Is wolfhound a wolf or a dog? Is it the wolfiest dog or the dogiest wolf...

Question: Is this a wolf or a dog?

This is actually a Czech wolfhound.

Why does this name include both wolf and dog?

I believe many people have heard of

Dogs evolved from wolves

So, how did dogs become what they are today?

How did the Czech Wolfdog come about?

The Czech Wolfdog is a new breed that is a cross between a German Shepherd and a wild gray wolf. In terms of morphological characteristics, it has hair similar to that of a wild gray wolf, its ears are not very long, and it has a protruding lower jaw like a gray wolf. However, in terms of brain development, social behavior, and cognition, it is more similar to many domestic dogs. The Czech Wolfdog is relatively less obedient to humans, not as good as the German Shepherd, Malinois, etc.

In the 1950s and 1960s, some people crossbred German Shepherds with wild gray wolves, and the Czech Wolfdog was born during the breeding process. In 1982, it was recognized as a unique breed by Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic), and later the International Livestock Federation also recognized it as an independent breed.

The Czech Wolfdog can weigh up to 20-27 kg. They need a longer period of activity and a larger range of activities every day. Although they are tall and handsome, they also have strong attack capabilities. Therefore, they are not suitable for modern urban environments and are banned in Shanghai and other places.

Czech wolfdog in need of exercise. Image source: 101dogbreeds.com

Czech wolfhound teeth image source 101dogbreeds.com

What is the difference between a dog and a wolf?

In fact, whether it is the Czech Wolfdog or other dogs that have not been mixed with wild wolves, they are actually wolves biologically, just domesticated wolves.

Dogs are biologically a subspecies of the gray wolf, Canis lupus familiaris. In the late Ice Age, the ancestors of dogs separated from other wild gray wolves. They encountered hunter-gatherers on the Eurasian continent and ate the meat left by these people.

In the past two years, there has been a view that two groups of gray wolves from both ends of the Eurasian continent were domesticated into dogs; there is also a view that dogs originated in eastern Asia, and then domesticated dogs spread to western Eurasia, where they merged and hybridized with local wolves to form other dog lineages.

Pleistocene gray wolf fossils from Italy

Regarding the step of getting close to humans during the domestication of dogs, the Internet-famous wolf in Hoh Xil has proved it all. Of course, in fact, the Internet-famous wolf in Hoh Xil belongs to the Tibetan wolf subspecies (Canis lupus chanco), which is a subspecies of gray wolf unique to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and its surrounding areas. The Tibetan wolf subspecies has a history of mating with the Tibetan mastiff. Some people in the academic community also believe that the Tibetan wolf is an independent species.

Tibetan wolf subspecies in Qinghai Source: Xinhuanet

Gray wolf specimen

Wolf skull on top and dog skull on bottom

Dog fossils have been found in Europe 14,000 years ago, and dog bones have been found in Hebei Province, China 11,000 years ago. Later, the Banpo site and the Hemudu site also showed signs of dogs accompanying humans.

In the process of accompanying people, the amygdala in the dog's brain has shrunk, and its aggression towards people has weakened. At the same time as the average weight has decreased, the snout has become shorter and the zygomatic arch is not as wide as that of wild wolf brothers, and the muscles at the corners of the eyes have also changed slightly. The dog's appearance is more like a young wild gray wolf, which is called neoteny.

The picture shows the comparison between the eye muscles of dogs and gray wolves. During the domestication process of dogs, these two marked eye muscles became developed, making the dogs look lovable (it is not that gray wolves do not have these two marked eye muscles, but they are relatively underdeveloped, and the degree of muscle development of different dog breeds also varies).

After the agricultural era, people bred many breeds of dogs with smaller bodies and shorter muzzles. At first glance, it is difficult to recognize that they are the same species as wild gray wolves. In addition to short muzzles like pugs, there are also short limbs like corgis due to chondrodysplasia caused by mutations in the FGF4 gene.

Corgi

In addition, dogs also have higher levels of AMY2B gene expression, which enables them to adapt to eating starchy foods such as bread (although there are also dog breeds that cannot adapt to starchy diets, such as Huskies).

Some people say that wolves travel thousands of miles to eat meat, while dogs travel thousands of miles to eat feces. If the tail hangs down, it is a wolf, while if it stands up, it is a dog. In fact, during the domestication process from wolves to dogs, some traits changed significantly, while others did not change much.

Wild gray wolves, domestic dogs, and other canines all have coprophagous behavior. Dogs' inability to eat feces is inherited from their wolf ancestors. Wolf mothers will eat the feces that their children have just excreted to prevent potential enemies from discovering them based on the smell of the wolf in the feces. It can also prevent the feces from being left for too long and the parasites in the feces from infecting their children.

In addition, dogs may eat feces due to mental illness, anxiety and other pathological reasons, or they may eat some of the feces of other creatures to supplement nutrients such as linoleic acid and fat. The diet of wild gray wolves also contains a certain amount of plant food, and they are not picky eaters among large carnivores, which also lays the foundation for domesticated dogs with a wide diet.

Gray wolves eating plants in the northern United States. Image credit: twin-cities.umn.edu

Gray wolf taking care of cubs

In addition, wolves sometimes bark, which is the sound they make when they are guarding their territory to warn their enemies, just like dogs barking. Wolf howling is a signal for wolves to convey messages to their peers far away. Some dog breeds will respond with a howl after hearing a wolf howl, while other dogs have lost the ability to howl.

The different fates of dogs and wild wolves

After the dogs and the wild gray wolf branch parted ways, in addition to the Czech wolfdog, the Saarloos wolfdog and the Kalupo wolfdog are also dogs that are mixed with wolves. In Eastern Europe and the United States and other countries and regions, there are also records of hybridization between domestic dogs and wild gray wolves. Whether in captivity or in the wild, there are records of hybridization between gray wolves and pit bulls.

Saarloos Wolfhound Image source: animalia-life.club

Wild Gray Wolf Pitbull Hybrid Image Source: happydogbreeds.com

However, it is not a good idea to allow wolf-dog hybrids to live in the wild. They will be as close to people as dogs, but their temperaments will be as aggressive as some wild gray wolves.

Two wild wolf-dog hybrids from Eastern Europe

Some dogs have hybridized with wild wolves, while others have not hybridized but have become kings in the wild. A group of domestic dogs once came to the Australian continent on human boats after being domesticated and have lived there for a long time. This is the dingo (Canis lupus dingo), which is considered a separate subspecies of the gray wolf.

They look similar to the yellow farm dog Dahuang and are genetically similar to East Asian dog strains, but they behave more like wild gray wolves, becoming the top predator in Australia after the Ice Age, when large carnivorous land mammals were scarce.

The body of the Australian dingo in Australia. Source: myinterestingfacts.com

Some domestic dogs have also escaped into the wild. They are good at team fighting, and they also rely on humans to feed them. At the same time, they compete with wild predators such as snow leopards for food. In addition, they may transmit some viruses to wild animals or harm rare animals such as blue sheep and Tibetan antelopes that are protected in the wild.

On some islands with few large predators, dogs have become the new kings of the outside world, attacking the slow-reproducing native species of the island ecosystem.

Turtles on the island killed by domestic dogs

Domestic dog attacks wild donkey Image source: wildfact official website

While some dogs are causing trouble, wild gray wolves in some places are facing a crisis. Since the second half of the 20th century, wolves have been extinct in many provinces in central and eastern China.

Today, the wild distribution of gray wolves in China is limited to the three northeastern provinces, Sichuan, Tibet, Gansu, and northern Hebei, except for Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet. Wild gray wolves have also become extinct in many parts of the western United States, Japan, and the United Kingdom.

Fortunately, people have realized their mistakes, from the reintroduction of gray wolves in Yellowstone Park, to their return to historical distribution areas such as Germany (the birthplace of the Little Red Riding Hood story), to their being awarded the second-class national protection in China. Now, compared to other large carnivores, the gray wolf is at a "least concern" threat level, and is much less threatening than tigers, leopards, great white sharks and other species.

The gray wolf subspecies introduced into Yellowstone Park preys on caribou, elk, etc.

A gray wolf was photographed in a military area in Germany. Apart from military activities, there are few human activities here, which has become a shelter for them.

Dogs and wolves, who have different destinies on earth, need people to fully and correctly recognize them, rather than blindly vilifying them or vilifying them.

References

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Linnell, JDC, Kovtun, E. & Rouart, I. 2021. Wolf attacks on humans: an update for 2002–2020. NINA Report 1944. Norwegian Institute for Nature Research. [3] Penteriani, V., Delgado, M., Pinchera, F. et al. Human behavior can trigger large carnivore attacks in developed countries. Sci Rep 6, 20552 (2016).

Early holocene dog bones from the Zhokhov Site (East Siberian Arctic) and the question of the reliability of identification of early canis familiaris from archaeological excavations December 2015

Wang GD et al.2013. The genomics of selection in dogs and the parallel evolution between dogs and humans. Nat Commun. 4:1860.https://omia.org/home/

Genomic AnalysisReveals Hypoxia Adaptation in the Tibetan Mastiff by Introgression of the GreyWolf from the Tibetan Plateau (DOI:10.1093/molbev/msw274)

Ollivier, FJ, Samuelson, DA, Brooks, DE, Lewis, PA, Kallberg, ME, & Komáromy, AM (2004). Comparative morphology of the tapetum lucidum (among selected species). Veterinary ophthalmology, 7(1), 11-22.

Kaminski, J., Waller, BM, Diogo, R., Hartstone-Rose, A., & Burrows, AM (2019). Evolution of facial muscle anatomy in dogs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(29), 14677-14681.

Waller, BM, Peirce, K., Caeiro, CC, Scheider, L., Burrows, AM, McCune, S., & Kaminski, J. (2013). Paedomorphic facial expressions give dogs a selective advantage. PLoS one, 8(12), e82686.

Weekly Summer Diet of Gray Wolves (Canis lupus) in Northeastern Minnesota Article in American Midland Naturalist · January 2018

DOI: 10.1674/0003-0031-179.1.15

Population distribution and diet composition of wolves in Saihanwula Nature Reserve, Inner Mongolia

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https://www.science.org/content/article/dogs-may-be-threat-sea-turtles-worldwide

wildlifegrow.com

International wolf center official website

Abandoned Tibetan mastiffs pose threat to snow leopards' primacy

2017/03/20 China Daily

"Domestication: Ten Species That Created Today's World" Author: Daqing Shenlong

Editor: Dong Xiaoxian

Reviewer: Liu Kun and Li Peiyuan