Mammals · Carnivora · Canidae

Domestic Dog

Canis lupus familiaris

Not Evaluated

It has not yet been assessed against the IUCN criteria. See full glossary

The domestic dog is a subspecies of the grey wolf and the first animal domesticated by humans, at least 15,000 years ago. It shows the greatest morphological variability of any land mammal: from the 1-2 kg of a chihuahua to the more than 80 kg of a mastiff. The FCI recognises more than 350 breeds. Its thousands of years of life alongside people have selected an exceptional ability to read human gestures and gaze, something not even chimpanzees show.

Weight

1 kg – 90 kg

Size

20 cm – 1.1 m

Lifespan

12 years

Diet

Omnivore

Combines animal and plant food depending on availability.

Activity

Diurnal

Active mainly during the day.

Social structure

Herd

Lives in large groups as a strategy against predators.

Sighting difficulty

Unknown

GrasslandOmnivore Diurnal In herds Grassland Mammal

34same family

Fun facts

GeneralThe first animal people domesticated, between 15,000 and 30,000 years ago, from the grey wolf.
The bloodhound can have as many as 300 million scent receptors, against the 5-6 million of a human being.
It can follow the direction of a person's gaze and pointing finger, a communicative ability that hand-reared wolves do not develop.
It is the only animal domesticated before agriculture: it happened when we were all hunter-gatherers, and that is why its relationship with us is the oldest of all.
It descends from the grey wolf, but not from any living wolf population: modern dogs and wolves are sister lineages that diverged from an ancestral population now vanished.
It is the mammal species with the greatest variation in size and shape: from the Chihuahua to the Great Dane there is a weight difference of more than fifty times, something found in no other species.
It can digest starch, unlike the wolf, thanks to additional copies of the amylase gene: an adaptation to eating the leftovers of our agricultural diet.