Hope I dont sound stupid

Ok, I was thinking about this earlier today.

My question is about dog species in the wild.

A long long time ago there were all dog species running wild around the world.

Humans then started to keep them as pets and then eventually breed them.

You would think that there are German shepards running around in the wild as well as retrievers somewhere but there probably arent.

Did humans make these animals extinct in the wild or are they still out there?

I know there are wild dogs in africa.

Pardon me if I sound like an idiot and have not fully thought this out properly. :P

Dog breeds as we know them today came about from breeding dogs for specific traits. They are all the same species.

You can probably find a lot of research on the web, but as I understand it wild dogs were line bred to produce the traits we see today. Of course, I'm tired and my brain may be on the blink....

Here's a link that may be of some help. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog

All of our pet dogs were domesticated from wild species and selectively bred over the years to become the pet's we now know today. There are no wild poodles, pugs, german shepards, dalmatians, etc in the wild and there never were any.

How you go from a wolf or fox to a poodle is a great example of genetic engineering and evolution rolled into one. Line breeding or selective breeding is by the way, just a longer version of genetic engineering. And the dramatic changes that occur along the way are inherent of evolution.
There have been experiments that showed how quickly you can go from something like a wild fox, to a human friendly pet that didn't even look like it's wild counterpart in just a matter of 30 or so years, by just selective breeding.
So take a wild fox or wolf and do the same thing but instead of having only 30 years, do it over 3,000 years. That is how we end up with so many different types of dogs that for the most part all came from the same wild ancestors.

The same goes for most domestic animals such as cats, horses, cows, goats, pigs, etc. They all came from a few wild ancestors but over the years have become the many various breeds you see today.

No, you don't sound stupid making this thread. It is something that I have wondered as well. The thing with cats really confused me until recently.

from what i've heard, they all started as wolves, foxes, or dingos.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by N4S

Did humans make these animals extinct in the wild or are they still out there?

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Man shapes the world around him by breeding and/or growing for specific traits. We've "invented" breeds of dogs out of wild genes in the very same manner we "invented" corn and what we recognize as bananas now (take a look at a wild banana if you want to see what I mean).

Selective breeding (unnatural selection if you will) is what takes a wild canine and makes it a poodle. A domestic dog has far less genetic diversity than a wild dog.. a poodle for instance has lost the genetic ability to produce a normal shedding double coat.

Accumulated genetic mistakes (mutations that cause non shedding hair, loss of pigment, stunted growth etc as in a white toy poodle) along with natural variation were selected for by people to produce a pet breed in the case of a poodle..

No new information has been added to the DNA.. hence a domestic dog and a wolf can still interbreed.. they are the same animal still, even though they appear so different. This isn't evolution, and I know I may ruffle some feathers here by saying so. :P

The dogs we have today were probably selectively bred from different species of wild dogs and wolves that are mostly now extinct. For example, the wolves here in Alaska before the glaciers melted were of a different species (sub species? I can't remember) of wolf than what lives here today. The huskies and malamutes may have been bred from those wolves instead of the ones here now, depending how far back you want to go. An example of trait selection is breeding for the upraised tail in huskies; some people think this is so the Natives could distinguish them from wolves at a distance. No one really knows 100% where all the variations of dogs originated from. Some scientists say "wolves"... but there are multiple species of wolves, and like you mentioned, dogs like the African wild dog (plus whatever-else-I'm-forgetting). It's a really fascinating topic to me and a person could theorize endlessly about it and never get bored. :D

To add to this, 90% of the dog breeds we have today were made/invented/whatever in the past 100 years. Never under estimate the power of man. Lettuce, cabbage, brussel sprouts, etc. all orginate from the same plant line.