

Our bond with dogs may go back more than 27,000 years - hdivider
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150521133626.htm

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Oatseller
I posted a link to a video about a month ago [0], where arctic wolves
approached some workers in remote northern Canada.

I'd always held the belief that man had probably initiated the contact that
led to the domestication of wolves but after viewing the video, I can imagine
a similar scene, playing out many thousands of years ago, where wolves were
the first to initiate contact.

It's a cool video in my opinion (no comments or votes so it must just be me),
I'd give anything to experience something like that (I don't think I'd let a
wolf get as close as the cameraman though).

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9411228](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9411228)

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ghshephard
Amazing video - but agreed about not letting the wolves get that close.
Everything I've been taught about wild animals, suggests that one of these
days, something very bad is going to happen to one of the workers who gets
that close to a wild wolf.

Absolutely no way would I let one get that close, or get that comfortable
about being around humans.

~~~
Qantourisc
Well if they are anything like dogs, and given their posture they looked
rather safe. However if you spook them (in any way), things could go wrong
fast. I've seen quite a few dogs that look more like flip-flops then dogs.
Hell these wolves behaved better then a lot of dogs I've seen!

(However still don't recommend it though ;)

~~~
ghshephard
The danger is in treating a wild animal like a domestic animal. Domestic
animals have gone through thousands of generations of selection bias - if they
attack a human, they are euthanized. Even today, a lot of dog handlers I know
have the rule of two - a dog gets one chance, but if they bite a human
(without being commanded to, of course) a second time, euthanized.

Wild Animals have gone through a little of that (any animal that attacks a
human is hunted down and killed), but nowhere near as much as domestic
animals. But the thing is, Wolves look a lot _like_ dogs, so we expect them to
potentially have the same behavior patterns - which is just not the case.

One other thing - the guy coming out (I presume he was Inuit, but his accent
actually sounded spanish), was acting totally alpha, and the wolves responded
well to that. The guy with the camera was practically inviting the wolves to
see if they could dominate him. That scene could have ended up really, really
horribly.

