Book Information
- Coming in Summer 2026
- Publisher: Livingwell Publishing
- ISBN: 9781732836433
Humans and canids have together walked the earth for the last 30,000 years. Branching off from the wolf family tree during the Middle Paleolithic, ancestors of today’s domestic dogs fell in step with another apex predator – Stone Age humans – in a fateful partnership that would fundamentally reshape the futures of both tribes and of the planet itself. This unprecedented alliance between two species represents earth’s first instance of “codomestication.” The term describes a mutual decision to go it together and the millennia-long journey that followed from it. It’s a pact and a process that continues today.
Becoming fellow travelers conferred profound benefits on both tribes, catapulting them to the top of the planet’s food chain. It contributed to the end of Neanderthals, earth’s only other apex predator at the time. Homo neanderthalensis had essentially all the other resources of Homo sapiens – but not their pact with dogs. Canids, for their part, used humans as a vector to travel far beyond where they could have on their own. Over time they established breeding populations on every continent except Antarctica; they preceded humans into outer space.
Traveling together through time, sharing the expertise particular to its kind, canids and humans coevolved. Their cross-species bond reshaped the bodies and brains of both. Recent advances in brain imaging, genomic studies and cognitive science have shed new light on this coevolution, deepening our understanding of how we’ve become each other’s best friends.
Canis familiaris provides an overview of this new science and of the long arc of our species’ fellow travels. It shares the author’s lifelong experiences with his own family dogs, who’ve taught him much more than he ever taught them. Taught him to to continue evolving, continue becoming a more human being. He is grateful.
Consider yourself invited: Sit! Stay! Read!
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