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She is among a wave of investigators puzzling out exactly how these furballs got to be our face-​licking, tail-wagging, number-one fans. We prefer to think that humans wrote the story of domestication: Some galaxy-brain hunter-​gatherer kidnapped a wolf puppy, then shaped a new species as a prey-sniffing partner, watchdog, and companion. But increasingly, most researchers think that dogs were the original authors of this tale. Long ago, some wolves hitched their destiny to ours, launching an extraordinary love affair that forever entangled both our fates.Though archaeology can help us pin down the when and where of dog domestication (current thinking is that it happened at least 15,000 years ago in Europe, Asia, or both), bones are mostly silent on the how and the why of this story. By studying other canids like foxes and wolves, and by analyzing dog genes, behavior, and brains—their sweet, friendly, trusting brains—researchers are developing new ideas about how the big bad wolf became the dear little dog. Some argue that their social intelligence is what makes them extraordinary; others point to their devotion, that deep soulful craving for humans.As the first domesticated species, dogs are also a model for how other mammals—including us—got that way. Scientists see in their genes and minds hints about our own unusually tolerant nature. During much of the human journey from just another primate to world-conquering hominid, our four-legged pals have been right by our side. They are our familiar, our echo, our shadow, and as we now look more closely into their eyes, we can glimpse a new image of ourselves.

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White dog on blue backgroundDogs just get us, without any teaching, looking to us to help solve their problems. The Voorhes
One night in 2011, Hecht and her miniature Australian shepherd, Lefty, were on the couch watching TV when a show came on about the legendary Belyaev foxes. Dmitry Belyaev was a Soviet geneticist in the early 1950s, a time when Moscow suppressed genetic research as a product of the imperialist West.Unable to study his chosen field openly, Belyaev hit upon an ingenious plan. He could experimentally tame foxes raised for their coats. Since animals kept by humans tend to reproduce more frequently, officially he’d be accelerating Soviet fur production. But the project would sneak in some science. His theory was that just by breeding for tameness, what’s now called the “domestication syndrome” would emerge: more-juvenile behavior, and physical changes like white splotches on the belly and face, floppy ears, shorter snouts, and smaller teeth.The research got going in earnest in 1959 in Siberia. Belyaev’s partners selected animals that were simultaneously less fearful and less aggressive (these traits typically go hand in hand), then crossed them. Just four generations later, in 1963, when collaborator Lyudmila Trut approached a fox cage, one of the kits wagged its tail at her. By 1965, a few juveniles were rolling on their backs and whimpering for attention, just like puppies. The researchers also kept a population of randomly bred control animals, and later, a strain of extremely fearful, combative ones. This landmark study continues to this day.