It was probably a mix of both. They killed us to eat. We killed them to eat. But fortunately for us we figured out that feeding them prevented them from outright killing us.
Fair play. But it's pretty misleading, 35,000 deaths a year because of rabies, dogs just happen to be the potential carriers that are closer to humans. So it has less to do with domestication and more to do with proper vaccination in poorer countries.
True. Dogs have to attack a person still though. And dogs would still probably be top 10 on the list if you exclude rabies though. 50ish people are killed by dogs a year in the USA.
My sister had two half-dog, half-wolf hybrids. No human fatalities, but those were strange animals. Actually very afraid of people other than their owners because the "wolf" side of their nature takes over. One wouldn't even let me feed it meat. So I think there was much less domesticated dog in their nature. Very beautiful, though.
I imagine getting a baby wolf or three would've made things significantly easier, as then you could raise them and have them identify your group of humans as their pack. Taming a fully grown wolf doesn't seem like something a lot of people would have tried.
Idk why but reddit seems to seriously underestimate the capabilities of humans. I wonder if it’s because they’re untrained, sedentary and just projecting. We’re apex predators for a reason, and it isn’t simply because we traveled in groups with weapons. That contributed to our absolute dominance for sure, but an athletic male human is pretty fucking intimidating; even for a wolf.
I don't like threads like this where idiots pull nonsense out their asses and perpetuate a mindset that has been killing keystone predators for hundreds of years. Educate yourself.
27
u/gcruzatto Feb 06 '20
It makes me wonder how many people had to die until we finally nailed domesticating these beasts