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Originally Posted by Burrowzig
It's also worth remembering that whilst wild canids are meat-eaters by design, the domestic dog Canis familiaris has evolved some differences. It seems to have adapted to living near humans off their rubbish and later in domestication by developing a longer gut in proportion to its size than wolves. This enables it to properly digest other foods they would have gained access to by living alongside humans, such as left-over cooked cereals and cooked meats. They're omnivores, like humans.
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On what do you base those assertions? What differences are you talking about?
The literature is abundantly clear that dogs (
Canis lupus familiaris, btw - The Smithsonian reclassified them and also labels them as carnivores just like their immediate relative the Grey Wolf) are identical to grey wolves with exception of only .2% of mDNA (mitochondrial DNA, not the 'big' DNA). Those minute variances account for coat, size and temperamental differences, nothing more.
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…an examination of seven dog breeds and 26 gray wolf populations show that the domestic dog is an extremely close relative of the gray wolf.
In comparison, the coyote differs from the gray wolf by about 4% (mitochondrial DNA sequence), whereas the [domestic] dog and gray wolf have a difference of only two-tenths of one percent (.2%). Nor does the genetic evidence support the view that dogs descended from jackal ancestors.
Our dogs are gray wolves, despite their diversity in size and proportion.
Robert K. Wayne, "Molecular evolution of the family dog,"
Trends in Genetics, June 1993 (vol. 9, #6) pp. 218-224.
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I have never seen any evidence that the domestic dog has a digestive system any different from its ancestors, unless you count assertions from pet food manufacturers which is hardly evidence. You may also find
Myths About Raw: Are dogs omnivores? interesting, which cites further literature and discusses the matter in more depth.
EDIT: Just in case you didn't take the extra time to look around the Myths About Raw site, here are a couple more links directly related to this discussion:
Myths About Raw: Are dogs too far removed from wolves to be fed raw food?
Myths About Raw: Have dogs adapted to cooked diets?