Dogs & More Dogs

Explore the science of dogs, their origin, evolution, and the special relationship they've developed with humans. Were Stone Age people the original dog trainers? Did “scraps” under the proverbial table encourage wolves to domesticate into man’s best friend? Theories abound as to how wolves became the face licking puppies of today, so we go to the dogs to find out the truth on Dogs and More Dogs.

Narrated by John Lithgow, Dogs and More Dogs travels from a wolf research facility in rural Indiana to the Westminster Dog Show in New York’s Madison Square Garden, with a fascinating detour to the city dump in Tijuana, Mexico, where viewers get surprising insight into the origin and evolutionary strategy of their canine companions.

The program also investigates dog genetic diseases — how they reflect misguided breeding practices and surprisingly, what they tell us about our own genetic disorders.

Along the way, viewers will learn about the biological mechanisms behind floppy ears, curved tails, spotted coats, short legs, long snouts and the countless other traits that make dogs so doggone different.

Dog evolution is simpler than most people think, contends Raymond Coppinger, professor of biology at Hampshire College and coauthor of Dogs: A Startling New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior & Evolution.

Coppinger is convinced that, contrary to the traditional theory that humans actively domesticated wolves, wolves themselves chose domestication because of the easy pickings in Stone Age refuse dumps, where those animals that weren’t scared off by people had a better chance of finding food and surviving.

It’s “natural selection in action,” he says. “Any one wolf that’s a little tamer than the other, who can stay there longer, gets more food. He’s the one that’s going to win that evolutionary battle.

“The idea that Stone Age people could tame and then train and then domesticate a wolf is just ludicrous,” he observes.

Coppinger also thinks it’s unlikely that early humans consciously bred dogs for ear shape, coat color and other traits. Suggestively, these characteristics appear naturally in foxes, a cousin of wolves and dogs, as their hormone levels change with increasing tameness.

Coppinger further postulates that typical dog behaviors such as tracking, pointing, retrieving and herding are aspects of a wolf’s unvarying hunting routine that have been isolated in a dog’s genes.

Also participating in the program are James Serpell, director of the Center for the Interaction of Animals and Society at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine; Elaine Johnston, president of the Empire Saluki Club of New York; and geneticist Robert Wayne of the University of California at Los Angeles, who authored a controversial study of canine DNA in which he suggested that dogs are far more ancient than previously thought.

Another researcher in the show is geneticist Mike Levine of the University of California at Berkeley, who is filmed at home with his first dog ever, Taxi, acquired after intense family pressure.

“There is one cool thing about dogs,” he says with a scientist’s appreciation for his new best friend. “It’s all the varieties — different shapes, different sizes, different colors. It’s an extreme example of evolutionary diversification.”

Producer: WGBH Science Unit. Senior executive producer: Paul Apsell. Read more on the NOVA website.