Tuesday, November 3, 2015

How climate change created the modern dog

Contributed by Charlotte




Source: Brown University

1 comment:

Ms. Ghazarian said...

Hello bloggers. This is Ms. Lambert.

I Want to clarify that when the article mentions climate change, they are talked about historic climate change, not current the human-induced climate change. There was a series of glacial periods during the Pleistocene epoch in which the landscape fluctuated from forested habitat to grassland as glaciers receded. At the end of the glacial period, grasslands became more prevalent, driving evolution in canids (aka dogs). For example the article mentions their shift from being ambush predators to pursuit predators, thus developing longer limbs over time that were more adept for running. Some canid species even developed much, much longer limbs specialized for navigating in tall grasses. Look up the Maned Wolf native to S. America. It is one of my favorite canids! :)