A very interesting read and something I've never thought of before. The first paragraph made me think - Surely there aren't many people out there who seriously think it's as simple as "having a wolf in your living room".

The points put forward seem feasible I guess. From books and film I've just always thought dogs were descended from wolves. This is the first time I've seen anything different.

[Kirty]

I just skimmed it, but it says domestic dogs didn't evolve from the wolf - but then says that domestic dogs evolved from a dog that evolved from a wolf!? It also says that most canids are not pack animals - what about wolves, wild dogs, etc?

[tarope]

In 1905 it was claimed that an ancestor of all GSD's living today had wolf's blood, this was never proved or disproved.

Does this mean I have a wolf in my lounge room GSD's do look a bit like a wolf and my GSD girl likes to lick me

[newfsie]

Well I read it that a dog type split into wolf and domestic dog.... " The dog and the wolf are related to each other in the same way you are related to your sixth

cousin, and in the same way we are all related to some other types of primates (monkeys and apes).

We share an ancestor, that’s all. But the dog most definitely didn’t descend from the grey wolf, any more than you descended from your cousin".But it lost me when it is supposed to be scientific and then mentions relationship comparison to cousins and then to apes see quote. The apes makes sense the sixth cousin bit does not, because that would still be same species with in the family, so that would make wolves related to our dogs.

Anyway interesting read. the other bits as about aggression in another part also made interesting reading

[Dame Aussie]

I see what the writer is getting at, but if a dog is descended from an animal that is descended from a wolf, then a dog is descended from a wolf....

[sas]

We already know the science behind dogs and wolves etc. as we have DNA. Discovery did a wonderful doco on it sometime ago and actually showed that not just wolves were involved in the creation of our domestic dogs, there were also Hyenia's etc as well.

Edited April 25, 2010 by sas

[Kirislin]

I dont think hyenas are related to dogs or wolves, they're more closely related to stoats and weasels I believe.

[casowner]

Sorry but my first reaction was that I know Quilette's did - sorry, but I couldn't help it

[Monah]

Pfft!!!

[corvus]

The Coppingers wrote a whole book about it that is currently sitting on my coffee table waiting for me to get around to reading it. From what I can gather the ideas about where dogs came from convince most people, but some of my friends in research didn't much like the writing style and some of the things said about wolves and dogs. I'll have to read it already.

I'm a bit behind on dog genetics, but last I heard they had changed domestic dogs to a wolf subspecies because of evidence from mitochondrial DNA, which has its own little suite of problems.

Personally, I think that dogs descended from wolves in that they descended from pariah dogs that descended from wolves. I do not think that dogs are anywhere near as social as wolves.

From a species perspective, technically dogs and wolves must be the same species because they can interbreed and produce viable offspring. Only problem with that is that so can tigers and lions. The species thing is starting to really annoy me. It's very arbitrary. It's got to the point that cryptic species are popping up all over the place now that we have the technology to look at genetics. I think the species concept is outdated.

As far as the non-linear dog goes, there's a lot of good stuff worth a look in that. Semyonova is sadly a raging pitbull hater and BSL advocate, but that doesn't mean all her ideas are rubbish.

[jackie_a1]

I personally disagree with her theories that dogs did not descend from wolves. Sas is right discovery did do a doco about it and I watched it with great enjoyment. Personally I feel her ideas contradict themselves and that (from what I can comprehend) she isn't certified (educationally/scientifically) enough to be able to support her theories. Her theories to me are just that [theories ] and have no evidential claim behind it.

In my own opinion.

[animalia]

Hi Guys. There has just been a scientific study on this subject. Through DNA they showed that the Grey wolf from the Middle east was a dominant source not the wolves in East Asia.

QUOTE-

Advances in genome technology have facilitated a new understanding

of the historical and genetic processes crucial to rapid

phenotypic evolution under domestication1,2. To understand the

process of dog diversification better, we conducted an extensive

genome-wide survey of more than 48,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms

in dogs and their wild progenitor, the Grey wolf. Here

we show that dog breeds share a higher proportion of multi-locus

haplotypes unique to Grey wolves from the Middle East, indicating

that they are a dominant source of genetic diversity for dogs rather

than wolves from east Asia, as suggested by mitochondrial DNA

sequence data3. Furthermore, we find a surprising correspondence

between genetic and phenotypic/functional breed groupings but

there are exceptions that suggest phenotypic diversification

depended in part on the repeated crossing of individuals with

novel phenotypes. Our results show that Middle Eastern wolves

were a critical source of genome diversity, although interbreeding

with local wolf populations clearly occurred elsewhere in the early

history of specific lineages. More recently, the evolution of modern

dog breeds seems to have been an iterative process that drew on a

limited genetic toolkit to create remarkable phenotypic diversity.

[shmoo]

The writer in that link talks nothing about the massive genome wolves have.

Humans have selected, for many many years, a certain look and characteristic from every litter that is born and given the ability to pass that look or trait. It's really no surprise we are so far from the wolf to make it appear unbelievable on the surface to the layman.

[corvus]

I think the point of the "dogs are not descended from wolves" argument is two-pronged. On the one hand, it's an attempt to dislodge the idea that we should apply pack theory models to our domestic dogs (pack theory models that are of questionable accuracy for wolves anyway). On the other hand, humans didn't "descend" from chimpanzees. We're cousins. Closely related species, but we didn't evolve directly from them. We just shared a common ancestor. I think that is what she's really getting at with this argument. The question you should be asking yourselves is "Did dogs evolve from wolves through artificial selection, or did they evolve from a different kind of canid that shared a common ancestor with the wolf?"

There is no doubt that dogs are very closely related to wolves. It is most likely that wolves contributed to the genetics of what we now call the domestic dog. But that's not to say that the wolf is necessarily the dog's closest relative in the wild, or that there is more wolf blood in there than anything else.

[felix]

I don't know who descended from who, but dogs and wolves are today considered to be the same species. Another possibility is that they evolved simultaneously from the same ancestor. I don't think hyenas are involved because they are not canids at all. They are separate family that evolved from civet-like animals.

Edited April 25, 2010 by felix

[Lhok]

I am wondering now about Dire wolves

Maybe our dogs are a divergent from that line considering they were cousins or something I was half asleep when I was trying to watch a doco about them

edit to make sense

--Lhok

Edited April 25, 2010 by Lhok

[corvus]

I don't know why hyenas are coming into things, here. They might not be particularly closely related to dogs, but their social system is fascinatingly complex and it is based on a dominance hierarchy. They also fill a similar ecological niche to wolves. That's they only reason I can see that makes it worth considering hyenas in the whole thing.

[jackie_a1]

The idea of the dog as a tame wolf has a huge romantic attraction for us. We imagine the great grey

wolf of the northern regions of the Earth, a powerful wild animal weighing 160–220 pounds, who

spends his days hunting deer, moose or elk. We dream of our own ancestors finding (or stealing) a

wolf puppy and raising him with lots of TLC. We imagine this pup growing up to be man’s friend and

companion, and bearing tame pups for us. After thousands generations of this, we supposedly

produced the dog as we now know him. We see a direct line of descent going from our own dog

straight to the mighty grey wolf we see on Discovery Channel. Wow, a wolf in our living room, what a

powerful feeling!

Ok so does that apply to owners of toy breeds? Min Poodle owners and chi's and the like? I'm sure (and correct me if I'm wrong small dog owners) that owners don't think when they see their dog asleep in the lounge room WOW a wolf in our lounge room. I think her theories are to broad and opinionated.

[Mrs Rusty Bucket]

Article has some good points and some daft ones.

For starters, Australian Aboriginals never had bow and arrow, and yet dingos probably came to Australia with them.

Dingos mostly live alone, except in places where there is plenty of food like Uluru, Fraser Island, town dumps, popular camp sites (ie places in the desert with permanent fresh water and a name on the map).

No more mating with hunters. Explain that one to our dingos.

Not sure about grey wolves, and ancestral links. Don't know how long it would take with selective breeding for friendliness to get a dog out of a grey wolf. There was a fox experiment, where foxes where selected for friendliness and it was very quick to get a tame fox.

"Dog as we know it today". Yes, what is that. Dogs have many roles. Dogs can cross breed with wolves, so they're pretty closely related to wolves. Certain sled dog types look very similar to wolves. And they don't seem to have been chosen for their help hunting, more like their help with transportation.

The worst thing about wolves and dogs, is a whole bunch of stupid harmful stuff about alphas and dominance is attributed to the way wolf packs work when in fact wolf packs do not work that way, and neither do dog groups.

http://www.dogstardaily.com/training/alpha-fallacy

http://www.avsabonline.org/avsabonline/ima...20statement.pdf

(check out page 3)