Today’s interesting fact has to do with dogs.

I wrote earlier about the new evidence that humans and dogs have co-existed for more than 32,000 years.

An article I read a little while ago asked why humans would have domesticated dogs, because as carnivores they would compete with humans, and that that competition would contraindicate the relationship.

However, another article suggested that as dogs are eaten over a large part of the world, and that dogs have been shown to been eaten everywhere in the world at one time or another, domesticating dogs would have made sense, especially if larger litters were selected for as well as breeding more than once a year.

A bitch that is nursing doesn't eat much more than they do when they are not, they tend to move about less and use less energy than they would normally.

As the owners of the litter would only want to keep one or two from a litter at most, and that they would be concentrating on selecting those in the litter that got on with humans best, the rest of the litter would be available for the common pot.

This would explain why dogs breed more than once in a year, unlike wolves, as well as the larger than normal wolf litter sizes most dogs have.