Dogs and wolves are very similar in appearance, but I believe most people can still distinguish them. The main method is to look at the eyes, the eyes of the wolf look much sharper than the eyes of the dog, and the eyes of the dog are more gentle.
Dogs originate from the domestication of wolves, and they are of the same origin as wolves, so why is there such a difference in the eyes? It boils down to two major factors: one is that in the long process of domestication, human preferences have influenced the evolution of dogs; and the other is that dogs and wolves have different eye muscle structures.
wolf
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="13" > human choice</h1>
When were dogs domesticated by humans? There has been a debate internationally. There is nothing wrong with dogs originating from wolves, but they are not the gray wolves we see in modern times, but to be precise, they were domesticated from some extinct late Pleistocene gray wolves. Therefore, even if the dog and the gray wolf are "two old cousins", they are also distant cousins.
There are differences in different views about the time of domestication of dogs, etc., but it is mutually recognized that in the long process of evolution, human subjective preferences have reconstructed the dog's brain.
The process of domestication of dogs is not achieved overnight, but is selected and bred from generation to generation to finally get the breed we want. Scientists have found that in the process of accompanying humans, several sets of genes between dogs and humans have converged and evolved.
dog
In order to restore the domestication process of dogs, scientists in Russia once did a simulation experiment for 60 years. Scientists replaced gray wolves with silver foxes, recorded the personality traits of each fox, and then grouped them according to different personality traits, such as a docile group and a fierce group.
Then the breeding was carried out separately, and in the next generation, the foxes with the characteristics of the personality required by the experiment continued to be selected, and under the condition of repeateding these steps, the foxes bred for 40 generations, and these silver foxes finally underwent a significant change:
The offspring foxes in the docile group are basically more docile; the offspring in the fierce group become more grumpy, and whenever people pass by its cage, these foxes show great aggression.
The experimental results are predictable, but what people do not expect is that the offspring foxes in the docile group have also undergone a certain degree of "canineization" in appearance, such as the appearance of curly tails in some individuals, and the ears have become softer.
fox
There is no doubt that after dozens of generations of breeding, the various characteristics of offspring foxes are basically the result of human intervention, so the evolutionary process of dogs is actually a history of human intervention.
According to their subjective preferences, people deliberately retained those individuals who were more in line with human aesthetics, and eventually formed the dogs we see today. This is understandable, for example, during the transition from tribal life to urbanization in the early days, some fierce and aggressive dogs became less popular, and relatively, small dogs with docile personalities became new favorites.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="13" > different eye muscle structures</h1>
If you look closely at the dog's eyes, you will find that the dog's eyebrows are moving, and the whites of the eyes are more exposed than those of the wolf, and these eye features combine to make the dog's eyes look more gentle.
In order to understand this feature of dogs, British scientists dissected some dog and modern gray wolves' facial specimens and found that the outer muscles of the dog's shrunken eyes were much larger than those of wolves, a difference that allowed dogs to show more whites. In addition, dogs have muscles in the corners of the eyes, driven by this muscle, dogs can easily move eyebrows, while wolves do not lift the inner muscles of the corners of the eyes, so the wolf's eyebrows cannot be moved.
Gray wolves in the late Pleistocene certainly did not possess these characteristics, so why did domesticated dogs have them? Apparently the result of human intervention.
For example, some early individuals appeared this feature, in contact with human eyes, found that large eyes, provoked eyebrows can capture the heart of humans, these individuals can naturally get more interaction with humans, over time, with these characteristics of the individual, was selected, after dozens of generations of cultivation, this trait was fixed, became the "standard" of dogs.
Contemporary dogs vary in appearance and are bred according to their own preferences, such as in the early 20th century, an Argentine farmer, in order to deal with the ferocious mountain lion and the flood of wild boar, with the Great Dane, Spanish fighting dog, boxing lion dog and other dog breeds, bred the world-famous Dogo.
Dogo dogs
After the birth of the Dogo, it did have an excellent performance in guarding the manor and hunting, and became the best choice for many farmers in South America. The dog's eyes look much gentler than the wolf's, and on the surface are different facial muscle structures, but they are essentially the end result of human intervention.
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