You don’t need to own a dog or a cat to know the two animals behave differently. One is loyal, protective, excitable and eager to please, the other… a cat. Now, large DNA studies have shed light on the historic origins of our closest pets, creating a fable-like explanation for their contrasting personalities.

Modern European dogs can trace half their ancestry to dogs that trotted out with men and women as they tracked Ice Age deer, wild cattle and boar, and perhaps even woolly mammoths

Modern European dogs can trace half their ancestry to dogs that trotted out with men and women as they tracked Ice Age deer, wild cattle and boar, and perhaps even woolly mammoths

Dogs first. It had long been thought they are the original tamed animals, and have been hanging around people around a millennia before would-be farmers engaged with other species.

Skeletons, up to 35,000 years old, that looked too small to be wolves had been excavated across Europe and Asia. But size is not definitive and early genetic studies found some assumed dogs were in fact extinct wolves. Other finds from the Americas suggested dogs could possibly have been first domesticated there. Where they were tamed, or who was responsible, remained an open question.

All that has changed with two major new studies of canine DNA, published today. Characteristically for the........

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