Wolves appear
The genus Canis produces pack-hunting predators built for endurance across the northern grasslands.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 2.4 million years
- Known to
- ± 500 thousand years
- Era
- Pliocene, Cenozoic
Canis originates in North America in the late Miocene and diversifies through the Pliocene, crossing into Eurasia and Africa. The design is endurance rather than speed or strength: a wolf runs prey to exhaustion, which works best in open country and works far better in a coordinated group. Pack hunting brings with it the social cognition — reading intent, cooperating, deferring — that would much later make one of these lineages the first domesticated animal.