The Wolf Within: The Astonishing Evolution of the Wolf into Man’s Best Friend. Professor Sykes Bryan
could not see any humans. She led her pack onwards.
Suddenly from a small clump of birch trees about twenty metres away an enormous bull aurochs charged out, heading straight for Lupa. These giant beasts, the ancestors of domestic cattle, had very short tempers and were extremely aggressive towards wolves. Lone bulls like this one were worst of all. Wolves knew better than to take on an enraged aurochs. It would take a much bigger pack than Lupa’s to subdue and kill such a giant. Before she had time to organise the rest of the pack, the beast was on her. She just managed to dodge the deadly horns on the first pass and moved backwards out of range. Seeing her in trouble, the first instinct of the rest of the pack was to protect its leader. The alpha male rushed into the attack, attempting to sink his long canine teeth into the beast’s huge neck. With a flick of the bull’s head the wolf was skewered on the aurochs’s left horn. Another flick and the bloodied body was flung to the ground. The other wolves went to attack, still desperate to protect their leader. The thrashing bull caught one of this year’s cubs full in the chest with its back leg then turned and trampled the winded and mewling animal and left it dying on the moss. Lupa herself now joined in, knowing full well that if she was killed or injured the pack was finished.
Just then, two humans appeared downwind over the crest of a low hill. They had been tracking the aurochs. They had heard the commotion and now they saw the reason for it. Standing well back, they took up position and hurled their spears at the snorting bull. The sharpened flint tips found their mark. One spear struck the animal in the flank while another buried itself deep in the beast’s chest, its razor-sharp edge severing the aorta. Blood spurted from the wound and the beast fell to its knees. It lay there quivering and within a few minutes it was dead.
The two humans advanced on the carcass, knives at the ready. They looked up, expecting the wolves to retreat, but instead they held their ground and lay watching in silence. The hunters opened up the animal and removed the steaming entrails. They cut slices from the warm liver and began to eat. When they had taken their fill but before they started to butcher the carcass, the younger of the two hesitated. He had seen how wolves ran down their prey, following them for many kilometres until the animals, weak from exhaustion, could fend them off no longer. Once they were sure the death throes no longer put them in danger of serious injury, the wolves would engulf the dying animal, ripping at the exposed abdomen and disembowelling it. An idea was beginning to form in the mind of the hunter.
Reaching into the ribcage of the fallen aurochs, the younger man ripped out its still-beating heart and tossed it towards the wolves, much to the dismay of his older companion. Still the wolves stayed where they were, their amber eyes fixed on the humans. After a full five minutes Lupa was the first to move, gingerly advancing towards the offered heart. The other wolves watched in silence. Lupa sniffed at the heart, then opened her wide jaws and sliced off a chunk of the left ventricle and began to eat it. Still the others did nothing. After a further five minutes, with an almost imperceptible movement of her ears Lupa sent a silent signal to the rest of her pack. They advanced and tore the rest of the heart to shreds.
When both wolves and humans had gorged themselves on the beast’s entrails they sat there looking at each other. Something passed between them. Was it a spirit message? Was it merely mutual admiration between hunters? Did either of them know what had just happened?
Over the years that followed, wolf and human grew closer together. The next spring, as lines of reindeer moved towards the skyline through purple meadows of crocus and gentian on their way to summer pastures, wolf and human followed to pick off the stragglers. Increasingly easy in each other’s company, they no longer kept their distance and it was not long before they began to cooperate in the hunt. Sensing a weakness among the reindeer, Lupa picked out the target animal in the herd. The pack trotted off in pursuit, with the humans following as best they could. As the isolated deer began to tire, the wolves formed a circle and held it at bay until the humans arrived to kill it with their spears. Because the wolves no longer needed to completely exhaust the animal in order to avoid injury, the chase was over more quickly. For their part, the humans had a static target for their spears. All shared the kill.
An Artist’s recreation of what a collaborative hunt, like Lupa’s, might have looked like. The wolves harry the aurochs, tiring it out, while the humans inflict the killing wounds from a safe distance. (© GraphicaArtis)
Wolf and human benefited from this collaborative hunting, and in the years that followed, long after Lupa had died, both groups learned to adapt and improve it. Wolves began to signal the presence of prey with a low-pitched howl. Humans understood the message and a hunting party set out to join them. Wolves and humans who hunted together prospered at the expense of those who did not. Their numbers increased and gradually the unstoppable current of natural selection spread this symbiosis across the rest of Europe. Eventually some wolves began to live with humans, intermittently at first, then permanently. Their numbers increased even more and, from this beginning, dogs began to evolve.
All this happened a very long time ago in the high and wild country above the Gate of Trajan. That was the start. We have yet to reach the end.
* Named after Roman Emperor Trajan (ruled 98–117 CE) and marking the northern boundary of the Empire.
2
It’s easy to pinpoint the moment when the collective view of how humans and all other animals and plants came to be changed abruptly. On 24 November 1859 the naturalist Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. The main contention of the book, that species were not fixed and could change over time, immediately challenged the predominant view of the Church that all of nature was deliberately and carefully designed by God himself. Humans were created by God in His image and, as such, occupied a special place above all other animals. The fact that all naturalists at the two predominant British universities, Oxford and Cambridge, were enrolled as Church of England clergymen as a condition of their employment only strengthened the grip that this ‘natural theology’ had on scientific opinion. To disagree was dangerously close to heresy.
At the heart of Darwin’s theory of natural selection was the concept that individuals within a species differed in their ability to survive and reproduce. Those that succeeded in what he referred to as ‘the struggle for survival’ passed on these qualities to their offspring, who were then better able to endure the struggle. Consequently, over time, new species evolved and others became extinct.
In many ways, Darwin was unlike any modern biologist. He knew nothing of genetics, the underlying principles of which lay undiscovered until well after his death in 1882. Nor did he work in a laboratory. Instead he relied on extensive correspondence with hundreds of his contemporaries throughout the world, persuading them to pass on information and sometimes to examine or collect specimens on his behalf. By these means, his accumulated wisdom and knowledge were immensely broad, which is what makes his writings such a joy to read. His theory of evolution took decades of development and refinement. Most of these were spent collecting a wide range of examples of his theory in action until he finally felt ready to publish.
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin was published in 1872. Darwin’s book is among the most enduring contributions to nineteenth-century psychology and a testament to his fascination with the dog. The left illustration is captioned, ‘Half-bred Shepherd dog approaching another dog with hostile intentions’. The right, ‘The same caressing his master’. Both were drawn by A. May. (Science History Images/Alamy Stock Photo)
One important strand was Darwin’s observations of the creation of new forms by deliberate breeding, which he referred to as artificial selection. His favourite examples