Humanity's Dual Response to Dogs and Wolves

Adrian Treves; Cristian Bonacic

doi:10.1016/j.tree.2016.04.006

Humanity's Dual Response to Dogs and Wolves

Trends Ecol Evol. 2016 Jul;31(7):489-491. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2016.04.006. Epub 2016 May 13.

Authors

Adrian Treves¹, Cristian Bonacic²

Affiliations

¹ Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin, 30A Science Hall, 550 North Park Street, Madison, WI 53706, USA. Electronic address: atreves@wisc.edu.
² Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin, 30A Science Hall, 550 North Park Street, Madison, WI 53706, USA; Department of Ecosystems and the Environment, School of Agriculture and Forestry Engineering, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Casilla 306, Correo 22 Santiago, Chile.

PMID: 27185394
DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2016.04.006

Abstract

Dogs were first domesticated 31 000-41 000 years ago. Humanity has experienced ecological costs and benefits from interactions with dogs and wolves. We propose that humans inherited a dual response of attraction or aversion that expresses itself independently to domestic and wild canids. The dual response has had far-reaching consequences for the ecology and evolution of all three taxa, including today's global 'ecological paw print' of 1 billion dogs and recent eradications of wolves.

Keywords: canids; coevolution; commensalism; competition; domestication; evolutionary ecology.

MeSH terms

Animals
Animals, Domestic*
Biological Evolution
Dogs
Ecology
Humans
Wolves*