Humanity's Dual Response to Dogs and Wolves

Dogs were first domesticated 31 000–41 000 years ago. Humanity has experienced ecological costs and benefits from interactions with dogs and wolves. We propose that humans inherited a dual response of attraction or aversion that expresses itself independently to domestic and wild canids. The dual response has had far-reaching consequences for the ecology and evolution of all three taxa, including today's global ‘ecological paw print’ of 1 billion dogs and recent eradications of wolves. The massive ‘ecological paw print’ of 1 billion dogs worldwide can be illuminated by understanding the evolutionary ecology of human–dog mutualism. We propose a dual-response hypothesis to explain humanity's unusual mutualism with dogs and its competition with wild wolves. Our hypothesis makes testable predictions for the fields of psychology, genetics, and political ecology.