How wolves became dogs
economist.com
economist.com
Many hunter gather tribes apparently employed this technique and it can still be found today in Africa with the San people.
Sharing food or stealing wolf puppies were probably part of the domestication but was this because humans possibly hunted alongside wolves? Humans possibly being capable of pursuing for longer distances due to better body temperature control through sweating while wolves being better at tracking.
At least that would be my take.
Until the dog is fully domesticated (OK, I'll go home and await his return. He'll bring me meat!), I don't know how they could cooperate on a many-hour hunt like this.
I used to wonder the same about falconry until I met a hawkmaster. The animals don't take prey far away where they'd be hard to find; they hover or perch near the humans in open fields, where they are trivial to find.
I also wondered why they don't just eat the prey. It's because that involves lots of effort; they know a human will shortly arrive with tasty food that isn't wrapped in tough fur. Basically, they trade a package of hamburger for a Big Mac.
Can you elaborate here? This is a weird fascination of mine (man+canine).
I walk long distances with dogs, here's what I've found and ruminated:
1. If I chase or follow a dog, I can chase them to exhaustion.
2. If I'm walking several miles with a dog, they tend to trot ahead of me and stop and pant and wait for me. Rinse, wash, repeat. Bursted energy/rest cycles.
When we are in the field they will triple my distance travelled ( verified by GPS ). My outings are typically 8-12 miles and thus 24-36 miles for the dogs. Of course I need to keep them hydrated during this activity.
The behavior of running forward and looking back is most likely what we refer to as checking in. The dog is trying verify where you are heading/doing. In my dog's case they will range out to around 400 yards and then return to with 20 yards and run passed making eye contact as they run by.
Dogs (and the prey) can do burst sprints, but will easily overheat, and will need to stop periodically to cool down. Humans are furless and sweating is sufficient to regulate our internal temperature, so we can keep jogging for hours on end. Additionally, dogs are great at sniffing out hidden prey at the beginning of a hunt, and once found, humans are excellent trackers.
That only applies in hot climate. In moderate climate, canines have similar performance to humans, in the arctic canines are ~2x better.
In the wider context there are other examples of cross species hunting with octopus and fish for example. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/watch-octopuses-te... So, completely wild wolves doing something similar with humans seems extremely plausible.
A weird, perhaps silly question I've had for a while is: how have wolves shaped humans? Has human society in any way been affected by the structure of wolf packs? Did hairless monkeys form stronger tribes because of it?
I don't believe for a second that this deep interspecies friendship has been one-sided and hasn't brought psychological if not physical changes as much as the changes it's brought to wolves.
I remember in one of Jiang Xueqin's videos, he made the interesting argument that "grain domesticated humans" at least as much, if not more, than "humans domesticated grain".
Wisdom teeth are far more valuable to a precooking human, who has to chew constantly to break down plant cells. The extra chewing causes stress that induces the jaw to grow longers, allowing space for the wisdome teeth.
We're basically at the "awkward teenage" part of evolving past raw-food diets.
Modern British dog owners are incredibly irresponsible surrounding how they look after their pets and how they handle the pets mess. Covid made it measurably worse.
That's wild. I've never once seen this in the US.
Obviously there are people who just don't clean up after their dogs in the first place, but to clean it up and then hang the bagged crap on a tree? Haha.
It looks a lot nicer out there now and I gave the trees a little prune (I'm a qualified arborist) so people know this is a "tidy area" and so far no more turds in bags.
Each morning, I take a 5K walk around the neighborhood, and am constantly passing cast-off shitbags.
They are usually brightly-colored, and are easy to spot.
I remember, once, being at a stop light, on a fairly major road, where a guy was walking his dog, and just dropped the bag, right there. He did it kind of surreptitiously, but he still did it in front of everyone.
Probably was a fairly high-value person, too. It was a pretty tony neighborhood.
But given how hostile many cat-people are (see sibling comment), compared to dog-people which tend to also enjoy the company of cats, I can imagine a timeline where this misanthropist branch of humans splits off, goes to live in trees and hisses at anybody that comes nearby.
Mainly because they lost the ability to climb down.
https://www.imf.org/en/publications/fandd/issues/2025/06/the...
So many are just... Not badass? A wolf is badass. Cats are totally badass: they're natural born killers, hunting billions of poor preys yearly.
My parents are divorced. Father always had huge dogs (St. Bernard, Leonberg, Newfoundland, etc.) while mother always had tiny dogs (daschunds). I loved these dogs but I really hate having to take care of dog poo. So I'm a cat person.
As a bonus my miniature tiger takes care of itself and goes shitting where nobody can see it.
Likewise, I now have a golden doodle. It's like having a giant 5 year old puppy. They've been bred to be docile, kid friendly, playful, cute, non-shedding, and the perfect family/instagram dog. But they're extremely dopey when compared to a border collie.
I'm not sure what cats get bred for. Fur length? Ability to shit in a box? I'm guessing they've not been bred too much on their personality, which is why they are mostly the same and still miniature tigers.
If I was a doggie researcher, I'd be breeding them for general intelligence and see how far that can go.
For example, some dogs have vocabularies of over 100 words.
I’ve assumed that this greater learning capacity and malleability is both the best part of a dog and a vulnerability that can lead them to become highly anxious and dependent animals.
I’ve had both cats and dogs, and loved them both, but my goodness they are so wildly completely different animals.
Years ago I was walking along the beach on a pacific island (probably Rarotonga). I'd noticed dogs running about (individually, not in a pack) and remarked how docile they seemed. Mentioned this to a local I ran into to which he responded "any that wasn't docile went in the Umu".
There are animals where the male and female only ever live together and are loyal (and not for the sake of the idea of loyalty, they're animals). It's not something speficic to some human societies.
That's silly. US Midwest farmers meet every detail up until "would have been impossible"; dogs are common but not ubiquitous, and farming communities are highly social.
(Cats, ironically, are ubiquitous on farms, because of their utility at hunting mice and rats.)
Ironically, you're describing the classic "cat lady" trope, only with the wrong pet type.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt10462930
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/dogs-that-changed-the-world-...
The bonds between humans and wolves go both ways. Humans love their dogs.
The wikipedia entry considers the issue, presents data that are curious with respect ot the data in the Economist article, saying domestication is presumed from wolves roughly 14,000 years or so ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog#Taxonomy
The Economist article hints at the curiosity, in mentioning pre-Colombian dogs in the Americas were distinct some 23,000 years ago, but then returns to the standard presumptions.
An article in Nature also considers the ancestry presumptions
"The remains of the Bonn–Oberkassel dog, buried alongside humans between 14,000 and 15,000 years ago, are the earliest to be conclusively identified as a domesticated dog.[9][7] Genetic studies show that dogs likely diverged from wolves between 27,000 and 40,000 years ago."
"Dog ancestors diverged from modern wolf ancestors at least 27,000 years ago"
which is still compatible with the two diverged ancestries sharing a proto-canid ancestor from which proto-wolves and proto-dogs both were derived.
Interestingly, the article about Belgian prehistoric canid dna says the genetics are so varied that they don't form a clear group.
Occam's Razor says that the posited ancestor of Canus domesticus that shared grey wolf DNA was... the grey wolf.
they do also emphasize that the "northern dogs" (huskies, malamute, akita?) are very close to wolves in shared ancestry.
do you have a dataset or study with such? it would be interesting.
Across many cultures, dogs exist in a transitory space between life and death (ie Cerebus). Hinting at dogs being "transitory" from here (camp) and out there (the wilderness). Going between, getting scraps, staying for a while, leaving. You can imagine a process unfolding over Millenia of gradual domestication this way. You see it in Ancient North Eurasians myth across different cultures. Ancient North Eurasians are genetic precursors Eurasian, Western Europe, and American lineages where dog domestication originated, and arguably where many cultures have the deeper associations with dogs.
> Famous Fox Domestication Experiment Challenged
> The tamed foxes, whose appearances changed with breeding, weren’t wild to begin with, say the authors of a new study.
Surely some enterprising hunter-gatherer had sufficient time on their hands. I can't help but think strutting around with a feared predator at your beck and call would have been the ultimate status symbol, and once you saw it would have to be the must have accessory for the self-respecting hunter. Aficionados would no doubt breed their stock amongst themselves to save the hassle of having to abduct more wolf cubs, which would naturally tend to the more suited specimens (friendliness being one trait as you don't want them eating the kids). Once it was realised what an incredible force multiplier they are in hunting and their utility in defence, any time investment would pay for itself many times over.
I find this no less as unlikely as thinking humans would let wolves help themselves to their excess food. Fascinating subject all round, no matter the reason. I hope they can figure out more.
Falconers often acquire and train wild birds. With wolves abducting pups or adopting orphans seems like a reasonable path to domestication.
Wolves can extract nutrition from animal tissue which humans discard, such as bone and the tougher cartilage/connective tissue. Modern dogs still absolute love bones.
They also have much better night vision than humans, sense of smell and hearing.
So, follow human tribes and pick off the remains when they move camp. Maybe eventually escalate to sneaking in at night. The human tribes now become a "resource" which the wolves will start guarding from other predators, such as bears or competing wolf packs. The humans eventually catch on that the wolves are providing a benefit at very little cost - food remains which they are not eating anyway. They even start to share kills - the wolves being better at tracking game while the humans finish the kill with spear/bow.
When animal and crop domestication occurs, you get another benefit - protecting the flocks/herds/crops from marauders. Especially at night.
Well, this is far from absolute, isn't it? :) There's a fair number of vicious attacks of a dog on his owner. Oftentimes pitbulls (are they even dogs or rather "creatures"?!), but other breeds do it too. So ... nothing is absolute :P
I've gotten "BEWARE OF DOG!" pitbulls and rottweilers to befriend me simply by speaking kindly to them, and then over a period of days raising that to handsniffs, then petting.
Misanthropic dogs are taught that behavior, which contradicts 10,000+ years of training. They don't enjoy being assholes.
This is not to say dogs aren't naturally barky and suspicious of strangers; that is also part of their millenia of training. Lots of nice people are also suspicious of strangers. But aggressively attacking people is basically psychotic behavior for a social animal that considers humans part of its society.
Your disgusting prejudice aside, I've never met a pitbull in public that wasn't sweet and loving - which reinforces my suspicion that the real problem with them is the sort of psychotic, uncaring owner they attract.
When I was young, it was Dobermans that were demonized, and likewise the dog of choice for assholes who abused them as mere security devices.
Another one on the homepage right now: "Samba Was Written". Ok, great.
It's an attempted technical solution to try to remove / limit the amount of "clickbait" in titles.
It does not work very well.
I don't know if Hacker News will pop up any extra confirmation to the submitter to warn that their submitted title were automatically edited, but I think that would be a better interface than relying on submitters and readers to fix the mistake after the article is already visible and ranked.
Whether any automated editing of titles actually helps with reducing clickbait is a different question.
[1]
How wolves became dogs (2026-01-09) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46553433
How Samba Was Written (2026-01-04) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46551531
Why I have to give Fortnite my passport to use Bluesky (2025-12-19) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46327832
How they clean the balls in a ball pit (2025-10-15) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45592984
Why we didn't rewrite our feed handler in Rust (2025-10-08) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45517240
How Spain put up wealth taxes (2025-08-16) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44927460
[2]
Majority of the submitted titles never had "how" or "why" to begin with, and sometimes the submitter catches the change in time, for example:
How to Code Claude Code in 200 Lines of Code (2026-01-08) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46545620
I didn't see any mentions of the title being edited here.
How the Wolf Became the Dog by Mark Derr
This is an active, and fast-moving, research area and I'd be keen to read something more up-to-date.
I won’t link to it, because all the sources are not so nice for techs, but just search for “10000 years later”, or “what’s the worst that can happen?”. The thumbnail previews will be fine. No need to open X or Facebook.
In some cases the animal's hair can be cut without harm, like how sheep are shorn for wool.
Me: Not sure man. The closest relative to the dog is the likely extinct, Japanese Wolf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_wolf Maybe they were very tame to begin with? Like the extinct Falkland wolf:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkland_Islands_wolf
"There were no forests for the animal to hide in, and it had no fear of humans;[citation needed] it was possible to lure the animal with a chunk of meat held in one hand, and kill it with a knife held in the other"