Natural History

If all it takes for carnivorous animal to become domesticated is for it to scavenge off of people and eventually evolve tolerance towards humans to fit this niche, why didn’t man domesticate the black-backed jackal?

I find this species to be the biggest affront to the Coppinger model, because it is one species that has lived very close to man for tens of thousands of years. For example, analysis of “dog” remains from South Africa’s Western Cape Province that had been dated to the Later Stone Age turned out to be black-backed jackals. These “dogs” were living within hunter-gatherer camps in Southern Africa, but they were not dogs at all. They may have been on their way to becoming semi-domesticated, and jackals would have been great to have around. Leopards are known to stalk both people and jackals, and the jackals would have given an alarm call whenever they scented a leopard nearby.

Traditional accounts of dog domestication say that this is all you need.

But black-backed jackals do this very well, and they likely have been doing it longer than any other species of wild dog.

But no one has domesticated the black-backed jackal.

I think Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, a dog writer and anthropologist, who wrote The Hidden Life of Dogs, a book that is often misrepresented in the popular culture by those who haven’t read it. She often gets attacked for saying that dogs “marry,” but she did indeed have two Siberian huskies that formed a pair bond and were monogamous. When the male of the pair was given away, the female became open to suitors, which is exactly how wolves reproduce. Most wolves form monogamous pairs because it is much easier to rear puppies in this fashion, but there are always Casanova male wolves that come in and try to mate with females that aren’t part of pair bond.  When these bitches give birth, the pups usually die because their mothers don’t have access to the pack’s dens and regular nutrition.  However, in Yellowstone, these bitches have managed to rear their litters, creating super packs once the pups mature. All that dogs have done is adopt that model of reproduction. But it doesn’t mean that they are incapable of forming pair bonds.

Now, in her second book, The Social Lives of Dogs. examines human behavior more closely. In her first dog book, the work examines how her dogs relate to each other, but in this book, she examines how her dogs relate to humans, cats, and parrots, which all live in her house. Part of her book was in response to Coppinger’s work, which lays out a domestication theory that has the elements listed above.

But she had grown up rather unusually. As I mentioned, she is a trained anthropologist. Her mother, Lorna Marshall, was an anthropologist who wrote the first ethnography of the !Kung people of the Kalahari.  The whole family lived with the !Kung for parts of nearly two decades. (!Kung are a Bushmen people. The ! represents the click sound you are supposed to make before saying the K in “Kung.”)

It is from this perspective that she examines how dog domestication could have happened, using the relationship between the Bushmen and the black-backed jackals as a very good analogy for how dog domestication happened.

Using an entirely different methodology from Mark Derr, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas realized that domestication could not happen from scavenging and alarm-sounding canids alone.

There has to be some room for cooperative in the domestication theory.

Black-backed jackals do hunt cooperatively. They are somewhat aggressive with each other– but so are Jack Russell terriers. And Jack Russells have been used to hunt everything from rats to wild boar to black bears.

For this reason I reject the notion that black-backed jackals were not domesticated because they were more aggressive with their social partners.  Many domestic dog breeds, including virtually all terriers, have been selected for their scrappy dispositions. It’s well-known never to let more than two intact male terriers of certain breeds run around loose together in a backyard. You are simply asking for trouble.

I think that Thomas got the real reason why they weren’t domesticated.

They simply had no interest in socializing with people or hunting the same prey as people.

Socialized wolves definitely would have been interested in going on long hunts in ways that these jackals simply were not. And still aren’t.

We have had ample opportunity to domesticate this species, which lives in roughly the same areas where our species first evolved.  This is likely the first species in the genus Canis with which we had contact. It has proven to be very adept at living near people and scavenging off of them.

But none has developed spots or floppy ears.

None has become a dog.

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Contrary to popular belief, black-backed jackals play no role in dog domestication. There are no black-backed jackal/dog hybrids. Black-backed jackals are more distantly related to the domestic dog than the dhole and African wild dog are, and there have been no confirmed hybrids between dholes and domestic dogs or African wild dogs and domestic dogs. (Although the Bangkaew dog is said to be part dhole, I would like to see the DNA evidence).