Dogs are a huge part in humans everyday life; they help the disabled,

protect us from criminals, and are good companions. But dogs had to
have come from somewhere and they didn't actually become dogs for
tens of thousands of years. Dogs are evolved from a common ancestor
with wolves, were domesticated by people around the agricultural
revolution, and have been specically bred to create new types of breeds
for di!erent purposes.


Many scientists believe that dogs didn't directly evolve from wolves, but
that they share common ancestors. According to the University of
Chicago Medical Center, "In this analysis we didn't see clear evidence in
favor of a multi regional model or a single origin from one of the living
wolves we sampled,". Later they said that dogs seem to have descended
from an older wolf like ancestor common to both species (UCMC, 2014).
The oldest dog like creatures were called canids, based on the shape of
their teeth (Strauss, 2014). These ancient dogs were carnivores just like
wolves are now. Some evidence suggests that some of these may have
lived in communities (Strauss, 2014). Later in the line of ancient canids
was the Leptocyon, which is considered the rst true canine, which was
not much bigger than a fox (gure 1.). An immediate descendant of
Leptocyon was Eucyon, which spread across the world via the Bering
Land Bridge (Stauss, 2014). These ancient canids laid the base for
modern dogs and wolves to come around, but people still had a big e!ect
on some of these creatures to make them into what we now know as
dogs.


Scientists believe that humans domesticated dogs about the time that
people changed to agricultural living from hunting and gathering. Israeli
fossils and genes show that domestication happened about 10,000 years
ago, or during the agricultural revolution (Yong, 2013). When comparing
genomes of dogs and wolves there were some di!erences in areas of the
brain that may a!ect temperament in dogs, and they found genes that
were critical in digesting starch (Yong, 2013). Wild dogs wouldn't need to
digest this starch because they are carnivores, so this shows that dogs
may have been attracted to human's garbage. These mutations caused
people and wild dogs to interact much more so people probably started
to capture and breed them. Breeding for specic traits, such as human
tolerance, people had created domesticated dogs and continued to breed
for other desirable traits like looks (Thomas, 2011). People went through a
world changing revolution and dogs were going through a similar world
changing evolution.


Each breed of dog is di!erent from others because of how that breed has
evolved and has been bred. There are 400 breeds of dogs that can be
roughly characterized by the shapes of their skull (Brownlee, 2014). Each
breed has been specically bred to become what they are; to look and act
like they do. By people breeding dogs so much for shows it increases the
chance for mutations which makes them live an unhealthy life (Brownlee,
2014). When a team bred and domesticated foxes, they saw they started
getting the same traits as dogs, and then compared it to wild and
domesticated rabbits, horses, pigs and sheep. Wild ones had erect ears,
straight tails, restricted breeding seasons, uniform coat colors and body
sizes. Domestic ones had oppy ears, curled tails, spotted coat colors,
variations in textures and lengths, di!erences in skeletal size and
proportion (Thomas, 2011). Humans have created the diverse world of
dogs that we have today mostly based on breeder preference.


Dogs evolved from a common ancestor with wolves, were domesticated
by people during the agricultural revolution, and have been bred
specically to humans liking through breeding. Dogs have gone on a long
journey to get to the ones we know of today, but now that they are here
people work alongside them to try to improve our society.


























Figure 1. This chart shows the evolution of canids. This is the line of
animals that modern dogs and wolves evolved from. As this genus
evolves it looks more and more like what we know as a wolf.