HJALMAR SNÖGLAD

Nya spännande teorier om hur hunden domesticerades berättas i NYT. Forntidens människor åt bara feta delar av nedlagda villebråd, och gav finköttet till tiggande vargar.

”It’s the middle of the last ice age and you are in the cave on a cold winter’s night chewing the fat, and I don’t mean gossiping. You are chewing real, gristly fat from some animal you just killed and cooked because if you eat only lean meat you’ll starve to death or get protein poisoning. By evolutionary necessity, you find fat irresistible. Many thousands of years later this will cause your descendants to eat Doritos and Slim Jims, but that’s not your problem.

Still, you have leftover lean meat because that’s not the part of the musk ox that people like. What to do with it? Toss it to the wolf pup! You don’t know why you took the beast in, but it’s cute, and it seems to thrive on the parts of the kill you don’t favor. If this happens often enough, and you and your children and their children end up keeping some of these wolves and their progeny, what do you get? Dogs!

Maria Lahtinen, an archaeologist at the Finnish Food Authority, and a group of colleagues published this idea in a bit more scientific detail on Thursday in the journal Scientific Advances. Dr. Lahtinen, whose main research is not on domestication but the diet of Arctic and sub-Arctic people, had a notion that the different dietary needs of humans and wolves could be key to the origin of dogs. It is, she said, “a completely new hypothesis why initial dog domestication took place.” Two species, both carnivores to a greater or lesser extent, with different nutritional needs, could have a commensal relationship. The wolves would benefit and the humans, at least at first, would neither lose nor benefit.”

Hjalmar växer så det knakar på hundpellets men också matrester och husses special, ugnsrostad kycklinglever blandat med ris. Lyktar pyton men älskas av ättlingarna till forntidens vargar.

Han gillar som alla hundar snö, och hoppas att det ska komma massor. Det bästa med snön är snöbad, att rulla runt tills man luktar snömos. Nu väger Hjalmar över 9 kg dvs. dubbelt så mycket som småhundarna som tanterna bär omkring.