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"What makes a dog a dog is behavior, not appearance."

Actually dogs are a subspecies of wolves and are not closely related to coyotes or jackals. The difference between dogs and most species of wolves is visible to the naked eye (if you know what bones to look for). Behavior does make a huge difference though and this is why I favor a single speciation event. That aside wolves have been hanging around genus homo for ~400,000 years. If they were attacking children I'm sure the humans would have exterminated them. Destroying a wolf pack is pretty easy.

As for all this being crank, well let's just say the evidence is piling up. This is the life's work of many people and I for one am glad to sit back and delight in what they find.

"As for all this being crank, well let's just say the evidence is piling up. This is the life's work of many people and I for one am glad to sit back and delight in what they find."

I agree...and you thoughts seem to be similar to mine.

Actually dogs are a subspecies of wolves and are not closely related to coyotes or jackals.

All these animals can and do interbreed with dogs and each other. Because dogs tend to outnumber the wild canids, and lots of dogs escape from their owners, then interbreeding with each other, they are all closely related. There is no DNA test that can tell whether my dog is descended fror the wolves at the zoo, or visa versa.

While I can't completely go along with the anti-evolution crowd, they are right to point out the slimness of the clues the evolutionary DNA experts work with. It just seems to me that the serious dog folks don't like the idea their pets are descended from scavengers, even though it is so obvious today's dogs prefer scavenging to hunting. So they grab onto any feeble evidence that their favorites are descended from the noble wolf. Likewise, they insist, without significant evidence, that dog breeding is responsible for the domestication of dogs, because it adds nobility to their own efforts. As if prehistoric man, living in the Hobbsian struggle of all against all, could possibly stick to a 100 or 200 year breeding program to get the nastiness out of wolves. It is surely more likely that God created dogs ready-made than that prehistoric man, migrating from place to place, could stick to such a project.

Yea, I know, I'm being a crank. Better on this issue than something having to do with the 'Rats, right?