Dogs were the first species to be domesticated and have been bred for many different jobs throughout history.
I've heard a decent amount about that, didn't early humans see them eating from the carcasses of what we killed so we started to utilize them and domesticate them?
Well the closest living relative to the dog is the gray wolf, so it is highly likely that early humans domesticated them.
Oh right, so what were the main tasks that we bred dogs for?
That I am unsure of, however the first undisputed record of a domesticated dog buried with human remains dates back over 14,700 years.
Wow that's an insanely long time! Were dogs back then anything like dogs today or closer to wolves?
They were closer to a wolf. The evolution of the wolf occurred over 800 thousand years turning into the specimens we now recognize as dogs.
That's pretty bizarre, but really cool. There's so many breeds of dogs nowadays, though its kinda sad to see some of them just bred to look good at the expense of their health.
Yes, that is very sad. But it is nice that todays dogs perform many various roles for people like aiding the handicapped and therapeutic roles.
Oh yeah it's great that smart dogs are able to help the mentally and physically handicapped among other vital roles.
, aiding disabled people and therapeutic roles. This influence on human society has given them the sobriquet of "man's best friend".
Terminology.
- The term "dog" typically is applied both to the species (or subspecies) as a whole, and any adult male member of the same.
- An adult female is a "bitch".
- An adult male capable of reproduction is a "stud".
- An adult female capable of reproduction is a "brood bitch",
caused the mass extinction that came at the end of the Pleistocene, or was it the climate change that did it? A third theory is also emerging, that the colonists and possibly domesticated dogs brought disease with them that caused this extinction.
But the few species that were hunted by humans that became extinct doesn’t account for the loss of so many species. The loss of some cornerstone species typically can result in an implosion of population and diversity similar to what we see during the transition from Pleistocene to Holocene. This