Improve your vocabulary – Why dogs love to chew bones?
Eight million years ago, a shift in the climate caused more barren, open landscapes to spread across the globe. And without the cover of trees, large animals grouped together for protection.
This, the scientists say, was when wild dogs started to work together, teaming up to drive big prey out of the herd. The Colombian team examined the skulls of more than 300 dog species, building a timeline that revealed how their jaws and teeth had evolved.
This revealed that the wolves from which our domestic dogs descend started to change when they began to hunt in packs. From then on, the dogs with the biggest teeth and most powerful jaws were most likely to succeed in overpowering their prey, so they passed their ‘hyper carnivorous’ genes on to the next generation.
The researchers say that this is what’s given our pet dogs such good evolutionary reasons to really enjoy chewing on bones.
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Vocabulary and definitions |
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ancestry |
ˈænsestri |
the family or the race of people that you come from |
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jaw |
dʒɔː |
the mouth and teeth of a person or an animal |
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carnivore |
ˈkɑːnɪvɔː(r) |
any animal that eats meat |
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barren |
ˈbærən |
land which does not have plants growing on it |
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landscape |
ˈlændskeɪp |
visible areas of land |
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big prey |
bɪɡ preɪ |
large animals that are hunted by others |
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herd |
hɜːd |
group of animals that live together |
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skulls |
skʌl |
bone cases for protecting the brain |
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species |
ˈspiːʃiːz |
group or type of animal or plant |
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evolve |
iˈvɒlv |
developed gradually over time |
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wolves |
wʊlvz |
a large wild animal of the dog family, that lives and hunts in groups |
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descend |
dɪˈsend |
come from |
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overpowering |
əʊvəˈpaʊərɪŋ |
defeating through greater strength |
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genes |
dʒiːn |
part of a cell which contains information about an animal’s characteristics |
Nguồn: BBC
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