This is the conclusion that has been reached in a new study after observing how these animals increasingly feed on livestock and human garbage , instead of hunting wild prey, with the consequent approach to the human world . However, given the characteristics of today’s industrialized societies, this closeness could generate greater conflicts between wolves and humans and have disastrous consequences .
Lee Dugatkin, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Louisville in Kentucky not involved in the research, points out the importance of this work in “establishing how the diet has the potential to change into a large predator.”
To discover how eating human food conditions gray wolves , Thomas Newsome, an evolutionary biologist at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, and his team examined studies of what has happened to other large carnivores living near people. The Asian lions that inhabit the Gir protected area in western India kill and eat mostly livestock. The felines that are being born are less aggressive towards humans to the point that tourists can see them on foot. In Israel, red foxes live longer and closer to people when they feed on scraps. In contrast, North American black bears , which eat human waste, are more likely to die young because people kill them.
In 2014 Newsome studied a population of dingoes in the Australian Tanami Desert and found that the habit of feeding almost exclusively on junk food from a waste management facility had made them fatter and less aggressive. They were also more likely to mate with local dogs and had become “cheeky,” says Newsome, daring to run between their legs while setting traps for them. The most curious thing is that the population of dingoes in the containers formed a different genetic group from the rest of the dingoes , which indicates that they were genetically isolating themselves, a key step in forming a new species.
Is the same thing happening to gray wolves? Newsome notes that human food already makes up 32% of the gray wolf’s diet worldwide. These animals are spread mainly in remote regions of Eurasia and North America, however, some specimens are moving to developed areas. Wolves in Greece mostly consume pigs, goats and sheep. In Spain they feed on horses and other animals. Iranian wolves rarely eat anything other than chickens, domestic goats, and human garbage. “Based on what has happened to these other carnivores [that eat human food], we think these wolves will change,” Newsome says.
The new diet of wolves could affect many aspects, from the size of the packs to their social behaviors , says the team of researchers. As with dingoes, these wolves are likely to mate with dogs and, in North America, with coyotes, they aim. Newsome hopes that they will also begin to diverge genetically from prey-hunting wolves just as they did with dumpster dingoes. Because ancient wolves are believed to have evolved into dogs by ingesting food and waste in human camps, we may be looking at “the makings of a new dog,” argues Newsome, who plans to start testing his idea on wolves in Washington state. .
But not everyone is convinced. “I doubt we’re taming wolves that eat human food,” says Robert Wayne, an evolutionary biologist and canine genetics expert at the University of California, Los Angeles. “This diet is more likely to kill them.” Unlike garbage collector dingoes, which reduce their territories, wolves still vary greatly from them and are less likely to genetically isolate themselves from their population. Bobcats, coyotes and other animals that are already well integrated into our neighborhoods are more likely to be domesticated, he adds.
Wayne and Newsome agree that, for all species, domestication is not best but the restoration of their habitats and natural prey in places where they can avoid humans, livestock and garbage. If humans can fix this, we won’t have a new dog, Newsome says, but we will still have wolves.
