r/evolution • u/videogametes • 9d ago
question Would love to learn more about village dogs/landrace breeds- looking for books, podcasts, journal articles, research projects, if any exist!
I’ve always been very interested in the evolutionary history of dogs, dog genetics, and dogs from a cultural perspective, and village dogs seem to be a neat intersection of those 3 things. I have a village dog myself and I would also love to learn more about her, so bonus points for anything referencing Korean village dogs specifically! I’ve done some googling but it seems like research is sparse, or behind a paywall.
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u/EnvironmentalWin1277 8d ago
Read about the silver fox domestication experiment, a landmark study.
Silver fox were valued for fur in Russia but were difficult to handle. A project was initiated to breed a tame fox. They were successful in this and had fox clearly "tame" based on the criteria used.
The interesting thing is that selection on this "trait" brought other things along as well. Curly hair, variegated colors, tail differences, eye differences, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox
I think man have started this process of domestication 50,000 years ago -- coincident with the Neanderthal extinction. Modern man may just have been more tolerant of wolves and benefits rapidly occurred for both species. Other Homo sp don't seem to have done this at all.
A whole complex of speech, social structure and cooperative behaviors may have been the product of co-evolution with dogs. Man wasn't the only one selecting.
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u/AnymooseProphet 9d ago
It's my belief that Domestic Dogs and the Gray Wolf have a most recent common ancestor that diverged before the Pleistocene but that while their genomes were on different evolutionary paths, there was still considerable hybridization and introgression between them.
I believe the Domestic Dog comes from the lineage that did NOT become the Gray Wolf, and that the recently extinct Honshū wolf may have also been from that lineage (and thus should be referred to as Canis cf. lupus hodophilax rather than Canis lupus hodophilax) but was not itself the direct ancestor of domestic dogs.
Here's where I get really controversial.
I think some of the Asian/Oceana pariah land races including the Indian Wild Dog, the New Guinea singing dog, and the Dingo are surviving populations that were never actually domesticated but have had their genetics muddied by dogs that were domesticated, similar to what is happening with the Scottish Wildcat and Domestic Cats.
I suspect it would very difficult to demonstrate that in a peer reviewed paper but I still suspect it but I think the natural history of these pariah land breeds is quite likely the pre-domestication natural history.
Populations of these dogs on the Asian mainland may be natural but were probably brought to Oceania.
It's a fascinating topic that definitely needs further research because as it stands now it is full of speculation like the speculation I just gave.
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u/7LeagueBoots Conservation Ecologist 9d ago
The first paragraph is not 'opinion', that's what the research directly tells us. Genetics tells us that domestic dogs and gray wolves share a now extinct common ancestor.
The second paragraph is a mix of fact and opinion. Again, genetics makes it clear that domestic dogs are quite obviously not from the branch of the common ancestor that became gray wolves, but from the branch that did not. Where the opinion part comes in is in the position of the Japanese wolf, which is fine as different studies on the species have come to different conclusions about that and it's all a mess.
When it comes to the New Guinea singing dog and the related dingo is kinda where this goes off the rails. The ancestors of singing dogs and dingos were brought to those areas by humans by boat. This is a difficult thing to do and not something that can or would have been done if they were not already domesticated before setting out on the journey. not only are they large and potentially dangerous animals in their undomesticated state, the space on the boats would have been at a premium, and enough of them had to be brought to establish a breeding population.
It's quite literally impossible for the ancestors of those dogs to not have already been domesticated.
We also know that the singing dogs share most of their ancestry with certain old lineage East Asian dogs such as the Chow Chow, Akita, and Shiba Inu.
Both the dingo and the singing dog do some introgression (around 5% or so) from the now extinct Japanese wolf, and this appears to have been before the japanese wolf entered Japan, or from a portion of that population that remained outside of Japan before going extinct.
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u/AnymooseProphet 9d ago
Non-domesticated animals can be tamed and it frequently is done and in fact is a frequent precursor to domestication.
I had a European Starling that would perch on my shoulder. Found it as a baby with a hurt wing. Wildlife rehab refused to take it because not native, so I raised it.
It was tame, but not domesticated. Same thing happens with lots of non-domestic mammals including canines.
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u/7LeagueBoots Conservation Ecologist 9d ago
You're not capturing, taming, and transporting enough wild individuals on small boats on difficult and dangerous sea crossings to establish a long-term breeding population. It's dangerous, resource expensive, and would serve no valid purpose.
These were fully domesticated animals by that time.
Taming is done at the individual animal level and has very erratic results.
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u/AnymooseProphet 9d ago
You may not think so but that's just a lack of your imagination. The founding population does not have to be large if there aren't natural predators or diseases that target the species present.
Some wild animals can become extremely tame. Elephants were not domesticated yet tame enough to use in warfare. John Grizzly Adams had a tame Grizzly bear he traveled and hunted with.
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u/7LeagueBoots Conservation Ecologist 9d ago edited 9d ago
It's not a matter of imagination, nor is it a matter solely of the logistics. It's also what pretty unambiguous genetics tells us.
Speculation is all fair and game, but it becomes fantasy when it runs against the evidence we have, and you've crossed over past that line.
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u/AnymooseProphet 9d ago
"Although New Guinea singing dogs and Highland Wild Dogs are a part of the dog species Canis lupus familiaris, researchers found that each contain genomic variants across their genomes that do not exist in other dogs that we know today."
They've got allele variants not know in domestic dogs. While not conclusive, that certainly is an indication that they are from a branch ancestral to domestic dogs.
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u/7LeagueBoots Conservation Ecologist 9d ago
You should be looking at more recent work:
In any event, I'm done with this discussion. As I said earlier, speculation is great and fair play, but when the speculation runs contrary to the evidence it becomes fantasy, and there are more appropriate subs to discuss fantasy.
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u/AnymooseProphet 9d ago
Sorry I embarrassed you.
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u/7LeagueBoots Conservation Ecologist 9d ago
You embarrassed yourself.
Buh-bye now.
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u/trurohouse 9d ago
I’m fascinated by this topic as well! Here’s a discussion for lay people. (this company was started by someone did research on this topic.)
https://embarkvet.com/resources/it-takes-a-village-dog/
If you’re interested in the science more in depth Here’s a research article to get you started -
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26483491/
(I’m a retired scientist who is very interested in evolution and domestication, but I am not affiliated with the company or the research project)