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re burrowZig -
What I meant by the huge divergence was between the heavy coated northern spitz types to the barely-coated dogs from the equatorial region, and everything between... that has developed to fit into the various climatic situations and habitats, and the way those have fitted in around emergent human societies.
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hey, ziggy! :--)
i agree wholeheartedly that the majority of appearance-driven human alteration of dogs has been over the past 500 or so years; before that, working qualities were desired over mere looks.
some non-human-directed dom-dog evolution has been pure happenstance, like the appearance of dwarfism (one gene variant) creating Vallhunds, Bassetts, Corgis, et al - that was not human designed, we just thought it was cute, or took advantage of it in drover-breeds - allowing them to slip under the kick of hoofed-stock.
similarly, wire-coats, curly-coats, etc, were not human creations - but we either liked the appearance, or found them functional, so they stayed.
hairless breeds are not so much an Equatorial design - they have appeared several times, in various places, and i *think* are another sport, which would not have been successful in village dogs or pariahs; all of the breeds that have developed hairlessness were already highly-domesticated and lived in homes, not at large.
the most-recent instance of hairlessness was a sport in American smooth Fox-Terriers, which was in a temperate climate,
so i think it is more accident than evolutionary adaptation.
if African village-dogs gave rise to a strain of hairless or semi-bald dogs, i think they would die out in just a few generations.
(they may have already appeared + vanished - how would we know? only a painting of a hairless dog would confirm or suggest it; fossils or archeological specimens rarely have any hair associated.)
thick coats on Northern breeds are definitely a geographic adaptation, but we have Siberians and Malemutes here in Tidewater-Va; they do not develop the same thick pelt as their relatives, even immediate-relatives like siblings, as in colder climes.
(it is hard to get a championship on a Nordic who lives here, in part b/c of the sparser coat - better for the dog, but a complication for the owner/handler.)
the heat-tolerance and ability to conserve water of the Rhodesian-Ridgeback came from the native ridgebacked stock, which sadly either died out, or more likely were killed by European colonists, who had no great tolerance for native stock of any sort; wildlife were either to eat, or to kill if they were predators; native cattle were pests and scrub specimens, and the dogs were probably seen as just another pestilential hanger-on.
as far as wolf-evolution in recent history, the wolf was already so well-adapted in their various regional types and species that there is not much that could be improved; the coat-color
BLACK actually moved from dom-dogs ---> into wolves; it did not arise in wolves, and be selected for in dogs.
it is one of the few documented instances of a wild species being genetically changed by a domestic descendent / relative.
the Arctic wolf is the largest, body volume being important in severe cold, but their size is likewise restrained by being efficient at using food and moving across an enormous home range. a 200# wolf would be too hard to keep fueled, and too hefty to move efficiently.
the little red-wolf of the Carolinas, small, neat and close-coated, is easily mistaken at a distance for a coyote, which may be their undoing as a species; they may so interbreed as to be lost, particularly as there are still wild Carolina dogs, altho widely scattered.
all 3 are interfertile, tho their habits are dissimilar in many ways.
wolves in all their remaining haunts are highly adaptable re diet, but they all have the strong social bonds that make them easy prey for humans - a nice songfest is a perfect advertisement to a wolf-hunter, here is the prey...
wolves also prefer large game to small, given their druthers.
the woods-bison of the Eastern USA is exterminated long ago; the eastern elk is a few reintroduced popns in widely scattered areas, and CWD, *aka* scrapie, is now known to be in over 12 states. (how this will eventually affect the huge over-popn of eastern whitetail deer, is yet to be seen.) this restricts wolves to areas that still have large game.
that is why coyote have rapidly taken over vast areas of former wolf habitat across the 48-states of the USA: coyote are small-enuf to subsist on small game and road-kill, and they do not gather in groups much larger than 4 to a max of 6, most of the year; they are often seen singly or in pairs.
hopefully we humans will learn to live alongside large predators; if not, hundreds of thousands of years of success will not save them. they cannot out-evolve guns, traps, poison and other lethal human weapons.
lions, leopards, cheetah, puma, tigers, wolves, great white sharks, jaguar, pelagic tuna, dingos... they are all under the threat of extinction in our lifetimes, localized or globally.
best regards,
--- terry