Survival of the Friendliest, Revisited: Four Years On

When Survival of the Friendliest was published in 2020, its central claim — that selection for tolerance, not dominance, drove the wolf-to-dog transition — was already well supported. Four years of new genetics and archaeology have made it look conservative.

What is new

Ancient-DNA studies published between 2022 and 2024 have pushed the divergence date back, and tightened the link between the earliest dog-like remains and human settlement patterns. The picture is no longer one of humans actively taming wolves but of a subset of wolves selecting themselves into our orbit by being less afraid of us.

Why it still matters

The friendliness hypothesis is not a feel-good story. It is a falsifiable claim about how cooperative cognition evolves, and it has direct implications for how we raise puppies, how we screen service-dog candidates, and how we should think about behavior problems that look like aggression but are really fear. Read the book if you haven't; reread it if you have.