Question: How did wolves split into so many dog breeds (over two hundred)?

Reka Nagy answered on 10 Nov 2016:

It’s all got to do with domestication and selective breeding, at the heart of which lies my favourite thing – DNA!

Dogs originated from wolves that humans have tamed, or domesticated. Humans used dogs for different purposes, such as hunting or herding animals, and these jobs required the dogs to be either fast, strong, brave, or able to follow instructions. In order to consistently get dogs with these traits, humans bred those dogs that presented these traits most prominently – this is what is known as selective breeding – and this selected for dogs that had certain types of mutations in their DNA.

After a while, dogs became objects of vanity and humans started breeding them not just for their abilities, but also their looks. This is how we ended up with things like the chihuahua – which does not look very much like a wolf at all!