With the domestication of wolves came the floppy ears, playfulness, colorful coats, and barking of the dog we know and love today. Interestingly, when an experiment was performed on silver foxes, these same traits appeared after domestication. Belyaev, a Russian geneticist, conducted this experiment by breeding domesticated foxes. Belyaev bred twenty generations of the most docile foxes until the foxes resembled dogs more than foxes. In nature there is no artificial selection, so the domestication of the dog certainly took much longer. Both the diet and behavior of the foxes changed over time just as those of the dogs had changed (Morey, 138). This shows how much domestication can change any animal, not just wolves. This now begs the question: why wolves? If other animals, such as silver foxes, become domesticated in a similar way to the way a dog evolves, then why were dogs domesticated rather than a different species? The topic of dog domestication poses many unanswered questions. When and where did wolves first interact with humans? How did these two different species interact and why? Even with the species barrier, humans and wolves have a lot in common. Both species work together and hunt in packs. Wolves are similar to humans in that they care for each other and take care of their young. “Wolves closely guard their territory and make their presence known…each member of the pack knows their position on the dominance ladder.” (Clutton-Brock, 22). The line of command is reminiscent of the human history of authority and social hierarchy. People claim land and wars break out over it; wolves do the same thing. Through all these similarities, wolves may have been self-domesticated. The wolves who were not alpha males,......middle of paper...."From Wolf to Woof." DIG. 8-11. GENTLEMEN Discoverer. Network. 11 November 2013. Clutton-Brock, Juliet. Dog. New York: DK, 2004. Print. Eyewitness. Derr, Mark. How the Dog Became the Dog: From Wolves to Our Best Friends. NewYork: Overlook, 2011. N. pag. Print.Lorenz, Konrad. Man meets dog. London: Routledge, 2002. Print.Masson, Jeffrey Moussaieff. The dog he couldn't stop loving. New York: HarperCollins, 2004. Print.Morey, Darcy F. “Early Evolution of the Domestic Dog.” American Scientist 82.4(1994): 336-47. Print.Serpell, James, ed. The domestic dog: its evolution, behavior and interactions with people. Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 1995. Print.Yirka, Bob. “Study shows dogs may have been domesticated much earlier than previously thought.” Phys. Phys.org, May 15, 2013. Web. November 24. 2013..