The Leftovers Route to Dog Domestication
If ancient hunters ate the juicy fat parts of their prey and gave wolves the lean meat, it could have been the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Feeding time for pups at Wolf Park, a nonprofit education and research facility in Battle Ground, Ind.Credit...Andrew Spear for The New York Times
Jan. 7, 2021
It’s the middle of the last ice age and you are in the cave on a cold winter’s night chewing the fat, and I don’t mean gossiping. You are chewing real, gristly fat from some animal you just killed and cooked because if you eat only lean meat you’ll starve to death or get protein poisoning. By evolutionary necessity, you find fat irresistible. Many thousands of years later this will cause your descendants to eat Doritos and Slim Jims, but that’s not your problem.