Wolves to Dogs to Siberian Huskies, Very Very Very Long Read...

[Sibe77]

Everyone knows that dogs evolved from wolves, but

when, which wolves where, and how are all big questions.

Did all dogs evolve from one common group or did they

evolve from independent domestication throughout the world?

Why are dogs so inextricably linked to humans? How did

they diverge into so many different breeds? Finally, how

did the Siberian Husky evolve?

In 1997, Dr. Robert K. Wayne at the University of

California in Los Angeles studied the mitochondrial DNA

sequences of dogs. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is separate

from the DNA of the animal it is in and is copied within

the mitochondria itself. It is an excellent source to

study the evolution of an animal because it is directly

inherited from the mother; there is virtually no

contribution by the father and usually no change in the DNA

from parent to offspring. Thus, you can follow the direct

maternal line of the animal through the mitochondrial DNA.

Dr. Wayne determined that dogs did evolve from wolves but

he set the date as 135,000 years ago (Wayne et al., 1997).

This date is hard to believe because the earliest known dog

bones are from 14,000 years ago.

In 2002, Dr. Peter Savolainen from the Royal Institute

of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden analyzed the mtDNA from

several distinct wolf populations throughout the world as

well as from 654 dogs around the world. Dr. Savolainen

determined that if all dogs evolved from a single common

wolf ancestor then the date they evolves is around 40,000

years ago; however, if dogs evolved from 3 different wolves

within the same population of wolves, then the date of

evolution as a separate group is set around 15,000 years

ago (Savolainen et al., 2002). Dr. Savolainen is more

confident that dogs evolved 15,000 years ago from a few

wolves in a single population. The big question then was,

“Which wolf population did dogs evolve from?†Dr.

Savolainen did further research with the mtDNA he had

collected and determined that dogs evolved from a single

group of East Asian wolves. He concluded East Asian wolves

were the ancestors of dogs because there is greater

mitochondrial genetic diversity in East Asian breeds of

dogs than in European breeds of dogs indicating greater

antiquity (Savolainen et al., 2002). In other words, the

Asian dog breeds are older than the European dog breeds, so

it is same to assume that dogs originated in Asia.

What about the dog breeds native to North and South

America? Are they indigenous breeds developed from local

wolf populations? Dr. Robert K. Wayne and another

colleague, Dr. Jennifer Leonard, analyzed the mtDNA of “New

World†dog breeds, expecting to find that American Indians

had domesticated them from local wolf populations. To

exclude dogs brought from Europe, Dr. Leonard gathered pre-

Columbian dog bones from archaeological sites and extracted

their mtDNA. The samples matched that of Eurasian dogs,

not American wolves, showing that pre-Columbian settlers

must have brought dogs, of at least five lineages, from the

Old World to the New (Leonard et al., 2002).

The dates of dog evolution from East Asian wolf

populations determined by mtDNA suggest that dogs evolved

when humans were hunter-gatherers rather than when humans

had established permanent settlements. How did the huntergatherer

people know they were domesticating the wolves?

How did they know which traits to select for? Why bother

when domestication supposedly took several generations?

Two experiments suggest different reasons why wolves

could have been domesticated. In the 1950’s Dmitri

Belyaev, a biologist at the Institute of Cytology and

Genetics in Novosibirsk, Russia spent many years breeding

the silver fox (Vulpes vulpes) solely for tameness. After

about ten generations of controlled breeding, these foxes

no longer showed any fear of humans and often wagged their

tails and licked their human caretakers to show affection.

Dr. Lyudmila Trut, who continued Dr. Belyaev's work after

his death, reported recently that after selecting from

45,000 foxes at the beginning of the study over 40 years

the Institute now had 100 fully tame foxes (Trut, 1999).

Tameness has brought with it other changes, like floppy

ears and white-tipped tails where pigment has been lost

from the fur (Trut, 1999). How could these morphological

(physical) differences be related to the newfound tameness

of the foxes? Dr. Belyaev and his colleagues began

performing tests on the animals. When they checked the

adrenaline levels of the domesticated foxes, they found

that they were significantly lower than normal. This makes

sense, because foxes that are not afraid of humans are

going to produce less adrenaline around humans. Belyaev

and his group theorized that adrenaline shares a

biochemical pathway with melanin, which controls pigment

production.

The other experiment, reported in the November 2002

edition of Science magazine by Dr. Brian Hare of Harvard

University shows that dogs have a special ability to pick

up human cues. Dr. Hare compared the ability of dogs to

pick up human cues with that of chimpanzees. He noted that

while chimpanzees have more brainpower than canines, dogs

are far more likely to realize what a person want and what

they are saying with their body language (Hare et al.,

2002). Dr. Hare’s experiment involved a person looking at

a box that contained hidden food. The chimpanzees noticed

where the person was looking but did not realize the box

contained the hidden food; dogs get the idea immediately.

Wolves, though very smart like chimpanzees, are much less

adept than dogs at following human cues, suggesting that

dogs were bred for this ability (Hare et al., 2002).

So, which is it? Where dogs bred for tameness or

trainability? Dr. Ray Coppinger, a dog behavior expert at

Hampshire College, believes that neither is the case.

Wolves domesticated themselves, Dr. Coppinger argues in a

recent book, ''Dogs: A Startling New Understanding of

Canine Origin, Behavior and Evolution'' written with his

wife, Lorna Coppinger. Wolves, which are scavengers as

well as hunters, would have hung around the campsite for

scraps, and those that learned to be less afraid of people

survived and flourished (Coppinger and Coppinger, 2001).

He calls this concept “flight distanceâ€Â; flight distance

determines when the animal runs and how far. Animals with

a shorter flight distance would have fared better than

those with a greater flight distance. For example, there

are two proto-dog wolves hanging around in a huntergatherer

dump. A person is bringing scraps of food to the

dump. Both animals see the person coming and retreat, but

one runs off 500 feet and the other only goes about 100

feet. The animal that only went 100 feet will get to eat

the scraps. ''It was natural selection -- the dogs did it,

not people,'' Dr. Coppinger said (Coppinger and Coppinger,

2001). ''The trouble with the theory that people

domesticated dogs is that it requires thousands of dogs,

just as Belyaev used thousands of foxes.'' From the halftamed,

camp-following wolves, he believes, people may then

have adopted some cubs into the household and found that

they could be trained (Coppinger and Coppinger, 2001).

Hunter-gatherer peoples often bring back baby wild

animals and keep them as pets until they become

unmanageable. Dr. James Serpell, an expert on dog behavior

at the University of Pennsylvania, believes that this is a

more likely explanation of dog domestication than that

people adopted scavengers (Serpell, 1995). The particular

population of East Asian wolves identified by Dr.

Savolainen's genetic studies, Dr. Serpell suggests, might

have had some special feature that made them easier to

train.

Once dogs had been domesticated, they would have been

of great value to hunter-gatherer societies, though it is

hard to know what specific quality the domesticators

sought. ''They could have been useful as guard dogs, for

hunting, as an emergency food supply, as bed warmers,''

(Leonard et al., 2002).

When two species live together for a long time, each

usually influences the genetically conferred qualities of

the other. People may have selected preferred abilities in

the dog, but dogs too may have fostered their favorite

qualities in people -- not of course deliberately but

simply by giving people who used dogs a better chance of

surviving than people who did not.

Now we know that dogs evolved from East Asian wolves

approximately 15,000 years ago, but how did they radiate

into so many breeds? Though there are more than four

hundred phenotypically distinct breeds of dogs, Parker et.

al. have used molecular markers to define an independent

classification of purebred dogs based on patterns of

genetic variation. This classification shows a subset of

traditional groupings but also reveals previously

unrecognized connections among breeds (Parker et al.,

2004).

The number of groups (K) of dogs was set to two,

three, and finally, four. The first distinct cluster to be

defined at K = 2 included nearly all breeds of Asian origin

(Akita, Shiba Inu, Shar Pei, Lhasa Apso, etc.), some sled

dogs, and some known ancient hounds such as the Saluki

(Parker et al., 2004). When added to the analysis, gray

wolves from eight countries all grouped in the first

cluster as well. The early divergence of the Asian breeds

on the phylogenetic tree and their association with the

wolves in clustering analysis supports the conclusions of

mitochondrial DNA analysis that domestication first took

place in East Asia (Savolainen et al. 2002). The next

cluster to be defined at K = 3 was comprised of mastifftype

dogs including the Mastiff, Bullmastiff, Bulldog,

Boxer, etc (Parker et al., 2004). Finally, at K = 4, the

third cluster to be defined included working dogs such as

the Collie and Shetland Sheepdog, together with a subset of

the sight hounds, such as the Greyhound (Parker et al.,

2004). The final cluster comprised mostly modern breeds

used in hunting and included gun dogs, hounds, and terriers

(Parker et al., 2004).

The arctic breeds, including the Siberian Husky, fall

into the “ancient†grouping. They originated with the

Chukchee peoples of Siberia. Genetic data has demonstrated

a close resemblance between the aboriginal Siberian tribes

living east of the Yenisey River and northern Mongoloid

populations (Hammer and Karafet, 2002). In other words,

the Chukchee peoples of Siberia emigrated from East Asia

around the same time as dogs were being domesticated.

The proto-dogs and dogs that were brought into Siberia

by the Chukchee people were isolated from other dog breeds

leading to them forming a distinct branch within the dog

family separate from other ancient breeds.

Beginning in 1908 Chukchee dogs were imported from the

Anadyr River region to Alaska for use as sled dogs during

the gold rush. Leonhard Seppala made the dogs famous as

sled dogs during his 1925 trip to bring medicine to Nome

during a diphtheria epidemic. In 1930, when Russia closed

the Siberian borders to export, no new dogs could be

brought in. The Siberian Husky as a breed was developed

from those dogs brought to the United States prior to the

closing of the borders.

Hopefully you now have an understanding of the current

ideas on how, when, where, and why dogs evolved from wolves

as well as an idea of how they managed to diverge into so

many different breeds. This research is extremely

important not only to understand the evolution of the dog,

but that of humans as well. The dispersal of humans across

the globe is directly linked to our canine companions.

I would like to see further research done with regards

to determining how to identify, by DNA every breed of dog

and mixed breeds. I would also like more research to be

done on the date of canine evolution from the wolf. I know

the generally accepted date is 15,000 years ago, but Dr.

Robert Wayne’s previously published date of 135,000 years

ago is still a popular figure in the lay world.

I believe improvements in the ability to read DNA

sequences will eventually make it so that we can determine

the breed of a dog based on its DNA and weed out genetic

diseases from dog populations. Hopefully, studying the

genetic influences on disease within the canine world will

also help people to better understand human disease.

[Sibe77]

Got it from here.

http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.lookpdf.com/images/thumbnail/243-jessica-edmonson-evolution-of-the-siberian-husky.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.lookpdf.com/result-www.world-animal-zoo-sex.com-page-1.html&usg=__NYbhYYuUnpWdp9a9E0WxHia8P6Q=&h=495&w=383&sz=7&hl=en&start=30&tbnid=rZ9ikQyeYFaixM:&tbnh=130&tbnw=101&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dfunny%2Bsiberian%2Bhusky%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D18%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26start%3D18

[raindog]

Thanks - that's a really interesting article. I love the theory that wolves actually domesticated themselves by the natural selection of those with a shorter flight distance - makes a lot of sense. I must admit that the theory that domestic dogs have been around for 15,000 years sounds more realistic than the 135,000 years often quoted. I know that archeologists have found the remains of Laika/Husky-type dogs in Kamchatka which are at least 10,000 years old.

For more information on the development of the Chukchi dog: http://www.dreamcatcher.org.uk/breed_history.htm

Mick

[SarahNukka&Shadow]

Thats absolutly fasinating! And I have actually read Coppingers book and his theories make alot of sense, there are some really nice anicdotes about dogs and some very interesting anicdotal evidence as well as his lifetime of research into sled dogs and dogs in general that really back up his ideas. I have had some very heated debates with my lecturers at uni about the subject of evolution and behavior so this is good to read, I must get the Serpell book I have a feeling that would also be interesting to read. Thanks Toney Im going to bookmark that page for my research!

[Sarah]

Really interesting read - added to rep

[Hock]

That was very interesting, ty for that read