In the United States, dogs are the most abundant pets, that is, Americans choose dogs over cats and any other domestic animal. There are many existing dog breeds (and many more of their crosses): there are highly intelligent dog breeds, and other breeds that bark a lot … In short, a long list of all the existing dog breeds. However, have you ever wondered how dog breeds came to be? Here we tell you.
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How did the dogs come to be?
As we pointed out previously, first of all, it must be taken into account that the dog descends from the wolf. Specifically, it is considered that the dog is a wolf that was domesticated by man when he stopped being nomadic. In any case, there would be other similar explanations, although this last statement is supported by a study by researchers at the University of California in Los Angeles (United States) that was published some time ago in the journal Science.
There are also reports that the domestic dog comes from “a common ancestor or ancestral group dating back approximately thirty thousand years and since then has spread to all parts of the world.” This ancestor would therefore be the wolf, but the wolf in turn would have these ancestors.
According to documentation, the oldest dog discovered to date is 31,700 years old, found in a cave in Belgium. It would be a form of canid that later developed to adopt the characteristics for which the wolf (Canis lupus) is known.
If we talk specifically about the appearance of dogs, we would have to say that it goes back to only 14 or 15 million years ago, in the same area of Eurasia. According to Animal Expert: “It is estimated that the first dogs appeared 15 million years ago when they lived in much of Europe and Asia.”
For a long time, dogs had the function of “hunters”, and therefore, their existence was linked to the survival of civilizations in search of meat. Finally, Animal Expert explains that “when leaving the wild, the characteristics of the dog adapted from breeding and in accordance with the needs that they had to cover in the populations of which they were part.” So, domestic dogs truly arose.
How did dog breeds come about?
Regarding this question, AnimalWised tells us that: “Dog breeds began with the basenji, the oldest variety in the world. More than 100 current breeds would develop from it and, to a large extent, this would respond to the contact they had with humans, in addition to natural selection.
“In each human population, dogs began to fulfill different tasks, for which they acted as watchdogs, hunters, bloodhounds, companion animals, and collectors of aquatic prey, among others. These activities required the development of specific skills. As a result of Thus, human beings placed special emphasis on breeding dogs that met the characteristics that were useful to them. In this way, certain particularities were consolidated until they led to the establishment of the different breeds,” says Animal Expert.