[tomjen3]

I did some research into this a couple years ago. There is an interesting theory that we didn't domesticate wolves, but that wolves domesticated us. For one, wolves naturally are very intelligent and pack hunters, so they could have used humans as a hunting partner. For another point, we domesticated wolves way before anything else (atleast 20000 years ago) and that makes no sense since every other animal we domesticated (goat, horse, chicken, etc) will eat pretty much anything and is only of very limited threat to us, whereas wolves are carnivores (very expensive to maintain) and extremely dangerous.

However, if wolves domesticated us as hunting partners, then this starts to make a lot more sense. We didn't need to first learn domestication on easier species, the danger was limited and our hunting would be so much more effective that it was worth the premium.

It also explains why we have the concept of werewolf and why some people have been charged with turning into wolves to be successful in hunting, but never any other animal (there are no cases of ware eagles/falcons). There is something primeval deep inside us that associates wolves with successful hunters.

I find the theory neat, I am not convinced it is true.

[algebraically]

Ya, I also don't know if it's true or not. I was just making the point that an animal can domesticate itself by changing its environment and then adapting to the new environment in a way that ends up being essentially a self imposed domestication process.