18/07/2018
Bark is the dog from Amercian author Jack London’s fiction The Call of the Wild. He was originally the pet of a wealthy judge and was stolen by someone. After all those dramatic accidents, he followed the call of the wild and became a wolf.
This story is fictional, but the details are worthy to study. Technically, the word “dog” we used to call is subspecies of Canis lupus. Dog IS a wolf in zoology. Then, if we put a pet dog in the wild, would it become a wolf like its ancestor?
We are aware that dogs are the results of wolf’s domestication. The determining step in this long period is that some wolves developed their ability to digest starch. Not like the other species’ domestication, human played a minor part in this process. It was the wolf that adept human’s agriculture activity and participated in human’s life. Yes, there is an increasing number of evidences showing wolves live near human’ habitat started to feed themselves on human’s leftovers. Meanwhile, they tended to act friendly with human near their habitat. After thousands of year of evolution ,dogs are born to be our best friends.
Of course, human are bonding with these friends strongly. Dogs can hunt, guard and bring joy to people.
During the evolution, human breed dogs based on their needs. Dogs now have very different size, coat and personality and finally settled as a subspecies of wolf. Dogs have hundreds of breeds – even more than their ancestor wolf.
As different breeds differ from each other greatly, we are not able to say yes or no directly to this question. Can dogs become wolves again? We have to do case study breed by breed.
Obviously, if we place a Chihuahua in the wild, it’s not hard to imagine the result. Chihuahua won’t even hunt down a rabbit, not to mention how to make it hunting like a wolf. Thus, toy dogs are out in our study.
If small dogs can’t hunt, does that mean big dogs can? It also depends. Dogs like Chow Chow and Sparpi are too slow to hunt. They need to get fit before leaning how to hunt. They are out as well.
Nevertheless, there are dogs that will surprise us! They are fit, active and preserved their hunting instinct. Humans usually call them hound. Can these dogs go back to the wild and become the king?
Surely the answer is yes, because there is one breed succeeded in Australia - dingos.
There weren’t dogs in Australia until 5000 years ago. Human activity brought dogs to this isolated continent. The natives kept dogs as their company animals or as a moving blanket. They sleep with dogs to keep each other’s warm. There’s a native saying “the night of three dogs” describing the coldest night – you need to cuddle three dogs to keep warm.
Either because the lack of food or the falling od human tribes, there were dogs leaving human community and going into the wild. After five thousands of isolation, dingos picked up their ancestors’ habits as a dogish wolf. They hunt rabbits, kamgaroos and birds. They are the king of Australia’s food chain. Sounds like your husky hunting squirrels in dog park?
So one day if you see dingos, run and scream, “WOLVES”!
BY: WOTANHUI, 20170828
