Many people have misunderstood how grey wolves are and look. Apart from the myth of the predator threat they are imagined as monstrous. People think they are much larger than average humans. Most grey wolves today are of approximately human size. The subspecies on the Arabian Peninsula is even considerably smaller. People imagine them to have sharp claws too. In reality they have dog claws. In the same way their teeth are a larger version of a dog’s. To get space for them they have proportionally longer noses. This is how I tell the difference between wolves and dogs of similar appearance.
Also grey wolves’ pack behaviour is the subject of misconception. Grey wolves get sexually mature in one year. Then they are just a little smaller then adult wolves. Since the difference was not obvious yearlings were long mistaken for adults. Their bodies continue to develop until they are two years. Before people found this out the idea arose of them constantly competing for status within their pack. This based on a misunderstanding of how wolf packs form. People believed ostracised wolves joined to hunt better. So several unrelated wolves were brought together in captivity. This forced relation resulted in a great deal of aggressions. Which people then mistook for how they normally behave.
Naturally arisen grey wolf packs are rather families. The leading male and female are as a rule the parents of the others. This couple naturally lead since they are more experienced. Usually they are more mature too. Many cubs die from starvation during their first year of life. But those which survive leave when they are one to three years old. Under particularly good conditions three generation families can arise. Adult daughters then mate almost always with males which have left other packs. As a result competition may arise between them and their mother. In connection with this it happens the grandmother kills her grandchildren. Maybe because she does not think the pack can sustain them.
It is today relatively well-known that dogs descend from wolves. This was on Eurasia’s tundra-steppe at the peak of the last ice age. Its inhabitants had no bigger problem getting large animals to eat. However, meat from wild animals is not particularly fatty. We need a certain minimum amount of fat to break down protein. People solved this problem by eating organ meats and the fattest body parts. What would they do with all lean meat? Grey wolves don’t have the same need for fat to digest protein. So people took wolf cubs and fed them on this. When they became too large and unruly they were butchered for their fur. Single particularly childish wolves survived to adulthood. Such females could mate with wolves in the wild. If their cubs became too wild they were butchered too. A little by and by a population arose of naïve and compliant wolves. It has given rise to all today’s dogs.
It is worth noting their appearance also changed. Childish wolves became smaller with smaller teeth and shorter nose. Their tails curved up and some got floppy ears. Large white spots in their fur arose too. Similar changes can be seen in animals which were later domesticated. They are simply by-effects of the domestication process. I think the first dogs most closely resembled larger spitzes. Some of them have a skeleton which can be hard to tell apart from skeletons of wild wolves. At least if one does not have the skull which is proportionally shorter.
This early type of dogs spread through trade over the world. In warmer climate the dogs came to evolve shorter fur. Then one gets something which appearance most closely resembles a basenji. (But this breed is special since it can’t bark.) After the development of agriculture early dogs were introduced to Australia and New Guinea. There they went feral and gave rise to the dingo. Adult dingoes are not a toy. They are wild predators and should be treated as such.
Today it is not obvious that all dogs belong to the same species. I think the explanation is canids having higher mutation frequency. In nature many are selected away since few cubs survive. Moreover many characteristics can be disadvantageous in nature. Grey wolves in Eurasia and North America are for this reason relatively similar. However, if humans feed the animals more young can survive. The majority of all present-day dogs can also reproduce twice as fast. They go into heat twice a year instead of only once. This combination means more variation which can be breed from. They have not only been bred for appearance but also for talent for things people taught them. The most teachable are those bred to herd livestock. I think this is because herding is particularly hard to learn. In contrast, dogs’ temperament can’t be judged by their breed. It varies too much for that.
Unfortunately most present-day breeds are highly inbred. Otherwise they would not be as similar in appearance and talent. The price is hereditary diseases spreading like epidemics. Maybe worst is the French bulldog. It is so inbred this decreases its life expectancy. This breed can’t get healthier unless it is crossed with others. The population it descends from was simply too small.
A smaller number of breeds are not as inbred. Some has arisen in modern times trough repeated crossings between two pure breeds. Then the crossbreeds have been bred to function in several roles. Otherwise it is about landraces which arose without any planning. Consequentially they have some internal variation. I know one who has married into a family breeding such. Her sister-in-law has said they are no allowed to mate closer than second cousins. I think this sounds good if they don’t even do this too often.
Female dogs should not be mated to male dogs being so much bigger than them. Then their pups risk becoming too large to be born normally. Otherwise I have nothing against crossing different breeds. Neither do I have anything against dogs not following their standard. The most important thing to me is the owner being able to handle it. Some types of dogs attract the wrong owners. Large and muscular dogs are for example brought by young men oftentimes behaving self-importantly. This bad habit makes them unable to handle their dogs correctly. The dogs then become aggressive. Later this in turn has given such a bad reputation.
Dog breeds are not subspecies but populations. I consider the dog a subspecies of grey wolf. Same applies to the dingo. In addition there are at least eight subspecies of the grey wolf (Canis lupus). Other species in the genus are golden jackal (Canis aureus), coyote (Canis latrans), golden wolf (Canis lupaster), red wolf (Canis rufus) and Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis). All these species can reproduce with each other. But under normal circumstances they rarely do so. Under certain special circumstances hybrid populations can arise. Both red wolf and golden wolf have evolved from such. The red wolf descends from crosses between coyote and grey wolf. The golden wolf comes from grey wolves which had cubs with Ethiopian. The “jackals” of North Africa are as such its own species. In contrast Africa’s other jackals don’t belong to the wolf genus. It can be discussed which species the word should be used for. Certainly the word jackal originally referred to the golden jackal.
Interestingly, red foxes have been systematically domesticated in Russia. Wild foxes have been captured and their friendliness to humans graded. At one end we have foxes reacting with anger at people just approaching. At the other end are foxes standing by being patted. Between them are foxes accepting people to different degrees. Those most accepting humans have been systematically bred from. Please note that red fox and grey wolf belongs to different genera. Members of different canine genera can’t interbreed. So they could not cheat by crossing them with dogs. By breeding from the tamest people got a domesticated red fox. Their appearance has changed in the same way as described for dogs above. They largely behave as if they were dogs. However, they have some particularities. Like them habitually hiding food they don’t want to eat immediately.
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