Dogs and Wolves Not as Genetically Close as Thought

Dogs and wolves had a common ancestor somewhere from 11,000 to 34,000 years ago, but aren't as closely related as previously thought, new research says.

A team of United States scientists have found the genetic overlap observed between some modern dogs and wolves resulted from interbreeding after dogs were domesticated, but was not due to a direct hereditary line originated from one group of wolves.

The findings were published the journal PLoS Genetics and promotes a much more complicated history than the popular notion early farmers adopted a few docile, friendly wolves that later developed into today's canine companions.

Researchers from the University of Chicago said that dogs are more closely related to each other than to any wolves, regardless of geographic origin, and they certainly didn't descend from a single line of wolves.

The scientists now believe the earliest dogs may have in fact first lived with hunter-gatherer societies and adapted to agricultural life later.

Researchers from the University of Chicago said that dogs are more closely related to each other than to wolves, regardless of geographic origin as they do not descend from a single line of wolves.

Senior study author John Novembre, associate professor in the Department of Human Genetics at the university, acknowledged dog domestication "is more complex than we originally thought ... In this analysis we didn't see clear evidence in favor of a multi-regional model, or a single origin" from one of the living wolves that were sampled.

"It makes the field of dog domestication very intriguing going forward," he said.

The research, said Novembre, suggests that all the dogs studied appeared to have descended from an older, wolf-like ancestor common to both species. Another possibility, he added, "is there may have been other wolf lineages that these dogs diverged from that then went extinct."

In any case, "now when you ask which wolves are dogs most closely related to, it's none ... because these are wolves that diverged in the recent past ... It's something more ancient that isn't well represented by today's wolves," he said.

A study published late last year asserted that dogs and human had learned to coexist as far back as the Ice Age and that dogs and humans first bonded between 19,000 and 30,000 years ago.

According to a long-held prior theory, dog domestication happened an estimated15,000 years ago in eastern Asia, after agriculture became a way of life.