Man's Best Friend: From Scavenger to Family Member
We have an interesting relationship with our domestic dogs. They live in our houses and sleep in our beds as members of the family. We give them quality food, expensive toys, and affection, and they give us love in a way that few other beings on earth can. This relationship has a rather unusual beginning. It began with wild wolves and our the untidy habits of a ancient humans. Before he was "Fluffy," he was a garbage removal service.
Somewhere in East Asia, roughly 15,000 years ago, some ancient humans were enjoying a feast of mammoth or some other great beast of yore. They tried to use every part of the animal, but with these large animals, they tended to leave behind quite a bit of waste. The stench from this waste would waft through the air, drawing in all sorts of prehistoric carnivores that would rather eat fresh human meat than choke down some left-overs and garbage. However, among the animals that came to scavenge were wolves.
From that period onwards, wolves that scavenged from humans got better nutrition than wolves hunting for their own food. The dogs became moochers off of humans hunting. Some of the wolves began to change shape, growing multi-colored coats, shorter muzzles and floppy ears. The ancient humans thought these animals were cute, so they received better rations than the wolves without them. Some dogs started barking, and barking was good way to warn people of enemies. These, too, got the better rations. In fact, all of these characteristics arose at once as wolves shifted into dogs. A population of low fear wolves would sooner or later begin to develop these characteristics. So dogs began as scavenging wolves that evolved cute appearances to endear themselves to ancient humans. When your dog begs food, he's using this ancient skill that he inherited from his ancestors.
That is how dogs became man's best friend. Humans provided the food, and dogs just took advantage of it. However, to better facilitate their begging, dogs got better at reading people, and that is why we think of dogs being almost human. That is how dogs became man's best friend.