| Essential Information on Essential Fatty Acids or |
| The Origins of the Domestic Dog |
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| Epicyon - an earlier larger canine |
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| Eucyon - smaller canid from which wolves originated |
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Epicyon and Eucyon
Epicyon (epp-ih-SIGH-on) was one of the larger, perhaps largest, of extinct canines that lived on the North American continent for over 15 million years. The name epicyon means "near dog". It was about 150lbs at adult weight, and while it was a true canid, its head resembled more of a large cat than that of a wolf. While a hunter, it has also been speculated that it lived almost entirely off of already dead animals or carcasses. As the larger animals of the time became extinct, so did epicyon.
It smaller competitor was eucyon (YOU-sigh-on) and also lived during the Late Miocene era. Its name is Greek for "original dog." Eucyon was only about three feet long or 25 pounds. It is thought that the modern canis genus (which encompasses dogs and wolves) came from Eucyon and may have lived for several million years together until eucyon fell extinct.
About 100,000 years ago, it is believed that dogs arose from wolves and were later domesticated about 14,000 years ago by early humans. This has largely been due to the study and research done by Dr Robert Wayne PhD, a geneticist from UCLA. His studies have evaluated the mitochondrial DNA of dogs, wolves, coyotes and jackals. Mitochondrial DNA is passed maternally.
Dogs are different than wolves.
With more than 100,000 years of being a separate species (135,000 years according to a Swedish study1), dogs have changed dramatically from wolves. With more than four distinct genetic groups throughout the world, it is believed that the dogs of today were individually domesticated be separate peoples throughout the world and do not have a common wild dog ancestor. We do know that the dogs are not evolved to jackals, coyotes or foxes due to DNA research.
"We expected to find DNA sequences in dogs that were closely related to those in wolves, perhaps even indistinguishable from those in wolves, we expexted to find few different sequences in dogs; instead we found 26." - Dr Robert Wayne, UCLA.
If dogs are omnivores, why are they part of the order Carnivora?
This is a good question and a fact cited often by those recommending overly high recommendations of protein or meat to be fed to dogs. Dogs are indeed a member of the order Carnivora. The order includes many animals based upon various structures including their carnassial teeth made of their last upper premolars and first set of lower molars. This order includes carnivores (eats other animals primarily), omnivores (eats both plants and animals as primary diet) and herbivores (eats primarily plants). A great example of a herbivore of the order Carnivora is the Panda Bear who can live off of a diet that is 99% bamboo.
So yes, dogs are omnivores and require much less protein than a cat. They can manufacture an amino acid that cats cannot and can live off of a diet that is as low as 8% protein (if the protein is highly digestible like egg) according to the NRC.
1) Vila C, Maldonando J E , Phylogenetic Relationships, Evolution and the Genetic Diversity of the Domestic Dog.
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