Evolution of Domestic Dogs
There’s no mystery in the idea that during the very first stage of man’s occupation of this planet, he befriended and lived with some kind of primitive canine ancestor of our modern dog, thus the evolution of domestic dogs.
The dog was wild and abandoned for generations in the old Oriental nations and generally among the early Mongolians. There was no attempt to coax it into human company or train it to be submissive.
Most likely, the animal was little more than an oddly mild jackal or a sick wolf who had been forced by its friends to flee the wild pack’s ravaging prey in search of safety. One can easily imagine how the relationship would have started if any hapless wolf had been carried home by early hunters to be cared for and raised by the women and kids.
In exchange for the dog’s assistance in keeping him safe from wild animals and in watching over his flock of sheep and goats, he gave the animal a portion of his food, a place in his home, and eventually came to trust and care for it.
Ancestry
We don’t find any different variety of canine form until we look at the records of the higher civilizations of Assyria and Egypt. The dog was not well-liked in Palestine, and both the Old and New Testaments frequently refer to it as a “unclean beast” with disgust and contempt.
It is significant that the only biblical allusion to the dog as a recognized companion of man occurs in the apocryphal Book of Tobit (v. 16), “So they went forth both, and the young man’s dog with them.”
It is difficult to imagine that dogs, with their many varied varieties and significant variations in their size, points, and overall appearance, could have shared a single ancestor.
The idea that the Mastiff and the Japanese Spaniel, the Deerhound and the trendy Pomeranian, the St. Bernard and the Miniature Black and Tan Terrier, and other breeds might have shared a same ancestor leaves one bewildered.
Skeletal Structures
The identity of structure in the wolf and the dog must first be taken into consideration in order to fully comprehend Evolution of Domestic Dogs. The skeletons, of the two animals can be compared to better understand this structural identity because they are so similar to one another that their reversal would be difficult to notice.
Seven vertebrae make up the dog’s neck, thirteen in the back, seven in the loins, three in the sacrum, and twenty to twenty-two in the tail. There are thirteen pairs of ribs, nine true and four fake, in both the dog and the wolf. Each one has 42 teeth. They both have five front and four back toes, but the common wolf looks so much like a big, bare-bones dog from the outside that the typical description of one might also be used to describe the other.
They have the same tendencies, too. While the wolf’s natural sound is a resonant howl, confinement with dogs teaches him to bark instead.
Despite being a carnivore, he occasionally eats vegetables and, when ill, grass. A pack of wolves will split up during a chase, with one party following the quarry’s trail and the other attempting to intercept its retreat. This behavior, which involves considerable strategy, is also displayed by many of our sporting dogs and terriers during team hunting.
Similarity
The fact that both dog and wolf have a gestation period of sixty-three days is another significant similarity between the two species. There are three to nine cubs, and they are blind for twenty-one days. After two months of nursing, they are able to eat partially digested flesh that has been disgorged for them by their dam or even their sire.
In terms of size, coloring, form, and behavior, all native dogs closely resemble the local wolves in each region. There are just too many instances of this most crucial event to allow for it to be dismissed as a mere coincidence.
Writing in 1829, Sir John Richardson noted that “the likeness between the domestic dogs of the Indians and the North American wolves is so great that the size and power of the wolf seems to be the sole difference.
It has been said that the fact that all domestic dogs bark while all wild wolf only howl as a means of expressing emotion is the one unfalsifiable argument against the dog’s lupine kinship. However, the challenge is not as large as it first appears because we know that bitch-reared wolf pups, jackals, and wild dogs quickly pick up the behavior.
On the other hand, domestic dogs let to roam free lose the ability to bark, albeit some still do not know how to do it as a form of self-expression. Therefore, the presence or absence of the dog’s barking behavior cannot be used as evidence to answer the question of where the dog came from thus the Evolution of Domestic Dogs.
Conclusion
We can now agree with Darwin, whose final hypothesis was that “it is highly probable that the origin and evolution of domestic dogs of the world have descended from two good species of wolf (C. lupus and C. latrans), and from two or three other doubtful species of wolves, namely, the European, Indian, and North African forms; from at least one or two South American canine species; from several races or species of jackal; and permutations thereof.”
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