“Although it is not yet clear whether the stress marker cortisol is actually lower in dogs than in wolves, the presence of two mutations on one gene – one associated with changes in the production of intracellular cortisol – could tell us how dogs have the ability evolved to adapt to human society,” says Nagasawa. She and her colleagues now want to find out whether the cortisol levels actually differ between the two dog breed groups.
Can genetic data from today’s dogs be transferred to their prehistoric ancestors?
The study, published in Scientific Reports, provides exciting new evidence that dogs’ exceptional ability to cooperate and communicate with us is the result of natural selection toward wolves, which approach humans and eventually exhibit friendly behavior could,” says Duke University evolutionary anthropologist Brian Hare, who was not involved in the study.
Maria Lahtinen, a visiting researcher at the Finnish Museum of Natural History, who also did not participate in the new study, doubts that the new findings necessarily apply to canine ancestors. “The problem with this work is that modern dogs were studied to find out about the past,” says Lahtinen. »I would not use the results of the study for this, but rather take them as an indication of how modern dogs behave.«
To circumvent this problem, Hare suggests expanding future research to populations of other ancient dog breeds. If the mutations identified in the new study did indeed play an important role in allowing dogs to communicate differently with humans, Hare says, “then it should be possible for dingoes and New Guinea dingoes to share the same relationship between understanding human gestures and those have genes.«