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| Greenland natives with pet wolf on deck of S.S. Diana, 1898. Source. |
How did wolves become dogs?
A lot of nonsense has been written on this topic. Some folks, for example, seems to be captivated by the notion that wolves self-domesticated by approaching ever-closer to our camp fires until at last they rested their heads on our laps. There's a "Just So" story if I have ever heard one!
Another story commonly offered up is that humans domesticated wolves and turned them into dogs in order to use them to hunt.
Nonsense.
Wolves still exist all over the world today, but no one is domesticating wolves in order to turn them into hunting partners. In fact, most primitive people do not use dogs to hunt at all, and for a very good reason: dogs are more likely to alert game than find it, and dogs are not all that easy to train to a high degree of command.
Look at the the techniques used to bring home the bacon in primitive cultures all over the world, and you are more likely to find stealth, snares, traps, poison, and human drivers rather than dogs. Trained wolves used to hunt? They exist nowhere.
Yet wild wolves are still being domesticated every day.
Why?
Simple enough: for pets.
The same trend is true for every other animal under the sun: coyotes, red fox, monkeys, apes, hyenas, tigers, lions, tapirs, sloths, crows, hawks, parrots, badgers, fenecs, servals, raccoons, cheetahs, bears, bobcats, rats, agoutis, possum, groundhogs... the list is endless. We routinely make pets of them all, in modern culture as well as primitive.
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| Pet hyena with Nigerian street performers. |
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| Children with pet coyote. |
So why have we heaped special creation myths on the dog-to-wolf conversion? What's the subtext there?
The subtext may be that when it comes to the origin of dogs, we would rather tell ourselves a lie than the truth.
The truth is that our first relationships with dogs was not forged in their desire to return a tossed ball to hand, but in out brutal masacre of their mothers and fathers, and their kidnapping to a strange and alien world where they grew dependent upon us for food, affection and any semblance to freedom.
And why did we do this? For our own amusement, and nothing more.
Our first relationships with wolves and dogs, then, was not forged in some notion of benign, mutual co-dependecy, but in blood and fear.
No wonder we created another story to hide the shame!
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| Adolph Murie and family with pet wolf, Mount McKinley, Alaska, 1940. |
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3 comments:
"Wolves still exist all over the world today, but no one is domesticating wolves in order to turn them into hunting partners."
Why would they? Wolves have been prosecuted by agriculturists for well over a few thousand years. The modern wolves which survived into this era are the legacy of paranoid canines leery of humans trying to exterminate them. No one in their right mind would re-domesticate the wolves-- they already did so over 10,000 plus some years ago.
"In fact, most primitive people do not use dogs to hunt at all, and for a very good reason: dogs are more likely to alert game than find it, and dogs are not all that easy to train to a high degree of command."
Again, you are wrong with this assumption. The Evenki people relies on laikas extensively as a means to survive to find protein (squirrels) for consumption and fur for commercial trades.
Heck, the Matagi were only armed with bows and spears and extensively relied on their dogs up until three decades into the 20th century.
Likewise, the Sami lived in a similar fashion, with their Nordic spitzes, to the Matagi and the Evenkis prior to the industrialization of Finland.
The Inuits and Seiskari people needed dogs that could find seals, so they employed Qimiq and Seiskarinkoira to detect breathing ice. They no longer have these traditions because sealing is frown upon.
In the case of Aborigines, the dogs acted as sentries.
Wicked hyena picture! They are truly odd looking, design-by-committee beasts. Helluva collar and chain on that one, too.
Seahorse
Sooggy, you are missing the sentence and the facts. I do not say dogs are never used by primitive people for hunting, only that they are frequently inapproproriate for primitive people, and you give good examples to support my case. The Evenki and Sami are reindeer hunters and herders, while squirrels are not a primary food source for anyone with a bow (have you ever made an arrow or eaten a squirrel?) when a deadfall trap will do the job and bigger game is about. As for seals, you might try to learn a bit more here -- open holes have to be visited to stay open when it is cold, and the job of seal hunting is about stealth -- something a dog is not very good at for the most part. Yes, a dog can signal on a seal, but you would not want one at the hole! Dogs in the arctic are about transportation, guarding, herding, and even a food source at times, but rarely about hunting. As for Inuit seal hunting, it is still done quite a lot, and though rifles may be used rather than spears, the core methods are not much changed.
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