SLEUTHING FOR SCENTS: DOG BREEDS, WOLVES AND THE CURIOUS CASE OF HUMAN DRIVEN SELECTION

Domestic dogs are well known for their astounding sense of smell. This trait has been so valued that for centuries humans have been training and employing dogs to better take advantage of their keen senses. We have even gone as far as to selectively breed for it, producing the iconic hunting dog breeds like bloodhounds, terriers, and spaniels. These breeds, and indeed dogs in general, share a lineage with a hunter that evolution has driven the selection of: Wolves. This offers a rare opportunity for us to interrogate the dynamics difference between human driven evolution and selection versus what we might think of as “natural” evolution. Are the traits that humans have selected for consistent in breeds being groomed for the same role? How strongly does this deviate from the configuration that evolution seems to have arrived at? Here we present preliminary comparisons of simple craniofacial parameters collected from various dog breeds with various historical "purposes" for their breeding, as well as from a sample of grey wolves. We examine both the degree of similarity in dogs ostensibly bred for similar tasks or functions as well as the morphological similarity of the groups to wolves. We summarize our results by assessing whether humans appear to be successful in their selection for particular traits that improve performance or if there is a potential non-morphological factor muddying what is actually occurring.