Over time, this phenomenon would have led to the development of their current anatomical configuration and decisively influenced their hunting techniques. This is suggested by a team of researchers coordinated by Professor Francisco de Borja Figueirido, from the Department of Ecology and Geology of the University of Malaga, in a study published in the journal Nature Communications .
According to this expert and his collaborators, 40 million years ago, a good part of North America (where they have focused their essay) was covered by wooded masses. The canids of the time were perfectly integrated in this environment, and their forelimbs were not adapted to run long distances. They were small animals that preferred to ambush; their appearance would probably not be much different from that of mongooses. However, a few million years later, the temperate climate that prevailed in that environment began to change.
Temperatures dropped significantly, inland regions became drier, and forests disappeared, giving way to grasslands and savannas. As a consequence, herbivores developed longer limbs. However, the predators examined in the study did not evolve accordingly. That is, their upper limbs did not adapt to the anatomy of their fast prey, which they could not reach in a race, but to changes in their own habitat.
This determined that they chose to chase them, even over long distances, just as wolves still do today. To pinpoint this shift from stalkers to pursuers, the scientists compared the teeth and elbow joints of 32 species of canids between 40 and 2 million years old with those of modern specimens.
Thus, they observed that they had become more efficient runners, but their members had lost much of the flexibility they had in the past. According to the researchers, just as they evolved then, they will surely continue to do so now, to adapt to the disturbances caused by the climate change that we are experiencing.
