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How wolves became dogs
- npstr 10mo agohttps://archive.is/yRObl https://archive.is/yRObl
- amiga386 10mo agoIt's Bob, all right... but look at those vacuous eyes, that stupid grin on his face - he's been domesticated, I tell you.
- jacquesm 10mo agoHehe, shades of The Far Side.
- azornathogron 10mo agoHN title-destroying rules strike again. It's "How Wolves Became Dogs"
- Luc 10mo agoThis rule is one of the worst ones, often resulting in nonsense titles or grammatical problems. Another one on the homepage right now: "Samba Was Written". Ok, great.
- rebolek 10mo agoTechnically it's correct.
- andersa 10mo agoWhy not get rid of this stupid title changer already? I don't get it.
- k8sToGo 10mo agoWhy is the how dropped? Is it automatic?
- xnorswap 10mo agoYes. There are a few other title-mangle rules that HN has. It's an attempted technical solution to try to remove / limit the amount of "clickbait" in titles. It does not work very well.
- omoikane 10mo agoI tried searching for similar incidents in the past[1], and I think the problem is that the title munging actually doesn't happen often enough for Hacker News to want to do anything about it. It's unusual that two front page articles were affected on the same day, but that's a small fraction compared to titles that passed through[2]. I don't know if Hacker News will pop up any extra confirmation to the submitter to warn that their submitted title were automatically edited, but I think that would be a better interface than relying on submitters and readers to fix the mistake after the article is already visible and ranked. Whether any automated editing of titles actually helps with reducing clickbait is a different question. [1] How wolves became dogs (2026-01-09) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46553433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46553433 How Samba Was Written (2026-01-04) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46551531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46551531 Why I have to give Fortnite my passport to use Bluesky (2025-12-19) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46327832 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46327832 How they clean the balls in a ball pit (2025-10-15) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45592984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45592984 Why we didn't rewrite our feed handler in Rust (2025-10-08) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45517240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45517240 How Spain put up wealth taxes (2025-08-16) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44927460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44927460 [2] Majority of the submitted titles never had "how" or "why" to begin with, and sometimes the submitter catches the change in time, for example: How to Code Claude Code in 200 Lines of Code (2026-01-08) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46545620 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46545620 I didn't see any mentions of the title being edited here.
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- sph 10mo agoIt's clear that human companionship has shaped wolves into dogs. A weird, perhaps silly question I've had for a while is: how have wolves shaped humans? Has human society in any way been affected by the structure of wolf packs? Did hairless monkeys form stronger tribes because of it? I don't believe for a second that this deep interspecies friendship has been one-sided and hasn't brought psychological if not physical changes as much as the changes it's brought to wolves.
- tomkaos 10mo agoI read somewhere that he could have change human sleep. Human can have a deeper sleep knowing a guard will alert of danger.
- the_af 10mo agoThankfully we have those other animals, "human puppies", to counteract this :P
- wincy 10mo agoI know it’s said in jest, but if your kid is attached while you’re sleeping, i.e. breastfeeding and cosleeping, which a hunter gatherer society would most certainly do, babies don’t fuss unless they’re sick or something. My wife slept soundly through the night and said “it’s amazing she doesn’t feed at night!” (Referring to our daughter), and I said, shocked, “she eats at night, she makes a soft noise and you just roll over and pop a boob in her mouth without waking up!” This is entirely a modern problem of our own creation and convenience.
- mikkupikku 10mo agoSeems plausible to me that our long relationship with wolves/dogs has modified humanity to be more empathic to other species of animals in general. Probably impossible to prove though.
- wendgeabos 10mo agoIt's hard to imagine how it could not have driven human evolution as well.
- z3t4 10mo agoIt's common in fur farms that they breed the animals that are most friendly to humans, and in only a few generations those animals behave like very friendly pets, and killing them becomes more difficult.
- wendgeabos 10mo agohuh so that's a way that it's adaptive for the animals
- ekr____ 10mo agoSee also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox
- suzzer99 10mo agoA NOVA episode on dogs showed a Russian study where they bred the most friendly foxes with each other and did the same with the most aggressive (so extremes in both directions). The aggressive-bred animals were like that scene in I Am Legend where he checks on his infected rats. They were being fed, and they still wanted to kill their feeders. Kind of terrifying.
- akkad33 10mo agoWhy do they kill animals for fur? Could they not shave them? (I realise my question sounds dumb)
- snerbles 10mo agoThe pelt is what's harvested - the fur is not removed from the skin. In some cases the animal's hair can be cut without harm, like how sheep are shorn for wool.
- szanni 10mo agoI am rather surprised the article does not mention the shared hunting technique of pursuing prey until exhaustion as a possible link. Many hunter gather tribes apparently employed this technique and it can still be found today in Africa with the San people. Sharing food or stealing wolf puppies were probably part of the domestication but was this because humans possibly hunted alongside wolves? Humans possibly being capable of pursuing for longer distances due to better body temperature control through sweating while wolves being better at tracking. At least that would be my take.
- IAmBroom 10mo agoInteresting. Counterpoint: since the canines can't keep up with the humans, are they only used to start the hunt? How do they know where the humans are near the end? Until the dog is fully domesticated (OK, I'll go home and await his return. He'll bring me meat!), I don't know how they could cooperate on a many-hour hunt like this. I used to wonder the same about falconry until I met a hawkmaster. The animals don't take prey far away where they'd be hard to find; they hover or perch near the humans in open fields, where they are trivial to find. I also wondered why they don't just eat the prey. It's because that involves lots of effort; they know a human will shortly arrive with tasty food that isn't wrapped in tough fur. Basically, they trade a package of hamburger for a Big Mac.
- runjake 10mo ago> Counterpoint: since the canines can't keep up with the humans, are they only used to start the hunt? Can you elaborate here? This is a weird fascination of mine (man+canine). I walk long distances with dogs, here's what I've found and ruminated: 1. If I chase or follow a dog, I can chase them to exhaustion. 2. If I'm walking several miles with a dog, they tend to trot ahead of me and stop and pant and wait for me. Rinse, wash, repeat. Bursted energy/rest cycles.
- kokanator 10mo agoI think your experience is one of conditioning or even breed type. I have German Wirehair Pointers which I keep in top athletic shape. When we are in the field they will triple my distance travelled ( verified by GPS ). My outings are typically 8-12 miles and thus 24-36 miles for the dogs. Of course I need to keep them hydrated during this activity. The behavior of running forward and looking back is most likely what we refer to as checking in. The dog is trying verify where you are heading/doing. In my dog's case they will range out to around 400 yards and then return to with 20 yards and run passed making eye contact as they run by.
- MichaelRo 10mo ago>> “The only, absolute and best friend a man has, in this selfish world, the only one that will not betray or deny him, is his dog.” Well, this is far from absolute, isn't it? :) There's a fair number of vicious attacks of a dog on his owner. Oftentimes pitbulls (are they even dogs or rather "creatures"?!), but other breeds do it too. So ... nothing is absolute :P
- gradschool 10mo agoFor another example of betrayal, one of the cronies in Katherine the Great's court always gave a dog to his girlfriends whenever he started a new relationship. Then if the dog ever greeted some other guy familiarly, he inferred he was falling out of favor. He probably learned that trick when someone did it to him, because he would let the other guy know how he was rumbled before graciously bowing out.
- inahga 10mo agoMostly, if not entirely due to intentionally poor breeding practices. Who betrayed who?
- IAmBroom 10mo agoMostly, if not entirely, due to poor raising. I've gotten "BEWARE OF DOG!" pitbulls and rottweilers to befriend me simply by speaking kindly to them, and then over a period of days raising that to handsniffs, then petting. Misanthropic dogs are taught that behavior, which contradicts 10,000+ years of training. They don't enjoy being assholes. This is not to say dogs aren't naturally barky and suspicious of strangers; that is also part of their millenia of training. Lots of nice people are also suspicious of strangers. But aggressively attacking people is basically psychotic behavior for a social animal that considers humans part of its society.
- IAmBroom 10mo agoThe quote doesn't insist all dogs are infinitely loyal. Your disgusting prejudice aside, I've never met a pitbull in public that wasn't sweet and loving - which reinforces my suspicion that the real problem with them is the sort of psychotic, uncaring owner they attract. When I was young, it was Dobermans that were demonized, and likewise the dog of choice for assholes who abused them as mere security devices.
- macspoofing 10mo agoNext up: Raccoons.
- srean 10mo agoWouldn't mind killer whales and dolphins while we are at it. We aren't that great about sharing the environment though.
- thedudeabides5 10mo agopositive sum games
- jjtheblunt 10mo agoI watch the genetic studies and it seems always presumed, in these articles, that dogs derive from wolves, not that dogs derive from siblings of wolves that derive from a common proto-canine ancestor. The wikipedia entry considers the issue, presents data that are curious with respect ot the data in the Economist article, saying domestication is presumed from wolves roughly 14,000 years or so ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog#Taxonomy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog#Taxonomy The Economist article hints at the curiosity, in mentioning pre-Colombian dogs in the Americas were distinct some 23,000 years ago, but then returns to the standard presumptions. An article in Nature also considers the ancestry presumptions https://www.nature.com/articles/505589e https://www.nature.com/articles/505589e
- griffzhowl 10mo agoThe wiki article doesn't say domestication occurred roughly 14k years ago, it says at least 14k years ago, because that's the earliest definitive evidence of a domesticated dog. Here are the next two sentences from the wiki article: "The remains of the Bonn–Oberkassel dog, buried alongside humans between 14,000 and 15,000 years ago, are the earliest to be conclusively identified as a domesticated dog.[9][7] Genetic studies show that dogs likely diverged from wolves between 27,000 and 40,000 years ago."
- jjtheblunt 10mo agoagreed. in one of the articles linked, they further summarize "Dog ancestors diverged from modern wolf ancestors at least 27,000 years ago" which is still compatible with the two diverged ancestries sharing a proto-canid ancestor from which proto-wolves and proto-dogs both were derived. Interestingly, the article about Belgian prehistoric canid dna says the genetics are so varied that they don't form a clear group.
- IAmBroom 10mo agoWe have fossil records of wolves that do not seem much different from modern grey wolves. We do not have fossil records of ancestors to the grey wolves that share much of their DNA coexisting with the grey wolves. Occam's Razor says that the posited ancestor of Canus domesticus that shared grey wolf DNA was... the grey wolf.
- jebarker 10mo agoHighly recommend the book "How to tame a fox" about the Russian fur farm fox domestication experiment
- mooreds 10mo agoBut see also https://www.the-scientist.com/famous-fox-domestication-experiment-challenged-66817 https://www.the-scientist.com/famous-fox-domestication-exper... > Famous Fox Domestication Experiment Challenged > The tamed foxes, whose appearances changed with breeding, weren’t wild to begin with, say the authors of a new study.
- softwaredoug 10mo agoOne clue is in mythology. Across many cultures, dogs exist in a transitory space between life and death (ie Cerebus). Hinting at dogs being "transitory" from here (camp) and out there (the wilderness). Going between, getting scraps, staying for a while, leaving. You can imagine a process unfolding over Millenia of gradual domestication this way. You see it in Ancient North Eurasians myth across different cultures. Ancient North Eurasians are genetic precursors Eurasian, Western Europe, and American lineages where dog domestication originated, and arguably where many cultures have the deeper associations with dogs.
- feintruled 10mo agoInteresting article, though is there really much new there? Also it discounts the alternative hypothesis of some bright spark acquiring wolf pups and doing it purposefully because that would take 'weeks'. Weeks, you say? Surely some enterprising hunter-gatherer had sufficient time on their hands. I can't help but think strutting around with a feared predator at your beck and call would have been the ultimate status symbol, and once you saw it would have to be the must have accessory for the self-respecting hunter. Aficionados would no doubt breed their stock amongst themselves to save the hassle of having to abduct more wolf cubs, which would naturally tend to the more suited specimens (friendliness being one trait as you don't want them eating the kids). Once it was realised what an incredible force multiplier they are in hunting and their utility in defence, any time investment would pay for itself many times over. I find this no less as unlikely as thinking humans would let wolves help themselves to their excess food. Fascinating subject all round, no matter the reason. I hope they can figure out more.
- tastyfreeze 10mo agoI see this as likely as becoming more amenable to humans over a long time due to free food. Falconers often acquire and train wild birds. With wolves abducting pups or adopting orphans seems like a reasonable path to domestication.
- SJC_Hacker 10mo ago> I find this no less as unlikely as thinking humans would let wolves help themselves to their excess food Wolves can extract nutrition from animal tissue which humans discard, such as bone and the tougher cartilage/connective tissue. Modern dogs still absolute love bones. They also have much better night vision than humans, sense of smell and hearing. So, follow human tribes and pick off the remains when they move camp. Maybe eventually escalate to sneaking in at night. The human tribes now become a "resource" which the wolves will start guarding from other predators, such as bears or competing wolf packs. The humans eventually catch on that the wolves are providing a benefit at very little cost - food remains which they are not eating anyway. They even start to share kills - the wolves being better at tracking game while the humans finish the kill with spear/bow. When animal and crop domestication occurs, you get another benefit - protecting the flocks/herds/crops from marauders. Especially at night.
- Beijinger 10mo agoPreviously: Our dogs' diversity can be traced back to the Stone Age https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45922997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45922997 Me: Not sure man. The closest relative to the dog is the likely extinct, Japanese Wolf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_wolf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_wolf Maybe they were very tame to begin with? Like the extinct Falkland wolf: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkland_Islands_wolf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkland_Islands_wolf "There were no forests for the animal to hide in, and it had no fear of humans;[citation needed] it was possible to lure the animal with a chunk of meat held in one hand, and kill it with a knife held in the other"
- craig552uk 10mo agoA good (if slightly dated) book on the subject: How the Wolf Became the Dog by Mark Derr This is an active, and fast-moving, research area and I'd be keen to read something more up-to-date.
- pointbob 10mo ago[dead]
- ChrisMarshallNY 10mo agoAll these comments, and no one has mentioned the classic “What’s the Worst That Can Happen?” Meme? I won’t link to it, because all the sources are not so nice for techs, but just search for “10000 years later”, or “what’s the worst that can happen?”. The thumbnail previews will be fine. No need to open X or Facebook.