Man’s best friend, the dog, comes in a wide variety of sizes and shapes. It is hard to believe that the large Great Dane and the little Ciwhawha are the same species, but their anatomical features are genetically identical. All dogs have 78 chromosomes, or 39 pairs of chromosomes (humans have 23 pairs). One member of each pair comes from each parent.

Recently there has been a growing interest in understanding where dogs originated from, as well as exploring intriguing questions like 'How long ago did dogs evolve', 'How did they become domesticated?' and 'Where were the first domesticated animals?' Looking at the how dogs and humans interact has led to much interesting research into the evolution of dogs.

The programme explores various hypotheses, old and new, and debates the pros and cons of the idea that the dog domesticated itself rather than being domesticated by humans, and that the dog is ‘the invisible paw’ responsible for the whole of civilisation.

Today dogs have characteristics similar to those seen in wild wolf puppies. One explanation for this is that humans originally found these puppies and raised them. As they grew up, the most aggressive wolves would most likely have been killed. So the puppy genes stayed within the dog population and new genes were not allowed in. This would keep the wolf puppy trait in dogs today. Another hypothesis is that domestication is the result of genetic changes from the course of selection.

There is obvious debate and ongoing research into these questions and because of the special relationship between humankind and dogs this debate won’t go away. Robert Wayne stated 'Dogs are a model for how rapid morphological change might take place in a natural population'. This is a clear case that evolution is still occuring. With genetic evidence we now have a better understanding of the common ancestor of dogs, or as the programme puts it — ‘the mother of all dogs’. Just think, your dog either came from a dingo or a wolf a very long, long time ago!