Dogs and humans have been the best of friends for thousands of years. Thanks to science we discovered that dogs regularly lived with humans about 10,000 years ago, and that even dogs and people were buried together 14,000 years ago. And, for even longer, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, humans walked alongside the ancestor of the domestic dog, an extinct species of wolf.
Dogs and wolves are part of a large taxonomic family called Canidae , which also includes coyotes, foxes and jackals, according to the Integrated Taxonomic Information System. Members of this family are called canids. Domestic dogs are a subspecies called Canis lupus familiaris , which have an average lifespan of 10-13 years and a sleep period of 12-14 hours (in adulthood).
The Canidae family includes 14 genera and 34 species, according to the Animal Diversity Website of the University of Michigan (United States). With such a variety of dogs, it is easy to see why there are so many different sizes of dogs. According to the University of Edinburgh (Scotland), the smallest canid is the Fennec fox. It is barely 24 centimeters tall and does not reach a kilogram of weight. On the opposite side, the largest canid is the gray wolf, 1.5 meters long not counting the tail.
Females typically weigh between 27 and 45 kilograms and males between 31 and 65 kilograms, according to the National Wildlife Federation .
Let’s know more scientific curiosities about them.
