It's clear that human companionship has shaped wolves into dogs.
A weird, perhaps silly question I've had for a while is: how have wolves shaped humans? Has human society in any way been affected by the structure of wolf packs? Did hairless monkeys form stronger tribes because of it?
I don't believe for a second that this deep interspecies friendship has been one-sided and hasn't brought psychological if not physical changes as much as the changes it's brought to wolves.
This is where evolutionary theory can be viewed through
the lens of coevolution or group selection (a group defined as containing both a selection of humans, and also animals and plants in varying degrees of domestication, as a whole system). This is in contrast to kin selection, which only accounts for genetic relatedness.
I remember in one of Jiang Xueqin's videos, he made the interesting argument that "grain domesticated humans" at least as much, if not more, than "humans domesticated grain".
I think the "wheat domesticated humans" argument is about changes to our behavior, our culture and social structures, rather than genetic change. It isn't domestication in the evolutionary sense. It would be like keeping zebras on a farm with horses and doing your best to tame and train them. You might be able to change their behavior so that they behaved differently from wild zebras, but it wouldn't be domestication unless you bred them over generations to produce a population that was genetically different from wild zebras.
Grains aren't very good food until bread is invented (probably from sprouted grains, originally). Seeds are designed to keep their goodness inside, and are very good at that containment. Bread in turn requires cooking. (I wonder now if there was a brief period of surviving on raw sprouted grains... which are far inferior because they mold so quickly.)
Wisdom teeth are far more valuable to a precooking human, who has to chew constantly to break down plant cells. The extra chewing causes stress that induces the jaw to grow longers, allowing space for the wisdome teeth.
We're basically at the "awkward teenage" part of evolving past raw-food diets.
Only if cat-people and dog-people don't intermingle.
But given how hostile many cat-people are (see sibling comment), compared to dog-people which tend to also enjoy the company of cats, I can imagine a timeline where this misanthropist branch of humans splits off, goes to live in trees and hisses at anybody that comes nearby.
Hmm, I've known a good number of dog people who dislike cats. Never read any stats on the ratio of cat-lover+dog-hater to dog-lover+cat-hater groups, though.
I watched a documentary on dogs that was cheerful until the last 5% when they mentioned modern day dog owners. The film speculated that dogs might be a considered like a parasite that infiltrates human families and causes them to stop breeding humans and instead only have dogs and cats. So if that’s the case, the evolution ends for us :)
I've heard this before. I think better term than parasite is an addictive drug since we created these types of pet dogs and indulge on them. I feel strongly the trend of dog ownership overtaking people having children, while real, is more so a result of modern economic realities regarding cost of housing and raising a child.
I think some dog people already are a different species - hanging bags of dog shit on trees would never occur to me for example. I’d hate to see what their Christmas trees look like.
This seems normal to me. I've never done it or even seen it - but it seems everyone exercises a slightly personalized disregard for the very society they are a part of these days
In the UK, it's incredibly common for dog owners to do this. When confronted about leaving the bagged dog shit somewhere they always say they're going to pick it up on the way back, yet the next day it's still there.
Modern British dog owners are incredibly irresponsible surrounding how they look after their pets and how they handle the pets mess. Covid made it measurably worse.
> In the UK, it's incredibly common for dog owners to do this.
That's wild. I've never once seen this in the US.
Obviously there are people who just don't clean up after their dogs in the first place, but to clean it up and then hang the bagged crap on a tree? Haha.
They do it a lot. My garden backs onto a public woodland and I can confirm it happens. Last summer when I tidied up out the back of my house, I found at least five years worth of buried dog turds in bags. Cleaning it up was not fun. I used a backpack blower to blow it all into line of "turd shame" away from the houses.
It looks a lot nicer out there now and I gave the trees a little prune (I'm a qualified arborist) so people know this is a "tidy area" and so far no more turds in bags.
I've never seen it in a tree, but I do see some owners leaving their crap bags on hiking trails and often forgetting about them on the return trip. I'd rather they let the dog poop in the forest instead of encapsulating it in a plastic bag until a Good Samaritan picks it up.
It's so weird that cats are still so feline, basically miniature tigers/lions but that dogs went so much off the rails compared to majestic wolves. Sure, some dogs are wolves-like but many just lot the plot: chihuahuas, daschhunds (my mom always had those: friendly but... not wolves-like), pugs, sharpeis, etc.
So many are just... Not badass? A wolf is badass. Cats are totally badass: they're natural born killers, hunting billions of poor preys yearly.
My parents are divorced. Father always had huge dogs (St. Bernard, Leonberg, Newfoundland, etc.) while mother always had tiny dogs (daschunds). I loved these dogs but I really hate having to take care of dog poo. So I'm a cat person.
As a bonus my miniature tiger takes care of itself and goes shitting where nobody can see it.
Dogs get bred for specific personality traits and to develop physical traits. My border collie was a maniac that just wanted to work all day every day. That herding part of his personality was extremely prevalent. Even if I tossed a treat on the ground, it never would occur to him to use his nose, he'd frantically look all around. Even if it was right under his nose if he didn't see it then it's as if it didn't exist. Likewise, from 1000 yards away I could make subtle hand jesture and he knew to go get his ball that was 1000 yards in another direction and bring it to me; over half our communication was body language and it even had context. Like if we were out somewhere and he was off leash, also 1000 yards away, I could nod my head slightly and he knew it was time to go and he jumped in the truck. Same head nod elsewhere meant something else. It's hard to explain but that was the most connected I've ever been to another creature (even my wife in many ways if I'm being honest, he never misunderstood me :)).
Likewise, I now have a golden doodle. It's like having a giant 5 year old puppy. They've been bred to be docile, kid friendly, playful, cute, non-shedding, and the perfect family/instagram dog. But they're extremely dopey when compared to a border collie.
I'm not sure what cats get bred for. Fur length? Ability to shit in a box? I'm guessing they've not been bred too much on their personality, which is why they are mostly the same and still miniature tigers.
Putting aside the greater variety of physical traits that you describe, dogs generally are more adaptable than cats. They are estimated to have twice the number of neurons and are much more malleable whereas cats feel more hardwired into a set of cat behaviours.
I’ve assumed that this greater learning capacity and malleability is both the best part of a dog and a vulnerability that can lead them to become highly anxious and dependent animals.
I’ve had both cats and dogs, and loved them both, but my goodness they are so wildly completely different animals.
Slightly tangential, but I think that dogs have allowed for some bad things to happen to us. Like, they are available physically, so if you don’t want to go insane in this society of ours where you are allowed to have physical contact with at most one person (your one and only partner), you can get a dog or five, or simply pet your friend’s dog or even a neighbor’s. Many post-agricultural revolution civilizations predicated on small family cells and strict property and succession rules would have been impossible without a dog to pet.
Are nuclear families a post-agricultural phenomenon? AFAIK, it's a much recent societal change driven by the industrial revolution (i.e. 300 years ago vs ~15,000 years of agriculture)
I don't really understand this comment. Are you saying dogs made way for nuclear families? Why would it be impossible? In India for example pet ownership is very low. Much lower than prevalence of nuclear families
> ... if you don’t want to go insane in this society of ours where you are allowed to have physical contact with at most one person ...
There are animals where the male and female only ever live together and are loyal (and not for the sake of the idea of loyalty, they're animals). It's not something speficic to some human societies.
> Many post-agricultural revolution civilizations predicated on small family cells and strict property and succession rules would have been impossible without a dog to pet.
That's silly. US Midwest farmers meet every detail up until "would have been impossible"; dogs are common but not ubiquitous, and farming communities are highly social.
(Cats, ironically, are ubiquitous on farms, because of their utility at hunting mice and rats.)
Ironically, you're describing the classic "cat lady" trope, only with the wrong pet type.
Seems plausible to me that our long relationship with wolves/dogs has modified humanity to be more empathic to other species of animals in general. Probably impossible to prove though.
I am rather surprised the article does not mention the shared hunting technique of pursuing prey until exhaustion as a possible link.
Many hunter gather tribes apparently employed this technique and it can still be found today in Africa with the San people.
Sharing food or stealing wolf puppies were probably part of the domestication but was this because humans possibly hunted alongside wolves? Humans possibly being capable of pursuing for longer distances due to better body temperature control through sweating while wolves being better at tracking.
Interesting. Counterpoint: since the canines can't keep up with the humans, are they only used to start the hunt? How do they know where the humans are near the end?
Until the dog is fully domesticated (OK, I'll go home and await his return. He'll bring me meat!), I don't know how they could cooperate on a many-hour hunt like this.
I used to wonder the same about falconry until I met a hawkmaster. The animals don't take prey far away where they'd be hard to find; they hover or perch near the humans in open fields, where they are trivial to find.
I also wondered why they don't just eat the prey. It's because that involves lots of effort; they know a human will shortly arrive with tasty food that isn't wrapped in tough fur. Basically, they trade a package of hamburger for a Big Mac.
> Counterpoint: since the canines can't keep up with the humans, are they only used to start the hunt?
Can you elaborate here? This is a weird fascination of mine (man+canine).
I walk long distances with dogs, here's what I've found and ruminated:
1. If I chase or follow a dog, I can chase them to exhaustion.
2. If I'm walking several miles with a dog, they tend to trot ahead of me and stop and pant and wait for me. Rinse, wash, repeat. Bursted energy/rest cycles.
I think your experience is one of conditioning or even breed type. I have German Wirehair Pointers which I keep in top athletic shape.
When we are in the field they will triple my distance travelled ( verified by GPS ). My outings are typically 8-12 miles and thus 24-36 miles for the dogs. Of course I need to keep them hydrated during this activity.
The behavior of running forward and looking back is most likely what we refer to as checking in. The dog is trying verify where you are heading/doing. In my dog's case they will range out to around 400 yards and then return to with 20 yards and run passed making eye contact as they run by.
I watch the genetic studies and it seems always presumed, in these articles, that dogs derive from wolves, not that dogs derive from siblings of wolves that derive from a common proto-canine ancestor.
The wikipedia entry considers the issue, presents data that are curious with respect ot the data in the Economist article, saying domestication is presumed from wolves roughly 14,000 years or so ago.
The Economist article hints at the curiosity, in mentioning pre-Colombian dogs in the Americas were distinct some 23,000 years ago, but then returns to the standard presumptions.
An article in Nature also considers the ancestry presumptions
The wiki article doesn't say domestication occurred roughly 14k years ago, it says at least 14k years ago, because that's the earliest definitive evidence of a domesticated dog. Here are the next two sentences from the wiki article:
"The remains of the Bonn–Oberkassel dog, buried alongside humans between 14,000 and 15,000 years ago, are the earliest to be conclusively identified as a domesticated dog.[9][7] Genetic studies show that dogs likely diverged from wolves between 27,000 and 40,000 years ago."
We have fossil records of wolves that do not seem much different from modern grey wolves. We do not have fossil records of ancestors to the grey wolves that share much of their DNA coexisting with the grey wolves.
Occam's Razor says that the posited ancestor of Canus domesticus that shared grey wolf DNA was... the grey wolf.
Across many cultures, dogs exist in a transitory space between life and death (ie Cerebus). Hinting at dogs being "transitory" from here (camp) and out there (the wilderness). Going between, getting scraps, staying for a while, leaving. You can imagine a process unfolding over Millenia of gradual domestication this way. You see it in Ancient North Eurasians myth across different cultures. Ancient North Eurasians are genetic precursors Eurasian, Western Europe, and American lineages where dog domestication originated, and arguably where many cultures have the deeper associations with dogs.
Interesting article, though is there really much new there?
Also it discounts the alternative hypothesis of some bright spark acquiring wolf pups and doing it purposefully because that would take 'weeks'. Weeks, you say?
Surely some enterprising hunter-gatherer had sufficient time on their hands. I can't help but think strutting around with a feared predator at your beck and call would have been the ultimate status symbol, and once you saw it would have to be the must have accessory for the self-respecting hunter. Aficionados would no doubt breed their stock amongst themselves to save the hassle of having to abduct more wolf cubs, which would naturally tend to the more suited specimens (friendliness being one trait as you don't want them eating the kids). Once it was realised what an incredible force multiplier they are in hunting and their utility in defence, any time investment would pay for itself many times over.
I find this no less as unlikely as thinking humans would let wolves help themselves to their excess food. Fascinating subject all round, no matter the reason. I hope they can figure out more.
> I find this no less as unlikely as thinking humans would let wolves help themselves to their excess food
Wolves can extract nutrition from animal tissue which humans discard, such as bone and the tougher cartilage/connective tissue. Modern dogs still absolute love bones.
They also have much better night vision than humans, sense of smell and hearing.
So, follow human tribes and pick off the remains when they move camp. Maybe eventually escalate to sneaking in at night. The human tribes now become a "resource" which the wolves will start guarding from other predators, such as bears or competing wolf packs. The humans eventually catch on that the wolves are providing a benefit at very little cost - food remains which they are not eating anyway. They even start to share kills - the wolves being better at tracking game while the humans finish the kill with spear/bow.
When animal and crop domestication occurs, you get another benefit - protecting the flocks/herds/crops from marauders. Especially at night.
I tried searching for similar incidents in the past[1], and I think the problem is that the title munging actually doesn't happen often enough for Hacker News to want to do anything about it. It's unusual that two front page articles were affected on the same day, but that's a small fraction compared to titles that passed through[2].
I don't know if Hacker News will pop up any extra confirmation to the submitter to warn that their submitted title were automatically edited, but I think that would be a better interface than relying on submitters and readers to fix the mistake after the article is already visible and ranked.
Whether any automated editing of titles actually helps with reducing clickbait is a different question.
It's common in fur farms that they breed the animals that are most friendly to humans, and in only a few generations those animals behave like very friendly pets, and killing them becomes more difficult.
A NOVA episode on dogs showed a Russian study where they bred the most friendly foxes with each other and did the same with the most aggressive (so extremes in both directions). The aggressive-bred animals were like that scene in I Am Legend where he checks on his infected rats. They were being fed, and they still wanted to kill their feeders. Kind of terrifying.
Me:
Not sure man. The closest relative to the dog is the likely extinct, Japanese Wolf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_wolf
Maybe they were very tame to begin with? Like the extinct Falkland wolf:
"There were no forests for the animal to hide in, and it had no fear of humans;[citation needed] it was possible to lure the animal with a chunk of meat held in one hand, and kill it with a knife held in the other"
>> “The only, absolute and best friend a man has, in this selfish world, the only one that will not betray or deny him, is his dog.”
Well, this is far from absolute, isn't it? :) There's a fair number of vicious attacks of a dog on his owner. Oftentimes pitbulls (are they even dogs or rather "creatures"?!), but other breeds do it too. So ... nothing is absolute :P
For another example of betrayal, one of the cronies in Katherine the
Great's court always gave a dog to his girlfriends whenever he started
a new relationship. Then if the dog ever greeted some other guy
familiarly, he inferred he was falling out of favor. He probably
learned that trick when someone did it to him, because he would let
the other guy know how he was rumbled before graciously bowing out.
I've gotten "BEWARE OF DOG!" pitbulls and rottweilers to befriend me simply by speaking kindly to them, and then over a period of days raising that to handsniffs, then petting.
Misanthropic dogs are taught that behavior, which contradicts 10,000+ years of training. They don't enjoy being assholes.
This is not to say dogs aren't naturally barky and suspicious of strangers; that is also part of their millenia of training. Lots of nice people are also suspicious of strangers. But aggressively attacking people is basically psychotic behavior for a social animal that considers humans part of its society.
The quote doesn't insist all dogs are infinitely loyal.
Your disgusting prejudice aside, I've never met a pitbull in public that wasn't sweet and loving - which reinforces my suspicion that the real problem with them is the sort of psychotic, uncaring owner they attract.
When I was young, it was Dobermans that were demonized, and likewise the dog of choice for assholes who abused them as mere security devices.
https://archive.is/yRObl
It's clear that human companionship has shaped wolves into dogs.
A weird, perhaps silly question I've had for a while is: how have wolves shaped humans? Has human society in any way been affected by the structure of wolf packs? Did hairless monkeys form stronger tribes because of it?
I don't believe for a second that this deep interspecies friendship has been one-sided and hasn't brought psychological if not physical changes as much as the changes it's brought to wolves.
This is where evolutionary theory can be viewed through the lens of coevolution or group selection (a group defined as containing both a selection of humans, and also animals and plants in varying degrees of domestication, as a whole system). This is in contrast to kin selection, which only accounts for genetic relatedness.
I remember in one of Jiang Xueqin's videos, he made the interesting argument that "grain domesticated humans" at least as much, if not more, than "humans domesticated grain".
I think the "wheat domesticated humans" argument is about changes to our behavior, our culture and social structures, rather than genetic change. It isn't domestication in the evolutionary sense. It would be like keeping zebras on a farm with horses and doing your best to tame and train them. You might be able to change their behavior so that they behaved differently from wild zebras, but it wouldn't be domestication unless you bred them over generations to produce a population that was genetically different from wild zebras.
Grains aren't very good food until bread is invented (probably from sprouted grains, originally). Seeds are designed to keep their goodness inside, and are very good at that containment. Bread in turn requires cooking. (I wonder now if there was a brief period of surviving on raw sprouted grains... which are far inferior because they mold so quickly.)
Wisdom teeth are far more valuable to a precooking human, who has to chew constantly to break down plant cells. The extra chewing causes stress that induces the jaw to grow longers, allowing space for the wisdome teeth.
We're basically at the "awkward teenage" part of evolving past raw-food diets.
I read somewhere that he could have change human sleep. Human can have a deeper sleep knowing a guard will alert of danger.
Thankfully we have those other animals, "human puppies", to counteract this :P
On a long enough timeline it’s possible that cat-people and dog-people evolve separately into different species
Only if cat-people and dog-people don't intermingle.
But given how hostile many cat-people are (see sibling comment), compared to dog-people which tend to also enjoy the company of cats, I can imagine a timeline where this misanthropist branch of humans splits off, goes to live in trees and hisses at anybody that comes nearby.
Hmm, I've known a good number of dog people who dislike cats. Never read any stats on the ratio of cat-lover+dog-hater to dog-lover+cat-hater groups, though.
> goes to live in trees
Mainly because they lost the ability to climb down.
A symbiotic relationship with Homo caniphilus firemen, then?
I watched a documentary on dogs that was cheerful until the last 5% when they mentioned modern day dog owners. The film speculated that dogs might be a considered like a parasite that infiltrates human families and causes them to stop breeding humans and instead only have dogs and cats. So if that’s the case, the evolution ends for us :)
I've heard this before. I think better term than parasite is an addictive drug since we created these types of pet dogs and indulge on them. I feel strongly the trend of dog ownership overtaking people having children, while real, is more so a result of modern economic realities regarding cost of housing and raising a child.
I don't know to what extent cost is stopping people from having kids. Many poor people have kids. And then they struggle to raise them.
Poverty breeds but globally fertility rates are declining. Economics isn't the only thing driving it but parasitic puppies isn't even in the debate :)
https://www.imf.org/en/publications/fandd/issues/2025/06/the...
I think some dog people already are a different species - hanging bags of dog shit on trees would never occur to me for example. I’d hate to see what their Christmas trees look like.
This seems normal to me. I've never done it or even seen it - but it seems everyone exercises a slightly personalized disregard for the very society they are a part of these days
Huh? Who does that?
In the UK, it's incredibly common for dog owners to do this. When confronted about leaving the bagged dog shit somewhere they always say they're going to pick it up on the way back, yet the next day it's still there.
Modern British dog owners are incredibly irresponsible surrounding how they look after their pets and how they handle the pets mess. Covid made it measurably worse.
> In the UK, it's incredibly common for dog owners to do this.
That's wild. I've never once seen this in the US.
Obviously there are people who just don't clean up after their dogs in the first place, but to clean it up and then hang the bagged crap on a tree? Haha.
They do it a lot. My garden backs onto a public woodland and I can confirm it happens. Last summer when I tidied up out the back of my house, I found at least five years worth of buried dog turds in bags. Cleaning it up was not fun. I used a backpack blower to blow it all into line of "turd shame" away from the houses.
It looks a lot nicer out there now and I gave the trees a little prune (I'm a qualified arborist) so people know this is a "tidy area" and so far no more turds in bags.
I've never seen it in a tree, but I do see some owners leaving their crap bags on hiking trails and often forgetting about them on the return trip. I'd rather they let the dog poop in the forest instead of encapsulating it in a plastic bag until a Good Samaritan picks it up.
Culture has been affected by Toxoplasmosis which humans are primarily exposed to through cats so this makes sense.
There's no evidence that Toxoplasmosis has that effect on humans
It's so weird that cats are still so feline, basically miniature tigers/lions but that dogs went so much off the rails compared to majestic wolves. Sure, some dogs are wolves-like but many just lot the plot: chihuahuas, daschhunds (my mom always had those: friendly but... not wolves-like), pugs, sharpeis, etc.
So many are just... Not badass? A wolf is badass. Cats are totally badass: they're natural born killers, hunting billions of poor preys yearly.
My parents are divorced. Father always had huge dogs (St. Bernard, Leonberg, Newfoundland, etc.) while mother always had tiny dogs (daschunds). I loved these dogs but I really hate having to take care of dog poo. So I'm a cat person.
As a bonus my miniature tiger takes care of itself and goes shitting where nobody can see it.
Dogs get bred for specific personality traits and to develop physical traits. My border collie was a maniac that just wanted to work all day every day. That herding part of his personality was extremely prevalent. Even if I tossed a treat on the ground, it never would occur to him to use his nose, he'd frantically look all around. Even if it was right under his nose if he didn't see it then it's as if it didn't exist. Likewise, from 1000 yards away I could make subtle hand jesture and he knew to go get his ball that was 1000 yards in another direction and bring it to me; over half our communication was body language and it even had context. Like if we were out somewhere and he was off leash, also 1000 yards away, I could nod my head slightly and he knew it was time to go and he jumped in the truck. Same head nod elsewhere meant something else. It's hard to explain but that was the most connected I've ever been to another creature (even my wife in many ways if I'm being honest, he never misunderstood me :)).
Likewise, I now have a golden doodle. It's like having a giant 5 year old puppy. They've been bred to be docile, kid friendly, playful, cute, non-shedding, and the perfect family/instagram dog. But they're extremely dopey when compared to a border collie.
I'm not sure what cats get bred for. Fur length? Ability to shit in a box? I'm guessing they've not been bred too much on their personality, which is why they are mostly the same and still miniature tigers.
Putting aside the greater variety of physical traits that you describe, dogs generally are more adaptable than cats. They are estimated to have twice the number of neurons and are much more malleable whereas cats feel more hardwired into a set of cat behaviours.
I’ve assumed that this greater learning capacity and malleability is both the best part of a dog and a vulnerability that can lead them to become highly anxious and dependent animals.
I’ve had both cats and dogs, and loved them both, but my goodness they are so wildly completely different animals.
I've watched a couple documentaries that discuss your question. I think they mention the aspect about how humans could become more agricultural.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt10462930
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/dogs-that-changed-the-world-...
Slightly tangential, but I think that dogs have allowed for some bad things to happen to us. Like, they are available physically, so if you don’t want to go insane in this society of ours where you are allowed to have physical contact with at most one person (your one and only partner), you can get a dog or five, or simply pet your friend’s dog or even a neighbor’s. Many post-agricultural revolution civilizations predicated on small family cells and strict property and succession rules would have been impossible without a dog to pet.
Are nuclear families a post-agricultural phenomenon? AFAIK, it's a much recent societal change driven by the industrial revolution (i.e. 300 years ago vs ~15,000 years of agriculture)
I don't really understand this comment. Are you saying dogs made way for nuclear families? Why would it be impossible? In India for example pet ownership is very low. Much lower than prevalence of nuclear families
> ... if you don’t want to go insane in this society of ours where you are allowed to have physical contact with at most one person ...
There are animals where the male and female only ever live together and are loyal (and not for the sake of the idea of loyalty, they're animals). It's not something speficic to some human societies.
> Many post-agricultural revolution civilizations predicated on small family cells and strict property and succession rules would have been impossible without a dog to pet.
That's silly. US Midwest farmers meet every detail up until "would have been impossible"; dogs are common but not ubiquitous, and farming communities are highly social.
(Cats, ironically, are ubiquitous on farms, because of their utility at hunting mice and rats.)
Ironically, you're describing the classic "cat lady" trope, only with the wrong pet type.
I am speculating that agriculture lead to human beings evolving to do the sort of labor that it requires, especially grains.
Seems plausible to me that our long relationship with wolves/dogs has modified humanity to be more empathic to other species of animals in general. Probably impossible to prove though.
It's hard to imagine how it could not have driven human evolution as well.
Misconceptions about wolf pack hierarchical structures have led humans to come up with misguided perceptions of being an Alpha, Beta, Sigma, etc…
On the plus side, it makes it easier to write off someone as a loser when they use any of those terms unironically.
I am rather surprised the article does not mention the shared hunting technique of pursuing prey until exhaustion as a possible link.
Many hunter gather tribes apparently employed this technique and it can still be found today in Africa with the San people.
Sharing food or stealing wolf puppies were probably part of the domestication but was this because humans possibly hunted alongside wolves? Humans possibly being capable of pursuing for longer distances due to better body temperature control through sweating while wolves being better at tracking.
At least that would be my take.
Interesting. Counterpoint: since the canines can't keep up with the humans, are they only used to start the hunt? How do they know where the humans are near the end?
Until the dog is fully domesticated (OK, I'll go home and await his return. He'll bring me meat!), I don't know how they could cooperate on a many-hour hunt like this.
I used to wonder the same about falconry until I met a hawkmaster. The animals don't take prey far away where they'd be hard to find; they hover or perch near the humans in open fields, where they are trivial to find.
I also wondered why they don't just eat the prey. It's because that involves lots of effort; they know a human will shortly arrive with tasty food that isn't wrapped in tough fur. Basically, they trade a package of hamburger for a Big Mac.
> Counterpoint: since the canines can't keep up with the humans, are they only used to start the hunt?
Can you elaborate here? This is a weird fascination of mine (man+canine).
I walk long distances with dogs, here's what I've found and ruminated:
1. If I chase or follow a dog, I can chase them to exhaustion.
2. If I'm walking several miles with a dog, they tend to trot ahead of me and stop and pant and wait for me. Rinse, wash, repeat. Bursted energy/rest cycles.
I think your experience is one of conditioning or even breed type. I have German Wirehair Pointers which I keep in top athletic shape.
When we are in the field they will triple my distance travelled ( verified by GPS ). My outings are typically 8-12 miles and thus 24-36 miles for the dogs. Of course I need to keep them hydrated during this activity.
The behavior of running forward and looking back is most likely what we refer to as checking in. The dog is trying verify where you are heading/doing. In my dog's case they will range out to around 400 yards and then return to with 20 yards and run passed making eye contact as they run by.
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I watch the genetic studies and it seems always presumed, in these articles, that dogs derive from wolves, not that dogs derive from siblings of wolves that derive from a common proto-canine ancestor.
The wikipedia entry considers the issue, presents data that are curious with respect ot the data in the Economist article, saying domestication is presumed from wolves roughly 14,000 years or so ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog#Taxonomy
The Economist article hints at the curiosity, in mentioning pre-Colombian dogs in the Americas were distinct some 23,000 years ago, but then returns to the standard presumptions.
An article in Nature also considers the ancestry presumptions
https://www.nature.com/articles/505589e
The wiki article doesn't say domestication occurred roughly 14k years ago, it says at least 14k years ago, because that's the earliest definitive evidence of a domesticated dog. Here are the next two sentences from the wiki article:
"The remains of the Bonn–Oberkassel dog, buried alongside humans between 14,000 and 15,000 years ago, are the earliest to be conclusively identified as a domesticated dog.[9][7] Genetic studies show that dogs likely diverged from wolves between 27,000 and 40,000 years ago."
agreed. in one of the articles linked, they further summarize
"Dog ancestors diverged from modern wolf ancestors at least 27,000 years ago"
which is still compatible with the two diverged ancestries sharing a proto-canid ancestor from which proto-wolves and proto-dogs both were derived.
Interestingly, the article about Belgian prehistoric canid dna says the genetics are so varied that they don't form a clear group.
We have fossil records of wolves that do not seem much different from modern grey wolves. We do not have fossil records of ancestors to the grey wolves that share much of their DNA coexisting with the grey wolves.
Occam's Razor says that the posited ancestor of Canus domesticus that shared grey wolf DNA was... the grey wolf.
I believe the linked articles number 10 and 11 in the wikipedia article have a counterexample to what you just wrote.
they do also emphasize that the "northern dogs" (huskies, malamute, akita?) are very close to wolves in shared ancestry.
It's Bob, all right... but look at those vacuous eyes, that stupid grin on his face - he's been domesticated, I tell you.
Hehe, shades of The Far Side.
One clue is in mythology.
Across many cultures, dogs exist in a transitory space between life and death (ie Cerebus). Hinting at dogs being "transitory" from here (camp) and out there (the wilderness). Going between, getting scraps, staying for a while, leaving. You can imagine a process unfolding over Millenia of gradual domestication this way. You see it in Ancient North Eurasians myth across different cultures. Ancient North Eurasians are genetic precursors Eurasian, Western Europe, and American lineages where dog domestication originated, and arguably where many cultures have the deeper associations with dogs.
Highly recommend the book "How to tame a fox" about the Russian fur farm fox domestication experiment
But see also https://www.the-scientist.com/famous-fox-domestication-exper...
> Famous Fox Domestication Experiment Challenged
> The tamed foxes, whose appearances changed with breeding, weren’t wild to begin with, say the authors of a new study.
Interesting article, though is there really much new there? Also it discounts the alternative hypothesis of some bright spark acquiring wolf pups and doing it purposefully because that would take 'weeks'. Weeks, you say?
Surely some enterprising hunter-gatherer had sufficient time on their hands. I can't help but think strutting around with a feared predator at your beck and call would have been the ultimate status symbol, and once you saw it would have to be the must have accessory for the self-respecting hunter. Aficionados would no doubt breed their stock amongst themselves to save the hassle of having to abduct more wolf cubs, which would naturally tend to the more suited specimens (friendliness being one trait as you don't want them eating the kids). Once it was realised what an incredible force multiplier they are in hunting and their utility in defence, any time investment would pay for itself many times over.
I find this no less as unlikely as thinking humans would let wolves help themselves to their excess food. Fascinating subject all round, no matter the reason. I hope they can figure out more.
> I find this no less as unlikely as thinking humans would let wolves help themselves to their excess food
Wolves can extract nutrition from animal tissue which humans discard, such as bone and the tougher cartilage/connective tissue. Modern dogs still absolute love bones.
They also have much better night vision than humans, sense of smell and hearing.
So, follow human tribes and pick off the remains when they move camp. Maybe eventually escalate to sneaking in at night. The human tribes now become a "resource" which the wolves will start guarding from other predators, such as bears or competing wolf packs. The humans eventually catch on that the wolves are providing a benefit at very little cost - food remains which they are not eating anyway. They even start to share kills - the wolves being better at tracking game while the humans finish the kill with spear/bow.
When animal and crop domestication occurs, you get another benefit - protecting the flocks/herds/crops from marauders. Especially at night.
I see this as likely as becoming more amenable to humans over a long time due to free food.
Falconers often acquire and train wild birds. With wolves abducting pups or adopting orphans seems like a reasonable path to domestication.
A good (if slightly dated) book on the subject:
How the Wolf Became the Dog by Mark Derr
This is an active, and fast-moving, research area and I'd be keen to read something more up-to-date.
HN title-destroying rules strike again. It's "How Wolves Became Dogs"
This rule is one of the worst ones, often resulting in nonsense titles or grammatical problems.
Another one on the homepage right now: "Samba Was Written". Ok, great.
Technically it's correct.
Why not get rid of this stupid title changer already? I don't get it.
Why is the how dropped? Is it automatic?
Yes. There are a few other title-mangle rules that HN has.
It's an attempted technical solution to try to remove / limit the amount of "clickbait" in titles.
It does not work very well.
I tried searching for similar incidents in the past[1], and I think the problem is that the title munging actually doesn't happen often enough for Hacker News to want to do anything about it. It's unusual that two front page articles were affected on the same day, but that's a small fraction compared to titles that passed through[2].
I don't know if Hacker News will pop up any extra confirmation to the submitter to warn that their submitted title were automatically edited, but I think that would be a better interface than relying on submitters and readers to fix the mistake after the article is already visible and ranked.
Whether any automated editing of titles actually helps with reducing clickbait is a different question.
[1]
How wolves became dogs (2026-01-09) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46553433
How Samba Was Written (2026-01-04) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46551531
Why I have to give Fortnite my passport to use Bluesky (2025-12-19) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46327832
How they clean the balls in a ball pit (2025-10-15) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45592984
Why we didn't rewrite our feed handler in Rust (2025-10-08) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45517240
How Spain put up wealth taxes (2025-08-16) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44927460
[2]
Majority of the submitted titles never had "how" or "why" to begin with, and sometimes the submitter catches the change in time, for example:
How to Code Claude Code in 200 Lines of Code (2026-01-08) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46545620
I didn't see any mentions of the title being edited here.
It is automatic on submission, but the submitter can go back and edit the title. I just forgot to do so.
It's common in fur farms that they breed the animals that are most friendly to humans, and in only a few generations those animals behave like very friendly pets, and killing them becomes more difficult.
A NOVA episode on dogs showed a Russian study where they bred the most friendly foxes with each other and did the same with the most aggressive (so extremes in both directions). The aggressive-bred animals were like that scene in I Am Legend where he checks on his infected rats. They were being fed, and they still wanted to kill their feeders. Kind of terrifying.
huh so that's a way that it's adaptive for the animals
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox
Why do they kill animals for fur? Could they not shave them? (I realise my question sounds dumb)
Previously: Our dogs' diversity can be traced back to the Stone Age https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45922997
Me: Not sure man. The closest relative to the dog is the likely extinct, Japanese Wolf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_wolf Maybe they were very tame to begin with? Like the extinct Falkland wolf:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkland_Islands_wolf
"There were no forests for the animal to hide in, and it had no fear of humans;[citation needed] it was possible to lure the animal with a chunk of meat held in one hand, and kill it with a knife held in the other"
>> “The only, absolute and best friend a man has, in this selfish world, the only one that will not betray or deny him, is his dog.”
Well, this is far from absolute, isn't it? :) There's a fair number of vicious attacks of a dog on his owner. Oftentimes pitbulls (are they even dogs or rather "creatures"?!), but other breeds do it too. So ... nothing is absolute :P
For another example of betrayal, one of the cronies in Katherine the Great's court always gave a dog to his girlfriends whenever he started a new relationship. Then if the dog ever greeted some other guy familiarly, he inferred he was falling out of favor. He probably learned that trick when someone did it to him, because he would let the other guy know how he was rumbled before graciously bowing out.
Mostly, if not entirely due to intentionally poor breeding practices. Who betrayed who?
Mostly, if not entirely, due to poor raising.
I've gotten "BEWARE OF DOG!" pitbulls and rottweilers to befriend me simply by speaking kindly to them, and then over a period of days raising that to handsniffs, then petting.
Misanthropic dogs are taught that behavior, which contradicts 10,000+ years of training. They don't enjoy being assholes.
This is not to say dogs aren't naturally barky and suspicious of strangers; that is also part of their millenia of training. Lots of nice people are also suspicious of strangers. But aggressively attacking people is basically psychotic behavior for a social animal that considers humans part of its society.
The quote doesn't insist all dogs are infinitely loyal.
Your disgusting prejudice aside, I've never met a pitbull in public that wasn't sweet and loving - which reinforces my suspicion that the real problem with them is the sort of psychotic, uncaring owner they attract.
When I was young, it was Dobermans that were demonized, and likewise the dog of choice for assholes who abused them as mere security devices.
Next up: Raccoons.
Wouldn't mind killer whales and dolphins while we are at it. We aren't that great about sharing the environment though.
positive sum games