Thousands of years ago, your precious little dog was a proud and fearsome wolf. Obviously, something happened along the way that turned them from wild creatures to our fully domesticated, highly obedient, extremely cuddly best friends. It wouldn’t be surprising to learn we domesticated them by breaking their spirits and forcing them to be loyal to us. The findings of a new study, however, suggest that it’s the opposite — wolves may have “self-domesticated” into dogs to reap the benefits of being around humans.The study comes from the scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B and was conducted by a team of researchers based in the United States. The researchers found evidence that by remaining docile around humans and coexisting without confrontation, wolves were able to treat themselves to our food waste. We won over their hearts through their stomachs.Eventually the vicious grey wolves that ruled the forests and plains chilled out a little bit as they adapted to human settlements, eventually being brought in so closely to the human settlements that they became what we now consider the modern dog, a fiercely loyal companion that we regularly feed, take out for long walks, and dress in silly clothing they probably find humiliating but it makes us laugh so they put up with it.Oddly, though, it wasn’t so much the how of wolf domestication that was cause for debate among scientists but the when of it all. The transformation of a wild wolf to a cuddly dog happened across two time periods. There was a stretch 30,000 to 15,000 years ago, and then there was another period of domestication that happened 15,000 years ago to around now-ish. That second one is the hot topic among wolf researchers. Some just don’t think natural selection could have happened that quickly without human intervention.The researchers created complex computer models that simulated a wolf trait called “human tolerance.” It took this one aspect of the wolf and extrapolated on it, evolving it using their algorithmic models to simulate this process. They found that it was indeed possible for self-domestication to happen within the 15,000-year timeframe.The research doesn’t take into account some other factors scientists have been debating for years, like whether prehistoric people even created enough food waste that wolves could snack on in the first place. And they didn’t go anywhere near the idea of whether humans raised wolf pups, thus making them particularly well-suited for adaptation over wolves that remained wild. The research does, however, offer some credence to the idea that wolves saw an opportunity for free food and seized it, because all they had to do was be nice to us. To wild grey wolves, that sounded like a win-win.The post Wild Wolves Became Dogs for Easier Access to Snacks appeared first on VICE.