Dog Domestication

1. The domestication of the dog began with the domestication of the gray wolf (Canis lupus) and this was several ten thousand years ago. It was used with a guard animal, a source of food, fur, andtrained to perform some tasks. Using mitochondrial DNA it was found out that wolves and dogs split into two different species around 100,000 years ago. If humans had something to do with this it isstill s mystery.

Earliest link to the dog is the Eocene Miacids some 56 to 38 million years ago. The dog-like evolved from this animal was the Canoidea.

Although the actual domesticateddog is believed to have been domesticated about 30,000 years ago even though the oldest evidence for a broader relationship, a working relationship, is at the Bonn-Oberkassel site, 14,000 years ago.The story of dog domestication is still in transition itself.

2. Natural selection simply requires certain conditions. When they occur, natural selection will occur:

• There must bevariation within the population of organisms.
• That variation must be heritable.
• There must be differences in reproductive success based on those heritable differences.
The onlydifference between natural selection and artificial selection is whether the difference in reproductive success is driven by naturally occurring processes, or whether the selection is imposed by humans.3. Artificial Selection has played a huge role in the domestication of the dog. we choose dogs with certain traits and breed them together to accentuate the traits we desire.
All moderndomestic dogs, no matter how different they are in appearance, from Chihuahua to Great Dane, all belong to the same species, Canis lupus familiaris. The originator of today’s domestic dog was the gray wolf(Canis lupus), and by incrementally selecting for certain traits, we have created a variety of dogs that differ widely in appearance and temperament.
The migration of people around the planet...