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A team of mathematicians and statisticians from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, the University of Tennessee and Valparaiso University, all in the U.S., has found new evidence that wolves had ample time to self-domesticate and evolve into modern dogs. In their study in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the group developed a computer simulation showing the evolution process.

Prior research has suggested that the process of self-domesticating and then slowly evolving into modern dogs would have taken too long. Additionally, researchers believe that humans and dogs have been living in close proximity for approximately 30,000 years and that for the past 15,000 years, humans have been breeding them to perform certain tasks. But what happened in the first 15,000 years is less clear.

Some have suggested that humans may have begun encouraging the friendliest wolves to hang around by adopting their puppies, finding their presence advantageous. Others have suggested that wolves moved ever closer to groups of humans for access to leftover food. But this evolution, others have noted, would take more than 15,000 years to reach the point where humans began breeding them.

In this new effort, the researchers sought to find out if the reasoning behind wolf self-domestication could be correct. They used mathematical models capable of simulating evolutionary changes over time based on given inputs, such as the tamest of the wolves mating with other tame wolves. They also allowed for variable amounts of food from humans to be made available to the gradually more tame wolves.

The team then ran simulations mimicking 15,000 years of evolution. They found that the wolves evolved into dogs ranging from 37%–74% of the time, depending on the favorability of conditions. The simulation also showed that the evolution from wolf to dog could have happened in as little as 8,000 years, strongly suggesting that the idea of self-domestication could explain how modern dogs came to exist.

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