Existing research suggests that humans and dogs have been living in close proximity to one another for 30,000 years, but it also suggests that humans have only been breeding dogs for the past 15,000 years. Checking the register here, I’m noticing a 15,000-year period where humans weren’t even trying to make the wolves that scavenged their garbage more doggy-like. Nevertheless, they stuck around. A new study sought to figure out what was happening here. It involved the team running simulations mimicking that 15,000-year period where the wolves were gradually becoming more dog-like, essentially of their own evolutionary volition. The simulation found that wolves evolved into dogs anywhere from 37 percent to 74 percent of the time, depending on the conditions set. It makes sense because you know somehow they did. The simulation also found that the evolution from wolf to dog may have occurred in as little as 8,000 years, provided that the creatures had what I like to call the “zoomies,” evolutionarily speaking, of course.
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