From wolf to dog: Late Pleistocene ecological dynamics, altered trophic strategies, and shifting human perceptions

Abstract

The immediate ancestors of modern domestic dogs emerged from wild wolves in latest Pleistocene times. In taking up life with people, they represent a lineage of wolves that escaped the extinction that struck a variety of animals at that time. Unlike wild wolves, animals that became well known apex predators of recent times, wolves that became dogs initially joined hunting-gathering people, many of whom functioned as apex predators. As such, those original dogs were equipped with meaningful behavioral compatibility with people, and some of them surely assisted hunting-gathering peoples with important hunting activities. Initial social compatibility between people and dogs was further refined as the Pleistocene gave way to the Holocene and the new dog population grew and expanded. Where people later developed agricultural economies, however, dogs transitioned with them as apex consumers, a fundamental change in trophic strategy. But in embarking on that new strategy dogs tended to become a less conspicuous part of people’s lives. Noteworthy exceptions to that generalization underscore the diversity of roles that dogs have played, and continue to play, in the human psyche.

Keywords:

• Wild wolves
• domestic dogs
• latest Pleistocene
• social compatibility
• apex predators
• apex consumers

Acknowledgments

We thank Melissa Pardi, Mark Derr, David Grimm, Holger Funk, Felisa Smith and Norbert Benecke for providing us with important bibliographic resources. Similarly, we thank the Interlibrary Services of the McConnell Library at Radford University for obtaining an important source for us. We are truly grateful to Lee Lyman for his insightful input regarding an earlier version of this presentation. Finally, we thank Elizabeth McClellan for her important help with certain pragmatic matters during the latter stages of preparing the final version of this paper.

Notes

1. Due to an unfortunate clerical error, in the references to our previous article (Morey & Jeger 2015), we reported as the title to Freedman et al.’s (2014) article a slightly extended pre-publication version of the title, though we drew exclusively from the final published version. It is correct here, and we regret the previous error.