Ten wolves, ten pet dogs and ten shelter dogs of various types and breeds were put to a test. They were supposed to open a box which contained a treat for them, a task that required some effort.
The task, designed by Monique Udell, a professor at Oregon State University, was successfully solved by eight of the ten wolves and by only one of the twenty dogs. The rest of the dogs required encouragement and assistance of people. This made researchers wonder whether by domesticating dogs from wolves humans created lazy and less intelligent, servile animals? How, after all, did friendship and interdependence of man and dog come about?
Earlier studies suggested that dogs were domesticated from wolves by the first farmers, who had adopted sedentary life. It was assumed that wolves were drawn to their settlements by food leftovers. However, the friendship seems to be much older.
Namely, four years ago, a group of geneticists and paleontologists of the University of Turku, Finland, led by Olaf Thalmann, analyzed genomes of modern dogs and wolves and 18 dog fossils dating from 1,000 to 36,000 ago. The study showed that dogs originated from a Central European population of wolves that became extinct in the meantime. They state in an article, published in the journal Science, that domestication began in Asia around 15,000 years ago and that the oldest dog fossils, dating back more than 30,000 years, were found in Europe and Siberia, which is much earlier than previously believed.
If their conclusion is correct, humans domesticated dogs from wolves long before they started growing livestock or cereals, at the time when they were still hunters-gatherers. It is possible that wolves initially followed groups of humans who left animal bones behind. Humans found this useful, as other wild beasts did not come near them for fear of the wolves. Thus, it was a mutual benefit that led to the forging of the friendship between the two species.
Wolves are by all means the first animals domesticated by humans. They helped humans hunt – humans ate meat and wolves ate bones. They also guarded the shelters of humans and alerted them in cases of imminent danger.
M.Đ.