The study lays out the case that the domestication process is often wrongly thought of as initiated by humans—with people capturing and selectively breeding wild animals. But the study authors claim that the process begins much earlier, when animals become habituated to human environments.

“One thing about us humans is that, wherever we go, we produce a lot of trash,” says the study’s co-author and University of Arkansas at Little Rock biologist Raffaela Lesch. Piles of human scraps offer a bottomless buffet to wildlife, and to access that bounty, animals need to be bold enough to rummage through human rubbish but not so bold as to become a threat to people.

This has absolutely blown my mind. I don’t think I’ve ever considered that, obviously.

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 24 points 5 days ago

Yeah, if you ever run across the theories of how dogs became so close to us, it started with wolves being willing to take the risks of scavenging near us, and eventually co-evolving (until selective breeding started).

Actively, intentionally domesticating a species is a slow process overall, and it wasn't something that I've seen any specialists suggest would have been the case with dogs, or cats.

[–] porcoesphino@mander.xyz 19 points 5 days ago

In that case you might like the PBS Eons video on the domestication of house cats (and it touches on some of the generalised processes):

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CYPJzQppANo

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 14 points 5 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

It's a popular theory about why dogs were domesticated so much earlier than everything else. Wolves have a remarkably similar lifestyle to human hunter gatherers, and so early dogs could live either in parallel or in close proximity as conditions demanded. With other creatures, like pigs or horses, humans had to run a program and do so consistently for domestication to work. In some places, semi-feral dogs are still a common sight.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 10 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I've felt that dogs have taken the same path. Notice how expressive their facial muscles are? Wolves don't have nearly so many facial muscles. Wild to learn about isn't it?!

[–] Enkrod@feddit.org 13 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Wolves also do not understand pointing, most other human gestures and they can not read human emotions through our faces. Dogs can understand all that. Humans and dogs have co-evolved for such a long time that our species now have a deep instinctual understanding of each other.

[–] moncharleskey@lemmy.zip 5 points 5 days ago

My dogs definitely do not understand pointing! No arguing, they just don't get it, though they could be trained to I'm sure.