How climate changed the dog

Appearing in Nature Communications, a new study of dog fossils suggests that the evolutionary path of whole groups of predators can be a direct effect of climate change.

Researchers report that based on the analysis of wolf and dog remains dating back to 40 million years ago, it’s likely that the animals developed their unique approach to hunting in response to changes in their habitat. It was a biome for small predators like native wild dogs of that period that could come out of hiding and take down their prey.

Climate and environmental change have been known to drastically affect the evolution of herbivores and inform adaptation mechanism or the extinction of some species.

“We selected the shape of the elbow because it is an established anatomical indicator of locomotor/predatory behaviour in living carnivores, as it reflects the relative range of forearm motion”, said Borja Figueirido, an ecology and geology expert at Spain’s Universidad de Malaga.

Two early dogs, Hesperocyon, left and the later Sunkahetanka, were both ambush-style predators. Their elbow joints allowed significant rotation so that they could wrestle their prey to the ground.

“The elbow is a really good proxy for what carnivores are doing with their forelimbs, which tells their entire locomotion repertoire”, Janis said in the press release.

Fast forward to a few million years later and the region’s climate began to change.

They learned that, over time, as global climates become colder and dense forest gave way to grasslands, certain species of cats started to develop elbows proficient in long-distance running.

After all, it was not advantageous to operate as a pursuit-and-pounce predator until there was room to run. If they would have attempted to do so in the forest environment, they would have smacked straight into a tree. For that matter, the findings of the current research will be used to determine the future evolution of dogs in parallel to the manmade climate changes.

They found that the forelimbs of canines were actually not specialized for running but did retain the flexibility for grappling with whatever meal they could find. And teeth became more durable, perhaps to deal with tough, dry hides or high-plains grit mixed in with the meat.

The scientists add that although it seems logical, the influence that climate change has on predators and prey had not been demonstrated in such a way before. According to the researchers, these would have looked quite different than what we know today.