Are Tibetan Mastiffs also domesticated from wolves? What process has it gone through?

There is a lot of controversy about the ancestor of the Tibetan Mastiff, because it is very different from most wolves and dogs in terms of shape and appearance. Therefore, many people think that the Tibetan Mastiff originated from some ancient large mastiff. However, according to current scientific research, Tibetan Mastiffs, like other dogs, were domesticated from wolves. So, what kind of domestication process did the Tibetan Mastiff go through to get its current form? Let's discuss this together.

There is a certain controversy about the "life experience" of the Tibetan Mastiff. The most critical issue is not the appearance, but a skull fossil. In Hezheng County, Gansu, China, a fossil skull of a large carnivore was unearthed, and it was a complete skull fossil. According to the measurement and comparison of scientists, it is found that the skull is quite different from the existing canines. It is wider than the existing canine skulls, and the frontal bone is prominent and the snout is more generous. Therefore, scientists initially judged that the skull fossil was not a canine animal.

After that, someone put forward a point: the skull fossil is likely to come from the ancestor of the Tibetan mastiff. After that, the news was widely publicized by many people on the Internet, which became direct evidence that the Tibetan Mastiff was not domesticated from wolves. (As shown below)

However, according to subsequent research by scientists, we will find that the above statement has long been overturned. First of all, based on the analysis of the fossils, scientists concluded that the animal lived about 10 million years ago. Secondly, another animal skull fossil that is very close to this skull was unearthed in Hezheng County. According to gene sequencing and comparison, it was found that the skull did not have anything to do with canids, because both skulls were an animal giant hyena .

The most important thing is that although Tibetan mastiffs are quite different from dogs and wolves in terms of morphology, there is one thing that they cannot deceive, and that is genes. Tibetan mastiffs have very close genes to dogs in many plains in China. That is to say, the Tibetan Mastiff, like other dogs, was domesticated from wolves, but in terms of evolution, the Tibetan Mastiff is different from most dogs. (The picture below shows the genetic relationship between dogs and wolves, the picture comes from National Geographic)

Although modern dogs are all "descendants" of wolf domestication, few of the existing dogs have been directly domesticated by wolves. This is because the domestication of wolves occurred about 15,000 years ago, when wolves abandoned wolves. After becoming dogs, they form certain differences in different environments. From the current genetic analysis of dogs and wolves, the existing dogs are basically the products of early domesticated dogs and wolves, including domesticated dogs, wild wolves wandering near human living areas, and wolves in different areas. Crossbreed with dogs multiple times. Therefore, there are certain differences in the genes of different dogs.

Regarding the generation of the Tibetan mastiff, there were two theories in the past: the first is that the Tibetan mastiff was brought to the plateau by the early humans after domesticated dogs. Under the environment, their hair grows slowly.

The second theory is that the Tibetan Mastiff evolved slowly from dogs in the plains in a special environment (plateau). As for the above two statements, at first glance, the first statement is more reasonable. However, scientists conducted genetic analysis on 49 dogs and wild wolves from 8 ethnic groups in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (4 dog groups and 4 wolf groups, such as Qinghai gray wolf, Xinjiang gray wolf, etc.), and found that The Tibetan Mastiff is the closest to the genes from the 4 dog groups, but far from the genes of the 4 wolf groups. In the long-term domestication of humans, dogs will slowly "abandon" the genes from wild gray wolves, because the changes in living habits and environment have caused genetic differences. This also means that there is no genetic exchange between Tibetan mastiffs and wild wolves in the place of origin, which overturns the first statement.

Through the research of scientists, the claim that the Tibetan Mastiff originated from dogs in the ancient Central Plains of China has been further consolidated (gene similarity with other dog groups in the same region). And according to the genome analysis of the Tibetan mastiff, scientists also found that 11 genes in the Tibetan mastiff's genes are related to adaptability, including hypoxia adaptation genetic genes, and these genes are all mutated genes, and their mutation time is about Between 11,000 years ago and 4,000 years ago. That is to say, the ancestral dogs of the Tibetan Mastiff came to the plateau area with humans at this time. Under the low oxygen and high cold environment, some of the dogs that survived developed adaptive genetic mutations, which allowed them to taste the The sweetness of survival in harsh environments. Slowly, these genes gradually increased after thousands of years, or even more than 10,000 years, and became more and more obvious, and finally formed the Tibetan Mastiff.

According to the analysis of Tibetan mastiff genes by scientists and the genetic analysis of wolves and other dog groups in the existing plateau area, it is found that the Tibetan mastiff does not have any genetic communication with the wild wolves in the plateau area, but has a high genetic similarity with other dogs. , these dogs came to the plateau area later, rather than domesticated from wild wolves in the plateau area.

From the plain area to the plateau area, the sudden change of the environment accelerated the mutation of the Tibetan Mastiff ancestral dog, and those mutations that were conducive to survival were retained, such as low oxygen adaptation, genes for thick and long hair, etc., after at least 4000 years Only after the adaptation and variation of the Tibetan Mastiff did it finally form today's Tibetan Mastiff.