A new research points out that wolves evolved to dogs by domesticating themselves voluntarily. Its goal would be to approach humans to ensure food.
Scientists have long discussed how wolves have evolved to domesticated dogs, and a new study suggests that they could have been themselves to tame.
The investigation in the magazine Proceedings of the Royal Society Bon February 12, proposes that wolves gradually adapted to human environments in search of foodleading to their eventual transformation into dogs through natural selection.
According to archaeological and genetic evidence, domestication occurred in two large phases. The first phase, between 30 000 and 15 000 yearsinvolved wild wolves that became primitive dogs. The second phase, between 15,000 years ago and the present, saw these dogs selectively created in the many modern races we know today. While the second phase was widely driven by human intervention, the forces behind the first phase remain uncertain.
A hypothesis suggests that wolves have undergone a “self-firm”. Prehistoric wolves, attracted to human villages by Easy meal perspectivemay have become more tolerant to human presence. Throughout generations, these most docile wolves would have reproduced, giving rise to the first domestic dogs. A similar process was proposed for cats, whose ancestors coexisted with the first agricultural communities hunting rodents in exchange for food, points out the.
However, critics argue that natural selection alone may not have been quick enough to turn wild wolves into domestic dogs without man -oriented reproduction. To solve this problem, study researchers created a statistical model to test the plausibility of self -nominations over 15,000 years.
The model showed that, for self -nominations to work within this period of time, two conditions had to be met: the wolves had to stay voluntarily close to human villages to feed and had to choose companions with similar domesticated temperaments. If both factors were at stake, the study suggests that natural selection could have gradually turned wild wolves into the first domestic dogs.
Although the study does not prove how domestication has happened, it provides strong evidence that self -nominacy was at least as possible.
