A socialized wolf briefly greeting an unfamiliar experimenter.IMAGE: MONTY SLOANThe key to dogs’ transformation from wild wolves into faithful canine companions may reside in a handful of genes, according to a new study. The authors of the paper, published yesterday (July 19) in Science Advances, suggest that a couple genes in the same region of a single chromosome might have played a role in the extreme sociability that likely attended the domestication of wolves tens of thousands of years ago.
These genes, GTF2I and GTF2IRD1, also play a role in a human disease, Williams-Beuren syndrome, marked by hyper sociability.
“It is great to see initial genetic evidence supporting the self-domestication hypothesis or ‘survival of the friendliest,’” Duke University evolutionary anthropologist Brian Hare, who was not involved in the study, tells Science News. “This is another piece of the puzzle suggesting that humans did not create dogs intentionally, but instead wolves that were friendliest toward humans were at an evolutionary advantage as our two species began to interact.”
Princeton University evolutionary biologist Bridgett vonHoldt and her coauthors studied the behavior of 16 dogs and eight socialized, captive grey wolves, finding that when faced with a cognitively challenging task, dogs spent more time looking at and interacting ...
