The dog, Canis familiaris, is a direct descendent of the gray wolf, Canis lupus: In other words, dogs as we know them are domesticated wolves. Not only their behavior changed; domestic dogs are ...

Despite the diversity of domestic dogs, these animals share an evolutionary history and behavioral traits. The oldest fossil that scientists agree came from a dog, rather than a wolf, comes from a ...

Brian Hare, an evolutionary biologist and author at Duke University, has spent the last 25 years studying animal evolution ... sweet dog you love started out as this: a wild, predatory wolf.

When a wild wolf and a domestic dog formed a bond and raised pups together, researchers were shocked. Their unusual parenting taught scientists more about instinct, survival, and canine cooperation.

Although many questions remain, the new data will be a valuable jumping-off point for scientists who are still trying to solve the many mysteries of wolf evolution and dog domestication ...

Roughly 30,000 to 15,000 years ago, the first dogs ... the evolution of red and timber wolves in North America, Sacks said. However, he added, the paper’s evidence for two sources of wolf ...

Scientists—and plenty of doting dog owners—have long wondered when and where wolves began their evolution to become ... some important insights into wolf genetics. More than 80 researchers ...

For one thing, the wolf was domesticated at a ... long enough to evolve into the domestic dog? The short version is that we often think of evolution as being the survival of the fittest, where ...

While domesticated dogs show a substantial decrease in brain size compared to their wild ancestor, the gray wolf (Canis lupus ... to constrain brain size evolution due to the high energy demands ...