WHICH CAME FIRST, THE DOG OR THE WOLF?

What? What’s the problem? It’s basically the exact same question. Yet everyone knows dogs are descended from, indeed are still a sub-species of, wolves. And no one seems to have a problem with that? Both species – Canis lupus and

Gallus gallus – initially benefited from hanging around near human populations, because we got them extra food, one way or another. Eventually we noticed them, caught some of them, bred them, and the rest is history. However, that there are hundreds of breeds of dogs and hundreds of breeds of chicken is surely no coincidence. The way both species can produce such radically different phenotypes from the same set of genetic code is probably key to the reason we were even able to domesticate them in the first place.