Carnivore Basics, Chapter 1 - The Path of Evolution

Brenda Hagel © 2003

The earliest remains of a domesticated dog that have been found are dated around 12,000 to 14,000 years ago. Recent studies of DNA changes in dogs and wolves have provided evidence that the dog may actually have been domesticated more than 100,000 years ago. Most researchers agree that the dog was first domesticated and selectively bred in the context of a forager (hunter-gatherer) society. During the Pleistocene period, humans lived in small tribal groups and hunted large ungulates as one of their food sources. Living and hunting as a social group allowed humans to be successful in hunting prey species that were larger or faster than themselves. At that time, another predatory species, the wolf, was also successfully surviving as a social hunter. Most likely, humans and wolves were competing for the same food sources within geographical areas and existed in close proximity to one another.

The first attempts at taming and domesticating the wolf were probably unintentional and occurred in many areas of the world at the same time. Being opportunists, wolves possibly followed human tribes occasionally to scavenge food from their campsites. It is known that humans of the Pleistocene age were in the habit of taking young animals of many species from the wild and raising them in captivity as pets. Although the young of the other carnivores, such as foxes, also would have been kept and tamed as young animals, the less social structure of these species would not have facilitated a long-term association with humans. The social nature of wolves, on the other hand, may have encouraged humans to keep them in captivity.

Once an individual wolf pup was raised and tamed, it could serve several purposes to tribal people, prime of which was as a food source. However, as time went on, humans began to recognize other advantages to keeping this predatory species as a campsite companion. A wolf’s alarm bark would have been beneficial in alerting humans to the approach of other tribes or predators as well as a possible deterrent to these intruders. The social nature of the wolf and its ability to hunt cooperatively led to uses of the wolf/dog in the detection, tracking and killing of game.

During the Mesolithic period, human culture developed the use of weapons for hunting. This allowed greater distances between hunters and prey and opened the need for canine partners to as trackers and retrievers. As the climate changed and human populations increased, man slowly evolved from hunter-gatherers to inhabitants of settled agrarian communities. Within communities, the need for dogs to act as sentinels to warn of approaching animals or other tribes increased. The age of agriculture and the keeping of domesticated livestock as a food supply resulted in a need for the dog as a guard or herder. As human lifestyles changed, so did the dog’s. Intentional breeding was undertaken to develop specific types of dogs for specific jobs. This process was repeated often in many parts of the world, and the dog slowly diversified to numerous body types, coat types, temperaments, and working abilities. The end result was the of today - comprising breeds that range in weight from a few pounds to more than 150 pounds and with temperaments as diverse as the difference in size.

In order to better understand your dog and the history of his nutritional requirements, we need to step back in time nearly 100,000 years ago when dogs began evolving away from their wolf ancestors. Although wolf and early human remains have been found from as far back as 400,000 years ago, domestic dog and human date back only about 15,000 years. This puts the wolf/dog as companion to man before the development of human settlements at a point when both species survived by hunting or scavenging. Because the wolf diet was almost identical to that of humans during this period, wolves may have followed human tribes to eat their waste. In turn, humans would have made use of the wolves’ superior scenting ability to locate and track prospective kills. Eventually subservient wolves adapted to humans and a union of companionship was born. At night, wolves with their keen senses, could warn humans of danger approaching. They were also used to flush game so hunters could successfully kill from a safe distance. Over thousands of years, wolves were eventually transformed into more people friendly breeds.

Wolves and Coyotes don’t get hungry in the way we normally understand hunger. Their feeding habits and digestive systems are adapted to a feast or famine existence. They have the ability to procure and process massive amounts of food in a relatively short time. They are more or less hungry all of the time. Wolves commonly go without food for three or four days and then gorge, eating as much as eighteen pounds of food at one meal. Then, “meat drunk,” they may lay out in the sun until digestion is completed, in about three to four hours. Wolves may eat up to one-fifth of their body weight at one time.

The wolf’s diet consists of muscle meat and fatty tissue from various animals. Heart, lung, liver and other internal organs are eaten. Bones are crushed to get at the marrow, and bone fragments are eaten as well; even hair and skin are sometimes consumed. The only part consistently ignored is the stomach and its contents. Some vegetable matter is taken separately, particularly berries, but Canis lupus does not seem to digest them very well. The coyote commonly consumes a higher proportion of vegetable matter and subsists on smaller game. Wolves and coyotes eat grass, possibly to scour the digestive tract and remove worms. Consisting of cellulose, the grass itself is never digested.

Wolves consume an average of five to ten pounds of meat a day and wash it down with large quantities of water to prevent uremic poisoning from a high production of urea associated with a meat diet. The wolf has a large liver and pancreas to aid digestion, and the feces provide an interesting example of efficiency in its large intestine. Droppings in the wild typically consist of chips and slivers of bone neatly packaged along with such items as the rubbery remains of deer hooves in a capsule of hair that moves very smoothly along the colon.

The major sources of meat in the wolf’s diet are deer, moose, elk, musk ox, Dall sheep, Rocky Mountain sheep, caribou, reindeer or beaver, depending on the area, the season and the year. Wolves also prey on buffalo, snowshoe hares, flightless ducks, marmots, mice, squirrels, grouse, geese, and rabbits. Wolves fish, too, wade-herding salmon, arctic grayling or whitefish into shallow pools where they’re trapped. They also mouth-spear them in swift water from the bank with well-timed lunges. They eat carrion and occasionally insects, especially when they encounter them in epidemic populations. And they feed on domestic stock. They hunt by intent but are opportunists, too.

Although coyotes aren’t considered genetically related to the domestic dog as are wolves, their eating habits provide useful comparisons about carnivore appropriate nutrition. Studies of coyote feeding habits indicate that besides domestic livestock, White-tailed deer, lagomorphs (rabbit or hares), and small rodents make up the greater percentage of the diet. Coyote scats (droppings) have comprised of wild birds, fruits and vegetable matter. At certain seasons or in certain areas, fruits may play a large role in the diet. There are also a small percentage of reptiles (lizards and snakes) and invertebrates (grasshoppers and beetles) in coyote scats. Such broad tastes allow these smaller species to survive in numerous habitats and in close association with man.

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