Anyone who has owned dogs knows that dogs are very close to people. Studies have shown that dogs can even better understand human intentions than chimpanzees. Not only that, dogs are also the most loyal of all domesticated animals-police dogs, military dogs, guide dogs, guard dogs, companion dogs, and play-watching dogs. Their magical talents and selfless love for mankind are still an irreplaceable right-hand assistant to mankind even in a world of advanced technology.
These are the result of long-term domestication by humans. You probably don't know yet, do you? Although people have domesticated many animals such as pigs, cows, horses, and chickens, the first wild animal to be domesticated was wolves. When wolves meet, dogs are born. Wolves are the ancestors of dogs! However, whether dogs originated from one type of wolf or multiple types of wolves, whether they were domesticated in one area and spread to all parts of the world, or whether they were domesticated successfully in different places. Even Darwin, the founder of evolution, said that I really can't see through it.
In recent years, with the development of molecular biology, things have begun to take a turn for the better. Scientists analyzed the mitochondrial DNA of dogs, wolves, jackals, etc. and found that dogs and gray wolves have the closest genetic relationship, indicating that dogs were most likely domesticated by gray wolves! The place of origin has always been debated. In 2002, the world's top academic journal Science reported that after comparing the DNA of dogs from around the world, scientists from China and Sweden said that dogs in East Asia have the richest genetic diversity, and dogs have the closest genetic relationship to gray wolves in China. Therefore, modern dogs probably originated in China about 16,000 years ago. This view immediately ignited a powder keg of controversy, and other scientists began to present various refuting evidence. In 2010, the prestigious online edition of Nature published another genetic analysis, which believed that dogs were closest to gray wolves in the Middle East, and locked the origin of dogs in the Middle East 13,000 to 12,000 years ago. However, the study also admitted that a small number of Oriental dogs do have a genetic relationship with China gray wolves. The controversy over the origin of dogs seems to continue for some time.
No matter how controversial it is, it is an indisputable fact that dogs and humans have been together for more than 10,000 years. Over these long years, more than 100 million dogs have served humans, thus establishing a deep emotion between the two parties. Although dogs can occasionally infect some people and dogs with zoonosis and cause some harm to people, their shortcomings cannot hide their shortcomings. They have undoubtedly become mankind's closest animal friends.