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Dogs make us human By Heidi De Wald Monday, 25 Mar, 2002 About 48% of Australian households own dogs. But can you imagine a world without dogs. And would we be the same if they were not here? Would human beings have developed in very different ways had our best friends not been by our sides? A recent study suggests that the domestication of dogs mutually led to profound changes in the biological and behavioural evolution of both species. It has long been known that the first species domesticated by humans was the wolf. In essence, we made wolves into...

The genetic heritage of New Zealand's first dog, the now extinct kuri, is being unravelled by University of Otago scientists using state-of-the-art ancient DNA analysis. University of Otago PhD student Karen Greig has sequenced the complete, or near complete, mitochondrial genomes of 14 kuri represented by bones recovered from Wairau Bar, one on New Zealand's earliest and most important archaeological sites. Kuri were smallish dogs about the size of cocker spaniels and were brought to New Zealand from East Polynesia in the colonising canoes that arrived in the early fourteenth century AD. They were the only domesticated animal to be...

It's thousands of years since mankind won dominance over nature, and we're still pretty proud. But a top researcher says we've been giving ourselves too much credit - because we were helped by our oldest friends. Humans paired up with dogs as early as 40,000 BC, it is claimed, giving us such an advantage in hunting that it prompted the wipeout of our Neanderthal rivals.

By Paul Rincon 20 October 2015 Dogs may have become man's best friend in Central Asia, according to the study Today's dogs can trace their origins to Central Asia, according to one of the most comprehensive genetic surveys yet. Dogs are the most diverse animal on the planet - a legacy of thousands of years of selective breeding by humans. But they derive from wild wolves that were gradually tamed and inducted into human hunting groups - perhaps near Mongolia or Nepal. The findings come from an analysis of DNA from thousands of pooches, and are published in PNAS journal....

When did dogs first become domesticated? A sophisticated new 3D fossil analysis by biologists Abby Grace Drake, visiting assistant professor of biology at Skidmore, and Michael Coquerelle of the University Rey Juan Carlos contradicts the suggested domestication of dogs during the late Paleolithic era (about 30,000 years ago), and reestablishes the date of domestication to around 15,000 years ago... Whether dogs were domesticated during the Paleolithic era, when humans were hunter-gatherers, or the Neolithic era, when humans began to form permanent settlements and take up farming, is a subject of ongoing scientific debate. Original fossil finds placed dog domestication in...

Dogs have been man's best friend for up to 40,000 years, suggests new research. The study shows dogs' special relationship with humans might date back 27,000 to 40,000 years. The findings, published in the journal Current Biology, come from genomic analysis of an ancient Taimyr wolf bone.

You may think your dog has an irrational hatred of cats, but their instinct to chase felines out of their territory might be more reasonable than you think. Fossils have revealed the two species have a rocky past after the introduction of cats to the Americas had a devastating effect on the continent's species of wild dogs. In fact, it is thought that competition from cats caused up to 40 species of dog to become extinct in the region millions of years ago.

The irresistible gaze of "puppy-dog eyes" has roots in thousands of years of human evolution alongside domesticated dogs, says anthropologist Robert Losey. Anyone who owns a dog is familiar with the "gaze" -- that hypnotic, imploring stare that demands reciprocation. It can seem to hold a world of mystery and longing, or just pure bafflement at what makes humans tick. It turns out that the look of mutual recognition between human and dog reflects thousands of years of evolution, a bond programmed into our very body chemistry. Last spring a research team in Japan discovered that both species release a...

Before humans milked cows, herded goats or raised hogs, before they invented agriculture, or written language, before they had permanent homes, and most certainly before they had cats, they had dogs. Or dogs had them, depending on how you view the human-canine arrangement. But scientists are still debating exactly when and where the ancient bond originated. And a large new study being run out of the University of Oxford here, with collaborators around the world, may soon provide some answers.

The geology of the site, as well as pollen and algae finds, suggest that the hunter-gatherers encountered the mastodon next to a small pond that both humans and animals used as a water source, the researchers believe. Waters said that the prehistoric "people knew how to find game, fresh water and materials for making tools. These people were well adapted to this environment. The site is a slam-dunk pre-Clovis site with unequivocal artifacts, clear stratigraphy and thorough dating." Another research team previously excavated the site and found what they believed were dog remains, so dogs "would most likely have been...

Humans may have domesticated dogs two separate times, taming wolves both in Europe and Asia thousands of years ago, according to new research. A major international research project may have cleared some of the controversy surrounding the origins of man's best friend, which has until now remained a mystery with two primary hypotheses. The first holds that humans domesticated dogs for the first time in Europe more than 15,000 years ago.

They may be man's best friend, but the question of where domestic dogs originated has long remained a mystery. Some argue that humans first domesticated wolves in Europe, while others claim this happened in Central Asia. Now, a new paper suggests that both these claims may be right, and that dogs were domesticated not once, but twice.

For a nature photographer, capturing a scene of epic predation is akin to winning the lottery. Yes, it isn't pretty. But it depicts the real and very much raw struggle to survive that takes place daily in the animal world. A professional photographer Christopher Martin was touring Banff National Park, when he happened to come across an elk uneasily moving back and forth across a railway overpass, he knew he was in for a scene that portrays real-world wild life struggle for survival. See the rest of the story here.

"There's not a cowboy in this room that couldn't qualify for disability. We want to work. You're making us dependent upon the federal government for compensation. Our best direction to make a living is now in the form of compensation from the federal government. At the end of the day the only way money is generated is harvest the animal you grow. You're choppin' the legs out from under us. If we could make a living with wolves, there would still be wolves here. Not just cattle...elk and deer bring in money to the economy. But the wolf doesn't contribute....

Man's best friend came about after generations of wolves scavenged alongside humans more than 33,000 years ago in south east Asia, according to new research. Dogs became self-domesticated as they slowly evolved from wolves who joined humans in the hunt, according to the first study of dog genomes. And it shows that the first domesticated dogs came about 33,000 years ago and migrated to Europe, rather than descending from domesticated European wolves 10,000 years ago as had previously been thought.

A U.S. judge on Friday approved a deal between conservationists and Montana officials to restrict road-building and logging in roughly 22,000 acres of state forest lands that make up core habitat for federally protected grizzlies. The agreement resolves a lawsuit brought by conservationists after the state had sought to open 37,000 acres , mostly in the Stillwater State Forest, to timber harvesting despite what environmentalists said would be the destruction of prime grizzly bear territory. ... U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy in a decision last year found the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service violated the Endangered Species Act by...

BOULDER JUNCTION - People often feel like their pets are members of their family. Teri Winter and Jimmy Dean Van Rossum felt that way about their dog Bella. Earlier this week, Bella was killed by wolves. The only thing they found of Bella was blood and fur. "They didn't even leave a bone, we can't find her collar," says Winter. On Monday night, Van Rossum let Bella out to go to the bathroom at his home in Boulder Junction. She never came back. "She was in her woods, her yard, going to the bathroom," Winter says. That's when wolves got...

Gray wolves are killing cattle and family pets in Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin, and all residents can do is stand by and watch thanks to a federal judge’s ruling. In December, US District Judge Beryl Howell overturned the Obama administration’s decision to take the gray wolf in the Great Lakes states off the endangered species list, The Detroit Free Press reported. Howell’s action effectively banned hunting and trapping of wolves in those states. Farmer Miles Kuschel watched a pack of six wolves surround his cattle on Easter, but decided not to shoot because of the ruling. When he came back,...

Scientists are calling it an ecological breakthrough: Two adult wolves and five cubs were recently photographed in Siskiyou County, the first known wolves in California since 1924 (with the exception of the famous wandering OR7, who wound up settling in Southern Oregon).

The ancestors of modern wolves and dogs split into different evolutionary lineages 27,000 to 40,000 years ago, much earlier than some other research has suggested, scientists reported Thursday. The new finding is based on a bone fragment found on the Taimyr Peninsula in Siberia several years ago. When scientists studied the bone and reconstructed its genome — the first time that had been done for an ancient wolf, or any kind of ancient carnivore — they found it was a new species that lived 35,000 years ago. Based on the differences between the genome of the new species, called the...