"Learning to love grains, potatoes was key to the evolution of dogs"

[Stinky The Clown]

You know that dog biscuit shaped like a bone but made mostly of wheat? Your dog’s willingness to eat that treat, instead of going for a bone in your thigh, helps explain how its ancestors evolved from wolves into house pets.

A team of Swedish researchers compared the genomes of wolves and dogs and found that a big difference is dogs’ ability to easily digest starch. On their way from pack-hunting carnivore to fireside companion, dogs learned to desire — or at least live on — wheat, rice, barley, corn and potatoes.

As it turns out, the same thing happened to humans as they came out of the forest, invented agriculture and settled into diets rich in grains.

“I think it is a striking case of co-evolution,” said Erik Axelsson, a geneticist at Uppsala University. “The fact that we shared a similar environment in the last 10,000 years caused a similar adaptation. And the big change in the environment was the development of agriculture.”

Interesting article; more at this link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/learning-to-love-cereal-was-key-to-the-evolution-of-dogs/2013/01/23/30c47500-6510-11e2-85f5-a8a9228e55e7_story.html?hpid=z1

[Curmudgeoness]

1. This is very interesting.

We hear all the time about how dogs are meant to eat meat, not grains. And we are encouraged to look for foods high in meats and lower in grains......but this explains a lot to me. I always wondered how our pets could survive on, and thrive on, the high grain foods that we have fed them for years.