Canis lupus hominis

This post from Archaeozoology lays out what we know about the origin of the domestic dog from the wolf.

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Although I know it bothers some people, I consider domestic dogs conspecific with Canis lupus. However, when I say that, I am not saying that domestic dogs are exactly like the big ungulate hunting wolves we all know from zoos and nature films. Dogs are no more those animals than those animals are Arabian wolves or the extinct shamanu.  However, we regard the wolves of the High Arctic and the wolves of the Northwestern parts of North America as the same species as those little wolves. Each has peculiar adaptations to its environment, and they are different animals. However, they are the same species. I don’t see why it is such a large leap to consider domestic dogs the same species as C. lupus, when we already recognize C. lupus to be a very diverse species in its wild form.

Just as the Arabian wolf is adapted to the hot and arid conditions of the Middle East and the Arctic wolf is adapted to the frigid wastes of the High Arctic, the dog is a wolf that is adapted to live with mercurial hairless apes that produce a lot waste.  It is simply another form of wolf that has adapted to a different environment.

I’ve also thought it a little weird that this reasoning is often mentioned for denying the dog as a subspecies of wolf. Because no wild dogs have reverted to the wolf phenotype and behavior, domestic dogs should be regarded as a separate species. However, feral dogs don’t become wolves, simply because they find scavenging far easier. Wolves and dogs have to learn how to hunt in packs, and if the opportunity never arises, then they never evolve that particular niche.

However, I think this is a bit of a canard. Everyone automatically wants to compare feral dogs with the wolves everyone knows about. Everyone thinks of those big game hunting wolves of northern Eurasia and North America. No one considers the smaller subspecies of wolf, many of which are quite similar to the Australian dingo– which is itself a feral domestic dog that has fully reverted to the wolf behavior and, dare I say, phenotype. The dingo isn’t that much different from the Arabian wolf. It’s not like the wolves of Ellesmere or Isle Royale, but that’s because Australia is more like the Middle East than the cold parts of North America. And there are no moose or caribou to hunt.

Then why do feral domestic dogs in Eurasia and North America retain the dog phenotype? Very simply, feral domestic dogs in those areas are living in an agricultural society.  That means that lots of food can be had without going on hunts or forming packs. And the dogs never evolve the wolf-like behavior or phenotype. It’s just easier to be a lazy dog and scavenge, and this is reflected in their retention of the dog phenotype and behavior.

If people were to disappear, it would not take many generations for domestic dogs to evolve back into wolves or at least wolfish dingo-types. They would evolve back into hunting animals.

So to me, it is Canis lupus familiaris, just as it is Bos primigenius taurus for European-derived domestic cattle and Sus scrofa domestica for domestic pigs.

I don’t know why this tends to launch certain people, but it is very common for domestic animals to be placed as members of the same species to which their wild ancestors belonged.

And no, I’m not saying that wolves should be kept like dogs. Wolves are different in certain respects. However, one can find dogs that act very wolf-like, and one can find wolves that are a docile as domestic dogs, like “Wags.”

I think that the original wolves were much more like “Wags,” because if wolves behaved exactly as they do now, there is absolutely no way that hunter-gatherers could have domesticated them. Domesticating the wolf had to be so easy that a caveman could do it. And that tells me that the ancient wolves probably weren’t the nervous and reactive species that we know today. It was our persecution of the species that selected for these traits in the wolf population, which is why wolves are so hard to keep.