A Northwoods Almanac for 2/2 – 15, 2024

 A Northwoods Almanac for 2/2 – 15, 2024  

Dogs and Humans

            Mary, Callie, and I have been hiking every day this winter, always accompanied by, or led by as the case may be, our Australian shepherd, Pippa. She’s two years old, with an amazing, and sometimes baffling, array of physical, intellectual, and behavioral traits. She can be the most loving of dogs, and the most loyal, but if she sniffs out a grouse or a deer anywhere in the woods, she’s off to the races no matter how well fed or well behaved she was just minutes before. Something in her DNA clicks in instantly, and there’s little we can do to deter her. 

Pippa when we first got her in December, 2021

            We’ve had a dog or dogs for all of the 40 years we’ve lived here, and most of them wanted to chase animals. Over that time, we have also encountered all manner, sizes, and shapes of dogs (and their people) on our hikes, all of which has led me to wonder not only how dogs came to be in the shapes we see them today, but how, when, and why they came to be domesticated at all.

            Well, the literature on this is vast, conflicting, and still evolving. And, as a caveat, my knowledge of the literature is comparatively small, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt. 

            Let’s start here: Dogs are one of the biggest enigmas of domestication – they’re the only animal known to have entered into a domestic relationship with people during the Pleistocene (which ended around 11,700 years ago). And despite decades of study, scientists still haven't figured out when or where they arose, much less how or why it happened. 

            Two big names in dog and human genetics, Greger Larson, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford, and Pontus Skoglund, a paleogenomicist, teamed up with colleagues in 2016 to sift through more than 2000 sets of ancient dog remains dating back nearly 11,000 years from Europe, Siberia, and the Near East. In the process, they added 27 ancient dog genomes to the five already on record. 

            The dog DNA revealed that as early as 11,000 years ago, there were already five distinct dog lineages in the Near East, northern Europe, Siberia, New Guinea, and the Americas. Because dogs had already diversified so much by that time, “domestication had to occur long before then,” Skoglund says, which fits with archaeological evidence. 

            The earliest generally accepted remains of a domestic dog, based on a convergence of evidence, comes from the site of Bonn-Oberkassel in Germany, dated to around 15,000 years ago. The morphology and genetics of this young dog clearly distinguish it from local wolves. Archaeologists excavating the site found the dog's skeleton interred in a grave with the remains of a man about 50 years old and a woman about 20 to 25. When researchers see a dog regarded so highly that it’s buried with a family, it’s as if it was considered a member of the family, and thus they know they are looking at a fully domesticated animal. 

            In Israel, at a hunter-gatherer site dating to 12,000 years ago in the upper Jordan Valley, archaeologists discovered perhaps the most famous dog-human burial. The skeleton of an elderly person lies curled on its right side, its left arm stretched out under the head, with the hand resting gently on a puppy. The dog was about four to five months old and was placed there, it’s thought, to be a companion to the deceased.  

            One line of thought suggests that dogs were domesticated in Siberia about 23,000 years ago, possibly while both people and wolves were isolated during the harsh climate of the Last Glacial Maximum when the area was ice-covered. Dogs then accompanied the first people into the Americas and traveled with them as humans rapidly dispersed into the continent beginning about15,000 years ago. But that’s controversial, too, with some strong evidence that humans were in the Americas well before that.

Animal Domestication

            What I want to know is when did dogs become dogs? Wolf-dog analysis by many researchers suggests dogs evolved only once, from a now-extinct wolf species, and not from our current gray wolf population or any other species of wolf. Genetic evidence suggests that dogs split from their wolf ancestors between 27,000 and 40,000 years ago (other research indicates between 18,800 and 32,000 years ago). But it isn’t clear whether domestication happened in Europe or Asia – or in multiple locations – or why it happened.

            Some researchers suggest that hunter-gatherers may have taken in orphaned wolf pups – perhaps viewing them a bit like pets – and fed them on spare lean meat. They probably didn’t have any long-term goal in mind, but the tamed wolves would have later proved to be useful hunting partners – reinforcing the domestication. Nomadic hunter-gatherer societies would have valued the highly specific behaviors of wolves, such as tracking and consuming prey, which may have driven the initial domestic evolution of dogs. Good hunting dogs can find fresh tracks, guide hunters to the prey, and hold the prey at bay.

            Others think that wolves may have started following people for the same reason that flies enter our kitchens – “to take advantage of a nutritional resource, our trash.” Over time, some of these camp-following wolves may increasingly have lost their fear of people – and vice versa – and a mutually beneficial relationship developed.

            Interestingly, the domestication of the dog predates agriculture by many thousands of years. It wasn’t until 11,000 years ago that people living in the Near East entered into relationships with wild populations of aurochs (an extinct cattle-like species), boar, sheep, and goats.

            With the advent of agricultural societies, dogs adapted to the introduction of starch within their diets, a crucial step in their evolution from the wolf. And more recently over the past few hundred years, domesticated dogs have been genetically selected into nearly 400 breeds to fulfill specialized functions in human society.

            All of which doesn’t necessarily bring me closer to understanding Pippa’s desire to chase wild animals. Many dog breeds are still bred to hunt wild animals – the predator trait is enshrined in them. But for dogs not bred for hunting, how many generations will it take before the hunting trait is erased, if ever? I don’t know, but we’ll continue working with Pippa to try and break her of this genetic carryover.

            

2023 – The Warmest Year Since Global Records Began

            By a large margin, the year 2023 was the warmest year since global records began in 1850. At 2.12°F above the 20th-century average of 57.0°F, this value is 0.27°F more than the previous record set in 2016. 

            The 10 warmest years in the 174-year record have all occurred during the last decade (2014–2023). 

            It's been 47 years – nearly half a century – since Earth's temperature was colder than average. 

 

Ice-up, Finally

            The Manitowish River finally iced-over below our house on Jan. 15, the latest date in our 40 years here.

 

Our Warm Winter Continues

            I’m curious to see if we end up breaking local records for the warmest January since temperatures were first officially recorded here. By my figures, we’ve only experienced seven days below 0°F this winter, with the lowest temperature only reaching -12°F, a quite warm minimum for an area where -30° to -40° used to be the norm for the coldest days.

            Our abysmal snow totals have followed suit, with a varying total depending on your location of perhaps 6 inches for the entire winter. No snowmobile trails have been opened in the Lakeland area this winter, and only a few cross country ski sites (Winter Park!) have opened trails.

            Folks are asking why this is happening, and as with all weather events nowadays, it’s weather influenced by climate change. It’s impossible to say if any given event was solely caused by climate change, because weather and climate are two different things. Daily weather can swing wildly over the short term in local areas, whereas climate change is assessed via long term averages from thousands of sites worldwide. 

            What’s essential to understand is that climate data is derived from accumulated daily weather data. Thus, the generalization to remember is simple: The warmer the overall climate, the warmer overall daily weather will tend to be, but with varying fluctuations.

            This winter is a good picture of where we’re heading in the next few decades unless we politically and individually commit to doing everything we can to stymie climate change. Climate change is based on straight-up scientific data, and we’ve got to come together around it. 

 

Celestial Events

            Does Groundhog Day count as a celestial event? Well, it’s more of a terrestrial event with supposed atmospheric consequences, but however we rank it, it’s happening today – Feb. 2. 

            February 4 marks the mid-season point between winter solstice and spring equinox.

            February 5 marks the midway between ice-up and ice-out, at least according to the 48 years of ice records that Woody Hagge has kept on Foster Lake in Hazelhurst.

            We’re up to 10 hours of daylight as of 2/7. The sun is now setting an hour later than our earliest sunsets in December. By 2/15, we’ll be receiving 3+ minutes more of daylight every day.

            The new moon occurs on 2/9.

            Look on 2/15 after dusk for Jupiter about three degrees below the waxing crescent moon.

 

Quote for the Week

            “The world, we are told, was made especially for man – a presumption not supported by all the facts.” –  John Muir