Sharing chunks of meat helped domesticate dogs in ice-cold winters, researchers say

by

Historically, humans and wolves were pack hunters and competed for large prey, especially during the thinner winter months. But while the two species were able to kill each other, humans domesticated wolves, whose offspring ended up becoming our dogs.

Researchers at the Food Authority of Finland, a department of the Ministry of Agriculture, hypothesized that by feeding leftover meat to wolves, ice-age hunter-gatherers could play a role in the early domestication of wolves. dogs. And they say they can explain for the first time why humans would tolerate the company of a competitive predator during this period.

It is believed that modern dogs were domesticated by wolves, but exactly when it is unclear – in 2017, a study published in the journal Nature Communications found that modern dogs were domesticated from a single population of wolves ago. 20,000 to 40,000 years.

Still, the Finnish Food Authority’s research team wanted to know how this “mutually beneficial” relationship came about, given that humans and wolves would have been competing to eat during the winter months.

By the end of the ice age, 11,000 years ago, there were at least five types of dogs

“Humans killed cave bones and saber-toothed cats to eliminate other carnivores,” Maria Lahtinen, a senior scientist with the Food Authority of Finland, told CNN.

“People have not been able to explain why humans would tolerate competitive carnivores in their living areas,” he said.

Researchers estimated how much energy would have been left over from humans from the meat of species they hunted for food, such as horses, elk and deer, between 14,000 and 29,000 years ago.

His calculations indicated that during the winter months in Europe and Asia, hunter-gatherers, who were not fully adapted to a carnivorous diet, had a surplus of lean meat, which they may have shared with wolves.

An ancient wolf pup was found

“During the late Paleolithic, the climate was such that most of Europe and Asia had winters,” Lahtinen, the study’s first author, told CNN. “They were cold climatic zones, which means that there was always (every year) (there were) conditions in which humans had to access protein,” he explained.

“Humans are naturally adapted to carnivorous diets, but we can only consume about 20% protein in our diet,” he said.

This excess meat could have been easily shared with wolves, according to the team, a step towards a mutually beneficial relationship.

“After this initial period, budding dogs would have become docile, being used in a multitude of ways, such as hunting companions, beasts of burden, and guards, in addition to going through many human-like evolutionary changes,” the authors wrote in the paper, published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.

.Source