Audiobook8 hours
How the Dog Became the Dog: From Wolves to Our Best Friends
Written by Mark Derr
Narrated by David Colacci
Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
2.5/5
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About this audiobook
That the dog evolved from the wolf is an accepted fact of evolution and history, but the question of how wolf became dog has remained a mystery, obscured by myth and legend. How the Dog Became the Dog posits that dog was an evolutionary inevitability in the nature of the wolf and its human soul mate.
The natural temperament and social structure of humans and wolves are so similar that as soon as they met on the trail they recognized themselves in each other. Both are highly social, accomplished generalists, and creatures of habit capable of adapting-homebodies who like to wander.
How the Dog Became the Dog presents "domestication" of the dog as a biological and cultural process that began in mutual cooperation and has taken a number of radical turns. At the end of the last Ice Age, the first dogs emerged with their humans from refuges against the cold. In the eighteenth century, humans began the drive to exercise full control of dog reproduction, life, and death to complete the domestication of the wolf begun so long ago.
The natural temperament and social structure of humans and wolves are so similar that as soon as they met on the trail they recognized themselves in each other. Both are highly social, accomplished generalists, and creatures of habit capable of adapting-homebodies who like to wander.
How the Dog Became the Dog presents "domestication" of the dog as a biological and cultural process that began in mutual cooperation and has taken a number of radical turns. At the end of the last Ice Age, the first dogs emerged with their humans from refuges against the cold. In the eighteenth century, humans began the drive to exercise full control of dog reproduction, life, and death to complete the domestication of the wolf begun so long ago.
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Reviews for How the Dog Became the Dog
Rating: 2.333333244444445 out of 5 stars
2.5/5
9 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5This isn't evolution. This book shows variations within the family of dogs.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5The author would have been better off simply making this an epoch-spanning novel. Instead, he blithely makes up his own fantasies of what the past was like, ignores any facts that disagree with his fantasies, and generally acts as though the truth, since it is currently scientifically unproven, can be bent to be whatever we wish it to be. If you like his arbitrary classifications (dogwolves, wolfdogs, socialized wolves, uhh, probably a few more I forgot), have fun with it. I'm not going to waste my time reading the rest.