Did A Starchy Diet Transform Wolves Into Dogs?

A new study which aims to trace the genetic changes that made wild wolves become pet dogs has concluded that the answer may lie in diet.

Dogs are able to digest carbs more easily than their wolverine cousins, and that may have been a crucial step in the domestication process, according to one evolutionary geneticist from a Swedish university.

As human beings started to farm, wolves may have given up their carnivorous diets to scavenge scraps that were rich in carbohydrates from the scraps that were left out in rubbish heaps. Those beasts that could make the best use of starch may have gradually transformed over generations to become man’s best friend.

The finding is a surprise – researchers used to think that when wolves became domesticated, genes controlling behaviour and the immune system must have changed.

The new research looked at the genetic differences between 60 canines from 40 different breeds, and a dozen wolves from all over the world.

Dogs were discovered to have more copies than wolves do of the AMY2B gene that creates an enzyme which breaks starch into sugars which can easily be digested.

It seems that pet nutrition and brain changes were both needed for some wolves to become domesticated, say researchers. Those that were able to extract more nutrients from the plant material in the rubbish of those first farmers that formed some of the earliest pet dieting would have had an evolutionary advantage.

Scientists are now trying to learn when and in which regions of the world the adaptations were most likely to have taken place.