What is a dog?

only more research can settle the question, but I believe that wolves and dogs and coyotes are descended from a common ancestor. Wolves and dogs are cousins not grandparent/ descendant. If you'd ever met any of my cousins trying to predict and understand my behavior by observing my cousins would seem kind of silly.

 If I remember from my first year biology days, a species by definition should not be able to interbreed with any other species and produce viable offspring, which wolves, dogs, coyotes, dingoes etc all can as far as I know. Problem with that being there is also a geographic component of this. A tiger and a lion would never meet in real life, but turns out they can interbreed. I'm not sure if the offspring is able to produce young, though. Anyway, I do think there are parrot species out there that can also interbreed and produce viable young. So as usual, there are exceptions.

Relatedness is not the be all and end all. My wild hare has animal genius that I've never seen any domestic animal come close to, but have seen echoes of in other wild animals.  There's a certain confidence and self-containedness to wild animals that marks them as fundamentally different to domestic animals to me. They know on some level that they don't need you.

Anyway, I don't think it matters what dog is. It matters how you choose to work with that little package of life. I've been working with Kivi Tarro in exactly the same way as I would work with any animal, wild or domestic. The beauty of domestic dogs is that they have several thousand years of human selection that has just primed them for a life with humans. You can't deny that no matter what you believe. And it makes them SO easy to work with compared to any other animal. And that's why so many methods do work, IMHO. So I pick the one that would work with any other animal as well. Seems sensible.

corvus

The beauty of domestic dogs is that they have several thousand years of human selection that has just primed them for a life with humans.

Let me say that this sounds like your making a point for me, i,e., the natural habitat of dog is with Man, as the Coppingers pointed out. And this markedly different than the natural environment of a wolf. And no on can certainly deny that. And I think using the wild animal approach to dogs can be valid. For a comparison, Mudpuppy once said that you should approach a puppy as you would a bengal tiger. Not in fear, but in a calm way that allows the animal to see that being with you is a good thing. Granted, that sounds a bit extreme but the insight gained from the viewpoint is important, I think. Insight into what motivates whatever animal you are dealing with. Such as a prey-driven hound.When you know what to expect of an animal, you are less likely, hopefully, to have wrong expectations.

The differences between dogs and wolves are found in structure, physiology, behavior, environment, and, most importantly, their relationship to us. Dogs, unlike wolves, or even other primates, look to humans for clues. Other primates will figure out their own solutions, Wolves will go about their way. The dog will stand and look at the human for a hint or a solution.

To limit the discussion of dogs and wolves to a < .2 % difference in a single (as in one) locus of mtDNA is stifling and possibly inaccurate. However, mtDNA has normally been used to discuss genotype since it does not recombine. Even so, any difference is still a difference. Dog mtDNA is different than wolf mtDNA, even if it is a small difference. And would merely suggest that the species are closely linked. Just as man is a primate, a type of ape, a great ape, to be more exact. A relatively hairless, bipedal ape. But does that mean that we are just like the chimp or mountain gorilla?

If dog is a barely domesticated wolf, why don't more people based their idea of dog behavior on the neoteny of wolf cubs in their natural habitat, which is far from humans and in their own family unit of parents and siblings? Goodness there is the research of L. David Mech, and others, such as the field reports I read from a researcher who tracked on foot coyotes through the Adirondacks and even analyzed their diet through the animal's scat. The behavior of these animals is a far cry from the notion of a violence-driven social order.

how much money is spent on human genetic research than canid genetic research? 

This is a more difficult question to answer than you might think.  Most dog genetic research projects, if not all, are carried on under the aegis of human medical research.  In other words, we study dogs to further human medical knowledge.   Very little pet animal medical research, in fact, is actually directly aimed at furthering veterinary knowledge.  That's why when you go looking around for research materials on dog health/nutrition/behavior you will mostly find the relevant research in human medical publications.

So, anyway, my belief on this is that dogs are their own species and have been taking their separate adaptive path from whatever wild ancestors may have once existed on a near-evolutionary scale.   I suspect that the canid variation that they came from no longer exists, no anything like them.  Dogs share characteristics with wild dogs, wolves, coyotes, and even some fox species.  They can breed with wild dogs, wolves and coyotes, though some coydog hybrids are sterile (not all). 

My own ideas about dogs are simply based on dogs.  I think it does them an injustice to try to fit them into the mold of any species we know today, when they are clearly their own species.  Why treat or handle them like wolves when they are dogs?  We wouldn't presume to handle domestic racehorses based on superficial observations of wild donkeys.

Dogs have been domesticated longer than any other animal, they think, possibly as long as 100,000 years.  Amazingly, that would mean that our species and the dog have developed side-by-side.  There are theories that the dog may have even played a key role in starting the process of social and technological innovation that marked our own developmental path in such a different direction than other animals.  I'm not sure about that, but certainly it would make sense that as the first domestic animal, dogs and humans have a really interesting and unique relationship - and one that I think is compromised when one tries to squeeze domestic dogs into the wild mold again. 

ron2

If dogs are not descended from wolves, how advisable is it to base dog behavior on wolf behavior?

Just as advisable as if they are descended from wolves, in my opinion. I don't think it is advisable to look at dogs as if they were wolves, or Pugs as if they were Basenjis.  

The problem is that we're often looking for easy or definitive answers, and they don't exist. We need to take what we know about other animals, and allow that to inform what we're learning about a new animal, but we have to remain open to seeing what is before us and letting expectations rule the day.

I'm very interested in human behavior, chimpanzee behavior, and bonobo behavior. We're related, but most definitely not the same species. I find it fascinating the ways in which we are all similar, and the ways in which we are different. Human politics and chimpanzee politics have much in common, it turns out. So it can be useful to draw comparisons and make hypothesis. "I know that in chimpanzees x follows y ... could that be true for us?" Etc. But I'd never assume that I could look at chimps to figure out how to toilet train my baby.

I approach the canids the same way, even though they are more closely related than the great apes. How can what I know of wolves, both domestically and in the wild, inform what I know about dogs? And vice versa?

There's a timber wolf who comes to our local dog park. Not a hybrid - 100% born in the wold timber wolf. The mom died when the pups were tiny (eyes still closed), and the man who owns the wolf was given the tiny pup by a forest worker.  The wolf is slightly aloof, but warms up after he's met you 3-4 times. He's friendlier than the average Akita. From his behavior, you'd never know he wasn't a dog.

One of the things about canids as a species that makes them so suitable for life with humans is how adaptable they are. Coyotes, it turns out, thrive in urban environments. Dogs can be lap dogs, highly trained working dogs (GSDs, BC's) or independent flock guardians. That's a huge range!  

And looks can be deceiving. My high school mate who lives on 15 acres has a dog, his wife's actually (she got him from a shelter) that is a mix of GSD and Siberian or Malamute. He is large and does look like a wolf. So, they give him a very bright pink collar so that others in the area can see the collar from a distance and know he is a pet and not a wolf. Why, you ask? Ranchers and farmers around here will shoot a wolf on sight.

Another point I wanted to mention that even Wayne considered and couldn't account for quantitively is how much hybrid breeding has gone on before he did his study. It's quite possible that the apparent similarity of dogs and wolves is partiailly due to hybrid breeding through the ages. I guarantee you that an alaskan husky would have quite a number of wolf markers since, for example, the Huslia line specifically had wolf and Irish Wolfhound bred into the mix. Point being, my question would be how much has the hybrid breeding that has gone on for centuries could account for a similar mtDNA? Quite a bit, I would imagine. A similarity of wolves to dogs would be due to the meddling of man, as wolves don't specifically seek out dogs to mate with but I am not ruling out the odd stray here and there.

Incidentally, there have been suggestions that the Dingo is an endangered species based on hybridisation. But how meaningful is this? Even if there were no dogs in Australia, only Dingoes, there are alpine Dingoes and tropical Dingoes and temperate coastal Dingoes and dessert Dingoes... At what point do you say if a tropical Dingo bred with an alpine Dingo the  offspring would be some bastardised version of Dingo that can't even be called Dingo anymore, for example? Look at the Florida panther. It was under threat from inbreeding and tiny populations, so they brought in healthy panthers from other parts to improve the gene pool. But what is the point? Now the sub-species they were trying to save is not even what they were trying to save anymore. We face these questions often in conservation, because a lot of the time what you are trying to save is already a severely altered environment, and altered unnaturally, if you consider humans unnatural.

Anyway, my point is, it's hard to draw a line and ultimately it will be an arbitrary one. I'd go one step further from Becca and say you treat a dog like an individual. In my mind, every animal I meet starts out almost the same. I know certain things will apply to all animals. Then I layer. A bird will have a tendency to behave like this, a mammal like that, a predator like this, prey like that, a social animal like this, a solitary animal like that. Once I have that tentatively down, I let the animal fill in all the blanks and add layers until I have my 3D working model of this particular individual. It doesn't matter what they are, the approach is the same. The way I ultimately treat that animal will always be different, but I will arrive at that way on the same path. It's just quicker the more experience I have with that particular kind of animal.

Dog_ma, did you hear about the research they did with bonobos and chimps co operating? I thought it was very interesting. They found chimps could rarely trust each other enough to co operate to achieve something, whereas bonobos could always come to trust each other enough to co operate. We've always thought of ourselves more like chimps, but it was pointed out that we could never have come as far as we have if we hadn't overcome our trust issues and co operated with one another. I guess we must fall down the middle somewhere. When I see bonobos, I see something that could so easily have been us. I don't know what put the bonobos in the zoo and us watching them rather than the other way around, but I feel like looking at them is looking through a little evolutionary window at what we could have been.

And to be fair to the other side of this viewpoint, dogs do arrange in social groups. Duke, the JRT, could and did lead Shadow, while being a fraction of his size. Now, this does differ from authentic wolf behavior. A wolf pack is normally a family unit, so of course, the cubs and other members of the family will follow the parents. And it's not uncommon for a sibling of the alpha male, say a brother or "beta" to take over teaching the cubs. That is, the uncle gets to revoke the puppy license. As opposed to dogs, who can easily and quickly form alliances and social orders with stranger dogs or dogs not of their litter or even their breed. Shadow is totally sweet on the Dachshund next door.

But might dog behavior be just a variation of similar behaviors in other canids? A little bit of wolf, a little bit of coyote. I think the Dingos are an excellent example of cross-over. A wild canid that can be friendly with humans, not unlike the New Guinea Singing Dog, considered by some to be the modern example of the prototypical early dog, friendly towards humans but still organizing in social groups when necessary.

In similar fashion, many primates can organize in troops, thought often centered around family units. Humans do the same, though that doesn't make us bonobos, chimps, or even mountain gorillas, who we match in size and even some behavior. Did ya'll know that a mountain gorilla will sing to her children to soothe them into sleep? I have seen it in a documentary. It is low and barely audible but it has melody. But we are still primates. But we are a distinctly different species, no matter how close our genome looks in comparison to other primates. Homo Sapien is, indeed, a unique animal.