How Dogs Where Created (link) "Because the domestication of dogs occurred so long ago during prehistoric times, many of our beliefs about people’s early relationships with dogs, wolves, and wild canines are sheer speculation. In some respects, we have not moved very far from the vision of the British writer Rudyard Kipling in 1912 when he offered his theory of the domestication of dogs in his Just So Stories. The story begins with the wild dog/wolf/jackal/coyote hanging around the home of the humans, looking at the food being cooked by the primitive human female, and feeling hungry". “Then the Woman picked up a roasted mutton-bone and threw it to Wild Dog, and said, ‘Wild Thing out of the Wild Woods, taste and try.’ Wild Dog gnawed the bone, and it was more delicious than anything he had ever tasted, and he said, ‘O my Enemy and Wife of my Enemy, give me another.’ “The Woman said, ‘Wild Thing out of the Wild Woods, help my Man to hunt through the day and guard this Cave at night, and I will give you as many roast bones as you need.’” "This is still basically the most common view (minus the talking wild dog, of course) of how wolves became our dogs. The commonly believed idea is that some prehistoric human found some wolf pups, took them into her home, fed them and treated them as we treat and care for our pets, and the generations that followed became our domestic dogs". "However picturesque it may be, this idea is wrong. The problem is that wolves are genetically wired to be suspicious and aggressive".
Never doubt Kipling. Ever. I'm always shocked to find that I am the only one at the zoo who knows exactly how the elephant got his trunk. Even the "experts" there are ignorant of the facts. [spits on ground] Regarding wolves and their genetic wiring: most of "evolution" consists of genetic aberrations being in the right place at the right time (like the story of how short-necked giraffes died out and the long-necked aberrations survived.) So it's entirely possible that there were one or two wolves whose suspicious genetic inclinations were not as strong as the others. Or the moment's survival overcame such fears. Toss in the possibility that such a wolf may have been female, and may have had litters that were cared for (raised by) by the humans, and you have a transition point. That's all it takes.
I am reading an interesting time-travel book called “Neander”, and it is about a modern archeologist who is suddenly transported to 40,000 years ago, and to where a group of Neanderthals are living. In the story, he finds an abandoned hyena cub and the group takes the cub in, and he grows up similar to how a dog pup would do, and so the group then adopts other abandoned babies into the group, and this is how they started having guard dogs. The story explains that hyena pups push out the weaker pups, and only feed the strongest ones, so if that is true, then I can see how there might have been abandoned puppies/cubs that the early humans might have taken in and rescued. There are all sorts of stories about wild animals who have been rescued and taken in by someone, and that animal still recognizes them when they meet again.
If you read a lot, the Kindle Unlimited is a great program. It costs about $10 a month, but there are all kinds of books in different price ranges that you can read for free with this program. Most of the books I read, I do not need to own, but if I read them and then want them, I can still purchase the book. This way I do not spend money on a book and then wish I hadn’t bought it if I don’t like it.
They did some experimenting with foxes in Russia. Choosing for mildness and looks to breed the traits. They ended up with some beeeeootiful , gentle animals. I met a few of them at one of our small animals swap meets here. They were not for sale, just for show.
I loved the Clan of the Cave Bear series. A Cro Magnon girl is adopted by a Neanderthal tribe. Nature vs nurture in her development.