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Humans are not the only ones who underwent self-domestication. So did ou close relatives, the bonobos, and the species we call our best friend. A tiny proportion of the genome differentiates dogs from wolves, and yet millions of dogs are comfortably curled up in our homes, while wolves move around at the edge of extinction.
When our research group began its work almost 20 years ago, we discovered that dogs also have extraordinary intelligence: they can read our gestures better than any other species. Wolves, in contrast, are mysterious and unpredictable. Their home is the wilderness, and that wilderness is shrinking.
But not so long ago the evolutionary race between dogs and wolves was so close,it was unclear who would win. Dogs, in fact, did not descend from wolves. Instead,dogs and wolves shared a wolf like ancestor.
Folklore supposes that humans brought wolf puppies into camp and domesticated them. Or as wolf expert David Mech wrote in 1974,“Evidently early humans tamed wolves and domesticated them, eventually selectively breeding them and finally developing the domestic dog from them.” But this story has not held up. Taming an animal occurs during its lifetime. Domestication happens over generations and involves changes to the genome.
So how did wolves turn into dogs? Back in the lce Age, as our human populations grew more sedentary, we probably created more rubbish, which we then dumped outside our camps. These leavings would have included tempting pieces of food for hungry wolves. Not every wolf would have been able to scavenge, however.These animals would have had to be unafraid of humans, and if they displayed any aggression toward us, they would have been killed. After generations of selection for friendliness without intentional selection by humans, this special population of wolves would have begun to take on a different appearance. Coat color, ears, tails: all probably started to change
Animals that could respond to our gestures and voices would be extremely useful as hunting partners and guards. They would have been valuable as well for their warmth and companionship, and slowly we would have allowed them to move from outside our camps to our firesides. We did not domesticate dogs. The friendlies wolves domesticated themselves.
1. What can be summarized about wolves and dogs from the first three paragraphs?
A. Wolves are smarter than dogs
B. They are very much racially divided.
C. They are close relatives but dogs seem to be on the winning side
D. Dogs have made their ways to indoor life while wolves to the wild.
2. What is the meaning of the underlined word “sedentary” in paragraph 5?
A. diverse
B. limited
C. living in the same place
D. involving regular migration
3. What does the author conclude from the history of dogs and wolves?
A. Dogs evolved from wolves.
B. Selective breeding developed domestic dogs
C. Taming and domesticating an animal are the same thing
D. Friendliness as a quality translates into an evolutionary strategy
4. Which of the following is suitable for a title?
A. From Wolf to Dog
B. Dog: Our Favorite Pet
C. An Intentional Domestication
D. A Competition Story between Wolf and Dog
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