Owning a big plush dog does not require the same amount of responsibility as owning the real thing. While it's true a big plush dog needs loads of love and attention, when it comes to food and walks, there is of course, no requirement at all.
If history is right, in that there is at least a 15,000 year relationship between humans and canines, then the first animal to be domesticated was quite likely the dog. Over these many years, dogs have played different roles and been involved in various types of jobs but one thing remains the same: despite their numerous shapes and sizes, dogs are all one species and have one history.
Dogs are members of a family of carniverous mammals and Canids are part of a bigger group called Carnivora; this group also includes cats, bears, and seals. According to fossil evidence, 40 million years ago, these mammals split away from their common ancestor, Carnivora. Thus, for approximately, 15 million years, carniverous mammals have been spit into three sub-groups: wolf-like animals (wolves, coyotes, and jackals), fox-like animals, and South American canids (like the crab eating fox).
Scientist Charles Darwin thought that dogs were descendants of different types of wild canids, however, with today's modern DNA analysis, we know for a fact that dogs are only descended from wolves. Despite this evidence, how exactly that evolution came about, is far less evident. Both fiction and non-fiction alike, represent the fact that it was prehistoric people who took wolf pups from their dens and went on to raise them so they would think of humans as their "pack." While living with people these tame wolves went on to reproduce. Eventually, they were selectively bred until the diversity of the dogs we know today was created.
There are those in the scientific community who believe there are holes in the above mentioned theory. If it's true that the traits of wolves shifted to the traits of dogs, then it only could have taken place very slowly and over a long period of time - thousands or millions of years to be able to obtain such diversity in the species. However, according to fossil evidence, the appearance of dogs was not that long ago. Per DNA results, it has been suggested that dogs split from wolves 100,000 years ago which in terms of evolution, is quite recent. But, in dogs, there are some of the most extreme physical differences of any species of mammal; in dogs we find more varieties of color, size, coat texture, and other types of appearance differences than can be found in all other members of the canid family.
There have been some more recent, even controversial theories as to how the dog evolved from the wolf; authors of the book Dogs: A Startling New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior & Evolution, Raymond and Lorna Coppinger, suggest that some wolves became tame on their own. "When humans went from mobile hunter/gatherer societies to sedentary villagers, they created a new ecological niche for neighboring wolves. The traditional niche for wolves is a forest predator of herbivores (plant-eaters) such as deer and elk. This niche requires wolves to be large, strong, innovative and able to learn by example."
No matter how the dog evolved, it's here to stay now. And with it, comes the best compliment it can ever be given: the design of the big plush dog representing the real thing in all its glory.
Copyright Shelley Vassall, 2010.
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