THE PACK Message Boards

Thanks, that's the info I was trying to share but couldn't find a source to back it up.

What can I say? I'm a Biology junky. I love the subject and I love to study wolves. I will be known as the.... *places fists on hips and looks towards the sky* FUR COVERED BIOLOGIST!
......
well maybe not but you get the idea. I still want to be a biologist though

Well rather than continuing to guess at a difference I actually went and looked it up. Seems there is NO actual genetic or chromosomal difference of any kind.

Seems the only differences are, apperance, mentality, pack behavior, and breeding behavior.

A dog is a wolf, just a weird one.


Unless we go the next level beyond genetics, but we're not there yet, a difference must exist, we just lack the ability to find it in their blood so far.

There are genetic differences, just very slight ones. (Genetics and chromosome study are the same thing) As for the differences you described: Apprearance, some dogs look like wolves. ex. Malamute or Husky. Mentality, I don't think we can conclude that ALL wolves have the same mentality and that ALL dogs have the same mentality. Like people, they all very from smart to not as smart. Pack Behavior, Dogs do this all the time. A pack doesn't have to consist of 3 or more wolves. It can consist of 2 but that is rarely found. Now in a dog's case, we are the Alpha. Depending on what type of relationship you have with your dog (stern, flexible, ect) that will determine who is Alpha in the house and more over who is dominant. Now as for breeding behavior, wolves and dogs have the same breeding type behaviors. The female wolf goes into heat and the male wolf mates with her (only the alpha pair). For dogs it's the same thing. If you have two unfixed dogs, they will mate. But that also depends on how the female dog feels towards the male dog, so I guess you got me there. (and the same breeding behavior goes for a heterozigous pair, Wolf and dog pair)

Dogs are wolves and I guess you could call then weird or you could call them a branch off of the canine family tree.

PariahPoet wrote:That's what I was saying though. Wolf DNA is exactly the same as dog dna. They aren't even seperate species. Just different breeds of the same animal.

This (also see this and this) was HUGE news in 1997. There is a lot more information in DNA than just what species you are. Otherwise, all humans would look like identical twins of each other. Furthermore, DNA analysis can even determine which breeds of dogs are most closely related to which other breeds of dogs, whether you carry the gene for a certain genetic defect and so on. Calling dogs and wolves the same species only means, scientifically speaking, that the difference in their DNA isn't big enough for them to be unable to produce fertile offspring. But there's still about 100,000 years worth of difference there, and some of those differences are bound to show up in the DNA of a hybrid, making DNA testing one possible method of telling the difference between a pure dog, a pure wolf, and a hybrid.