Natural History

The first wolves were very similar to these Indian wolves, which are either Canis lupus pallipes or Canis indica.

When Westerners think of wolves, the tendency is to think the big game hunting wolves that live in the northern parts of Eurasia and North America. These are the wolves we know, because in Europe and North America, the most accessible wolves belong to these subspecies. We’ve simply been too good at killing off the wolves that inhabited the temperate and subtropical regions.

Our view of the wolf is partially distorted through this prism.  We do not consider the full natural history of Canis lupus when we think about them. Many aspects of that species are simply very hard for us to understand.  We think of the wolf within our cultural context, which conjures up the image of the northern subspecies.

We must consider the entire story of the wolf. My interest in wolves has since shifted from looking at the literature on the relatively docile wolves of Ellsmere Island to examining the literature on the much-less celebrated subspecies.

I’m looking at the little wolves. These smaller are actually hold more to the story than you might assume.

I have written at length about the Arabian wolf, Canis lupus arabs. I became interested in this subspecies when comparative studies of the dog and wolf genome revealed that dogs were first domesticated in the Middle East. 

I thought that the Arabian wolf could possibly be the closest thing to the ancestral wolf population from which the first dogs descended. I had to see what had been found about this particular subspecies.

So I perused the literature on the Arabian wolf, but I found no linkage between dogs and these anmals, except for some speculation that discussed how much dingoes looked like Canis lupus arabs.

But I did find something rather interesting, something I did not expect at all. It was information that had always been there, but I had always overlooked it for some reason.

It turns out that the first modern wolves were actually very similar to these smaller subspecies. Indeed, it is now accepted that the larger subspecies of wolf evolved from these smaller animals. The smaller and more slightly built wolves from the southern part of Eurasia are actually “more primitive” than the bigger ones.

The ancestor of C. lupus was Canis mosbachensis. It  was found in Europe until 500,000 years ago, when it was replaced by modern wolves.

Judging from its fossilized remains, C. mosbachensis looked a lot like one of the little southern wolves. Because of this similarity between C. mosbachensis and these smaller subspecies, it is now recognized that the smaller subspecies are actually “more primitive” than the bigger ones.

Which wolf subspecies have these primitive traits?

In addition to the Arabian subspecies,  the Indian and the Iranian wolves of the Old World and the Mexican, red, and Eastern North American wolves of the New World are thought to very closely resemble Canis mosbachensis. The current thinking is the red wolf, the Mexican wolf, and the Eastern North American wolf represent the earliest waves of colonization by C. lupus into the New World.  They retained these primitive traits that later disappeared in main or so-called “northern” branch of C. lupus, which mostly evolved into the big game hunting wolves we know so well. In the Old World, only the subspecies that represent southern branch held onto these traits.

That explains why red wolves look so much like Indian wolves. Both of them are subspecies that have these ancient  feature.  They also happen to live  in the warmer parts of the wolf’s range, which means they also have experienced similar selective pressures for larger ears and less profuse coats. We would likely point to such similarities as the result of convergent evolution.

However, it is possible that the similarities exist because they are both derived from populations of wolf that have retained those primitive features.

If we want to see what the first wolves might have looked like,  we should take a look at these smaller subspecies. The bigger subspecies have captured everyone’s imagination, but these smaller ones have captured mine.

Not only is it accepted that the first wolves looked a lot like these animals, most dogs descend from these subspecies. The study that found dogs to be of Middle Eastern origin did not specify which Middle Eastern subspecies they were using. It could have been C. l. arabs, but it could have just as easily been the Iranian wolf, which may or may not be distinct from the Indian wolf.

The Iranian wolf is the larger of the two subspecies native to the Middle East. It weighs up to 7o pounds. It is often grouped with the Indian wolf, but it may represent a distinct subspecies.

It often comes in a lovely golden color:

This color is very similar to what we see in so many domestic dogs, including “primitive breeds,” like the dingo, basenji, and lots of different pariah dogs.  This color is quite rare in other wolf subspecies– except for the red wolf, of course.

Perhaps it is from this golden retriever-sized wolf that the first dogs were derived.

Or maybe it is some other long lost subspecies that just happens to have been closely related to current living Middle Eastern wolf populations.

Whatever it was, we do know that dogs have a greater affinity with these less-celebrated wolf subspecies than the big ones that everyone knows so well.

And our comparative studies between wolves and dogs should utilize these “lesser” wolves instead of the big-game hunting specialists.

Big differences will be seen between dogs and those northern wolves. To not find those differences would be a big surprise. Dogs don’t kill moose, and the big wolves from Alaska don’t live in apartment buildings.

But if we looked to the more primitive wolves for our comparative studies, we would get a more complete picture of what it means to be a wolf and what it means to be a dog. The differences are actually more subtle and nuanced than you might assume, especially when you consider the main differences between an Arabian wolf and a dingo are coat length and color.

The first wolves were not the bone-crunching behomoths we know from so many nature films. They were more like these little wolves that everyone seems to ignore.

And it is likely that the first dogs were derived from wolves like these.

These wolves tell us more about the story of their species than the better known subspecies do. Those big northern subspecies tell us what happens when wolves evolve to hunt large animals in very cold climates. That’s about all they tell us.

The smaller wolves from those southern regions tell us so much about the past.

If only we’d just look at them more closely.