Konrad Lorenz y la pregunta sobre el origen del perro

Resumen

K. Lorenz and the origins of dog.

The question of the descent of the dog has a long history. Whilst Linneo still believed in the constancy of the species, Buffon already tried to deduce the different dog breeds from some archetype of dog, an archetype which however he did not want to trace back to the wild forms of the Canides, wolf, jackal or fox. Darwin, on the other hand, inferred the assumption that our dogs have to derive from more than one wild breed, as it is a historical fact that already in the oldest times several dog breeds existed. Again deducing from the variety of dog breeds, Konrad Lorenz concluded that they have to derive from at least two wild breeds, wolf and jackal. Later on, he corrected his opinion in so far as he assumed that the ancestor of our dog has to be found in a greyhound that is more closely related to the wolf. The moment of splitting between wolfs and dogs has also to be corrected according to the latest DNA-analysis; it could have happened as far back as more than 100 000 years.

Key words: Descent, dog, wolf, jackal, domestication, DNA-analysis, Buffon, Darwin, Lorenz.