Talk:Dog

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Gray Wolf or European Wolf?

This article says that dogs are descended from the now extinct European wolf, yet the article on gray wolves says that all dogs are descendents of gray wolves, which is it? 123.243.215.92 (talk) 09:57, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

dogs can't feel guilt

I recommend a part where it explains that researchers say dogs can't feel guilt.

Source: http://www.kansas.com/2014/02/28/3316662/dogs-feel-no-shame-despite-how.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.75.161.46 (talk) 00:54, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Is the wolf a proto-dog, or is it actually a feral dog.

The wolf and the domestic dog are fu;ly interbreedable, and are in that sense, the same specie. The history of the domestic dog and the wolf separate about 10,000 years into history. This coincides with the peak of the last ice-age, when Homo Neanderthalis was driven out of the Northlands, mainly by the Atlantic coastline, but also by the Pacific. This exodus was an emergency operation, and many were lost by the wayside. Among the lost were the dogs these people had used as hunting associates. My proposal is that some of these survived, and became feral. As for the humans, blue eyes, large noses, fair hair, and white skin, is all that is left of Homo Neanderthalis. The minute fraction of survivors of the exodus were forced to interbreed with the dark skinned Africans they found when they reached Africa. So we have a coincidence: the tiny survival of some Neanderthal characteristics in Humans, indicating interbreeding, and the deviation of Domestic dogs from Wolves. Both occurred about 10,000 years ago. Because the domestic dog is genetically indistinguishable from the grey wolf, it cannot be fair to call the wolf a proto-dog. They are all Canis Lupus. The proto-dog must be an earlier specie, and we must go back at least another 10,000 years, possible 100,000 years to find this proto-dog, possibly the African hunting dog. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Daveat168 (talk • contribs) 22:50, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Dogs appeared on the record about 31,000 years ago (Olaf Thalmann, 2013). There is evidence of people and their wolves living together in caves in what is now the Czech Republic during the Ice Age 50,000 years ago. Some time between the two periods, the dog developed.William of Aragon (talk) 03:15, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

References at the start of this article

There appears to be no subject matter linked to footnote Reference 1? Footnote Reference 1 appears to link to the same source as footnote Reference 2? Footnote Reference 3 is a bit dated now and suggest that this be removed.William of Aragon (talk) 03:11, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 22 May 2014

Please change X to Y X: As pets

A British Bulldog shares a day at the park.

A young male border terrier with a raccoon toy. "The most widespread form of interspecies bonding occurs between humans and dogs"[58] and the keeping of dogs as companions, particularly by elites, has a long history.[61] (As a possible example, at the Natufian culture site of Ain Mallaha in Israel, dated to 12,000 BC, the remains of an elderly human and a four-to-five-month-old puppy were found buried together).[62] However, pet dog populations grew significantly after World War II as suburbanization increased.[61] In the 1950s and 1960s, dogs were kept outside more often than they tend to be today[63] (using the expression "in the doghouse" to describe exclusion from the group signifies the distance between the doghouse and the home) and were still primarily functional, acting as a guard, children's playmate, or walking companion. From the 1980s, there have been changes in the role of the pet dog, such as the increased role of dogs in the emotional support of their human guardians.[64] People and dogs have become increasingly integrated and implicated in each other's lives,[65] to the point where pet dogs actively shape the way a family and home are experienced.[66]

Y: As pets 150000 homeless dogs are killed every year in the streets on average of a occidental country.

A British Bulldog shares a day at the park.

A young male border terrier with a raccoon toy. "The most widespread form of interspecies bonding occurs between humans and dogs"[58] and the keeping of dogs as companions, particularly by elites, has a long history.[61] (As a possible example, at the Natufian culture site of Ain Mallaha in Israel, dated to 12,000 BC, the remains of an elderly human and a four-to-five-month-old puppy were found buried together).[62] However, pet dog populations grew significantly after World War II as suburbanization increased.[61] In the 1950s and 1960s, dogs were kept outside more often than they tend to be today[63] (using the expression "in the doghouse" to describe exclusion from the group signifies the distance between the doghouse and the home) and were still primarily functional, acting as a guard, children's playmate, or walking companion. From the 1980s, there have been changes in the role of the pet dog, such as the increased role of dogs in the emotional support of their human guardians.[64] People and dogs have become increasingly integrated and implicated in each other's lives,[65] to the point where pet dogs actively shape the way a family and home are experienced.[66]

Illian14yy (talk) 00:07, 22 May 2014 (UTC) reliable sources: the foundation of protection of animales in Spain

Not done for now: Your requested content might have a place in this article but not in the location requested and not without a better link to a reliable source. —KuyaBriBri^Talk 01:50, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Canis familiaris

The domestic dog should once again be recognized as its own species, Canis familiaris, rather than as a subspecies of the Grey Wolf. The classification of the domestic dog within Canis lupus is not at all unequivocal, and in fact, a lot of the recent genetic research has shown that domestic dogs actually are not descended from wolves, and instead belong to their own, distinct species: Canis familiaris. So it would be really good if someone edited this article, and updated that information (or at least presented both sides of the debate). Do The Roar (talk) 05:12, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

This article currently contains a Taxonomy subsection which addresses that subtopic. If there is in fact debate about this, WP:DUE specifies that this article should represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 20:54, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Review and fix stuff related to outdated notions of "alphas"/social hierarchy

From the notes on the "wolf" article:

In the past, the prevailing view on gray wolf packs was that they consisted of individuals vying with each other for dominance, with dominant gray wolves being referred to as the "alpha" male and female, and the subordinates as "beta" and "omega" wolves. This terminology was first used in 1947 by Rudolf Schenkel of the University of Basel, who based his findings on researching the behavior of captive gray wolves. This view on gray wolf pack dynamics was later popularized by L. David Mech in his 1970 book The Wolf. He formally disavowed this terminology in 1999, explaining that it was heavily based on the behavior of captive packs consisting of unrelated individuals, an error reflecting the once prevailing view that wild pack formation occurred in winter among independent gray wolves. Later research on wild gray wolves revealed that the pack is usually a family consisting of a breeding pair and its offspring of the previous 1–3 years.[82] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.74.188.234 (talk) 03:51, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

If anyone had been thinking that wolf packs were not usually families, Mech has put that to rest. There is no real reason for such packs to engage in much violence because the hierarchy has been established since the birth of the puppies. However, this does not mean that a wolf pack is an anarchistic. There are Alphas and Omegas and they regularly engage in dominance/submission behaviors that are used to avoid violence. http://1onewolf.com/lakota/Wolf/Images/bodlang.jpg If an outsider wants to join the pack, that's going to be very difficult, but it can happen. Chrisrus (talk) 14:25, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 14 June 2014

68.104.58.216 (talk) 07:19, 14 June 2014 (UTC) a dog has decended from hippos in the last 1,000 years

Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. + Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. — Reatlas (talk) 08:03, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Lead Request

The lead sentence currently reads: "The domestic dog ... is the 18-31,000 year old descendant of a now extinct European Wolf". The relevant material in the source cited for this sentence (located here: https://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6160/871 ) reads: "The precise details of the domestication and origins of domestic dogs are unclear." and: "The data suggest that an ancient, now extinct, central European population of wolves was directly ancestral to domestic dogs.".

"The data suggest" and "the precise details are unclear" are not conclusive or factual statements. The wording of the current lead is unrepresentative of the statements in the source and should either be prefaced with "imprecise data suggests", something to that effect, or should be removed. I would like consensus on this before making a bold edit, and I thank you in advance for helping me with this. --Jacksoncw (talk) 21:53, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

I decided to make the change and simply removed that part of the sentence. --Jacksoncw (talk) 01:46, 26 June 2014 (UTC)