Essay On Domestic Animals

1633 Words7 Pages
Homosepians of the 21st Century have grown fond of domestic dogs so much that, dogs are referred to as man’s best friend. According to Morey (1994), dogs are the evolutionary products of wolves, Canis Lupus. Clearly there are distinct differences in both organisms; physiologically, morphologically and behaviourally (Morey 1994, 338-345). In the article studied, Morey questioned the origin of domestication, whether or not it was an intentional act of humans such as breeding or whether self-domestication took place, without breeding selection by humans. Domestication is the ability of animals to interact with human beings without fear, adhere to the rules and reproduce under the new conditions (Belyaev 1979, 301).To understand the ubiquitous…show more content…
The most distinct change in the morphology of the wolf to the domestic dog is the reduction in size of the cranium and snout. Domestic dogs are described as paedomorphic meaning that, they bear juvenile traits of their wolf counterparts (Morey 1994, 343). In addition, domestication caused a strong selection on the reproductive clock, which affected the size of the dogs thus, producing the paedomorphic dog (341). Moreover, early reproduction was selected for thus, fertility is increased deeming early maturation efficient. For instance, wolves become sexually mature after two years thus, they can only breed from the stipulated period (342). However, dogs become sexually matured within six to twelve months and can begin reproduction much earlier and so increase the quantity of offspring that can be produced. In addition, the shortened growth period introduced problems in the developmental process such that some features such as the jaw to teeth ratio did not develop proportionally resulting in crowded teeth and the retention of paedomorphic traits (343). A plot of snout length versus skull length of the following: the juvenile wolf, the adult canids and prehistoric dogs revealed a trend of increasing snout length

More about Essay On Domestic Animals

Open Document