Two big wolves come into my front yard once in a while to eat the raccoon food. They just stand there and growl until I throw them some meat. I did come about 6 feet away from them once. They just stood there and growled til I brought them some meat. They didn`t bother the raccoons neither coz they knew I had the best meat.
If they are around, the coydogs nor mountain lions are nowhere to be heard nor seen.
I think when early man/woman hunted game, the wolf pack followed for scraps coz it was easier than hunting. The pack in return guarded them at night from the lions cos a wolf pack ain`t one bit afraid of a fire nor lions at night.
Agreed. The wolf-dogs would have been smart enough to recognize that everybody wins when the dangers of the hunt are shared with humans bearing spears & standoff weapons (slings & bows). In turn the humans would benefit from the wolves powerful endurance and seen the value of pushing large game to exhaustion before attempting the kill.
Wolves would not have been domesticated at this point since there would have been no selective breeding taking place. The wolf pack would have been on the periphery of the human encampment, everpresent.
I saw a show on the Discovery Channel that presented the best theory of wolf domestication I have ever heard. As you suggest, it started with wolves standing off waiting to scavenge food from an animal humans had killed. Most wolves naturally kept a certain distance from the human encampment. Some few wolves were not quite as wary, and their stand-off distance was not as great as the other wolves. Those less wary wolves, being closer to the food, got there first when the humans left. They ate first and ate the most. Over only a few generations, this trait reinforced itself. As the wolves became less wary of humans, they ate better and evolved into dogs. Humans too recognized the advantages of having these tolerant wolves around and purposefully began to feed those who were the most domesticated. And so on to poodles ...