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Related: About this forumRuff News: Man’s Best Friend May Have Been Domesticated Twice
Source: Smithsonian.com
Ruff News: Mans Best Friend May Have Been Domesticated Twice
Where did Fido come from? Its complicated
By Erin Blakemore
smithsonian.com
June 2, 2016 4:40PM
It's well-known that humans and dogs go way back. But how far back? The debate still rages over the timing of that fateful day when humans teamed up with canine companions. And the answer may have just gotten more complicated. A new study suggests that humans in two different parts of the world independently domesticated wolves to produce our lovable modern pooches, Ed Yong reports for The Atlantic.
The study, published in the journal Science, was what the researchers call a dogged investigation of domestication. The international team of scientists sequenced DNA of ancient and modern dogs and found that two different wolf populations on two different sides of Eurasia may both be ancestors of the modern canine.
This means that humans in both Asia and Europe may have separately tamed dogsand could solve longstanding confusion over why modern-day dogs seem to be a mixture of both East and West. Evidence from the dog genome suggests that they were domesticated around 15,000 years ago in Asia. Yet researchers have uncovered even older archaeological evidence of dogs in Europe.
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In this case, mitochondrial DNA analysis showed that both Eastern and Western dogs split from one another at dates that are earlier than both the oldest Eastern and Western archaeological evidence of dogs. The only explanation is that dogs were domesticated independently in both the East and West.
At some point, however, Western dogs seem to have dwindled. Domesticated Eastern dogswho were brought to Europe by migrantsthen mated with the remaining Western dogs. This intermingling created an East-West hybrid that replaced the pure Western domesticated pooches. Meanwhile, the original Eastern dogs continued to breed in Asia.
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Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/mans-best-friend-may-have-been-domesticated-twice-180959297/?no-ist
Related:
A New Origin Story for Dogs (The Atlantic)
Genomic and archaeological evidence suggest a dual origin of domestic dogs (Science)
Warpy
(111,222 posts)Early kids were no different from kids now and would have been bringing home pups and kittens all the time, claiming "he followed me home, ma, can I keep him?" Sometimes they survived and the ones that did stuck around. The dogs got scraps and our messy eating habits attracted the cat's prey.
The intrepid hunter facing death to supply 10% of the group's food needs didn't do it. Kids did.
eppur_se_muova
(36,256 posts)Same goes for cats. There are several species of small wild cats that could have easily adapted to bossing humans around.
keithbvadu2
(36,722 posts)attack of the wild ocelot
Warpy
(111,222 posts)because the cat was wild, young and an inexperienced hunter who only realized he was too big to eat when she(?) caught him, then wanted to play rough since he seemed to be OK with it.
He thought it was pretty special, anyway. Bet it happened a lot with cubs who'd wandered off. Eventually they found smaller ones who were easier to live with.
My best guess says that keeping a little smilodon cub was frowned upon by everyone.
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)jtuck004
(15,882 posts)this at vets and dog clubs and other places for many years. Those two types of dogs, one from the mountains of Turkey, the other from Korea, have markedly different approaches to the world. The Anatolian an d the others fall into the Western category, friendly, obsequious. But the Jindo has a distinctly differing personality, much more like a cat in a dog suit. Only dog I ever had that evaluated the smallest treat while it was in the air. If she wanted it she is fast enough to take nearly anything, but if not, she watches it sail by, and often as not throws something over it, perhaps because it offends her.