Dog's Best Friend

The dog-wolf next door

Mark Derr

Of Glaciers, Wolves, and Humans

During the last great glaciation, people and wolves created dogs.

From Wolves to Dogs: Give the Dog a Hindquarter

A new study gives weight to the notion that early human hunters actively fed wolves.

Has Pandemic Fatigue Got You Down?

COVID-19 has altered the way we live. Is it also changing our brains?

Arctic Sled Dogs Are Uniquely Adapted to Frigid Climes

Ancient sled dogs go back at least 9,500 years.

Dogs in the Time of COVID-19

How is sheltering at home affecting shelter dogs?

Farm Fox Theory Bites the Dust

A cornerstone of domestication theory collapses.

Shifting Perspectives on How Dogs Came to Be Dogs

Will learning more about dog evolution save them from us?

Why Did the Dog Go Over the Mountain?

Dogs have sometimes been known to pick their owners and have adventures with them.

Dogs and Humans Are Evolutionary Partners

German theorists take a fresh look at the wolf-to-dog transition.

Red Fox Genome Is Sequenced

Russian farmed fox experiment is beginning to yield interesting results—about foxes, not dogs.

An Eminent Ethologist Elucidates Dogs

Marc Bekoff makes a case for how we can live better with our dogs.

The Enduring Friendship of Wolves and Humans

New book challenges received wisdom on how wolves became dogs.

Doping Scandal Imperils Iditarod Sled Dog Race

Dogs have hauled people and their goods around the Arctic for thousands of year. The snowmobile and airplane have nearly rendered them obsolete, except for racing.

RIP Self-Taming Dump-Divers

A new research papers argues that hypersociability is tied to domestication of dogs.

Rats!

Rats bred for tameness confound predictions of several popular theories of animal domestication.

Becoming Dogs

It took time to make a dog.

Mourning a Canine Companion

William Harris memorializes his dead friend.

Did Dogs Help Hunters Succeed?

Dogs helped early Japanese hunters and foragers negotiate climate change.

A Wolf Is a Dog Is a Coyote Is a Jackal Is a Dingo

Coyotes, it turns out, are basically wolves—and so are dogs.

Did Dogs Arise on Opposite Sides of Eurasia?

Were dogs domesticated twice on opposite sides of Eurasia?

What a Dog Is Not

Once again the Coppingers rely on an outmoded paradigm to define dogs.

Cesar Millan Crosses the Line Again

How do a weeping woman and a bleeding pig add up to dog training?

Did Dogs Take 18,000 Years to Reach the Middle East?

Most of the world's dogs approximately one-billion dogs are free-ranging, but it's sometimes hard to tell. These dogs guard sheep on the Navajo Reservation.