Designing Dogs | Worldbuilding 

I think that certain traders would have specific "dog" breeds, and when they're older they'd give them to other "dog" trader friends and "dog dinasties" would form

Ooh, maned wolves would be great. I can imagine humans selecting for a really long mane so they can style it.

It would be really cool! Unfortunately manned wolves are ill suited for domestication, at least in the way that grey wolves were domesticated IRL and the painted dog was in Nakari’s world. They wouldn’t be very useful for human hunter-gatherers because they don’t hunt large game, feeding mainly on fruits and small prey, like lizards and rodents. They also live mostly alone or in pairs, making it harder for humans to exploit the pack mentality, the way we did with wolves and could have done with painted dogs.

@@incanusolorin2607 that sounds to me like they could be an alternative to domesticated cats, rather than dogs.

@@livendus Thank you so much! I really wanted to incorporate domesticated manned wolves to my world somehow, but for the reasons I mentioned above I just couldn’t do it. But many peoples of my world are sedentary and grow maize and other grains. So maybe I could have some wolves living around the villages to feed on the rodents attracted by the crops. Eventually, people might start to develop some sort of relationship with them.

@@incanusolorin2607 oh definitely! Let’s get some cat-like maned wolves skulking around the fields chasing rabbits, rodents, and other pests into _inward opening_ fence corners and cage traps and watch the humans interpret their actions as intentionally benevolent! This could definitely be the start of a wonderful relationship

2/3 of the above sentences are matches made in heaven. The last one: ...oh...oh no

Something I learned while making this: some cold climate dogs in our world have turned up mouth because it stops drool from turning into icicles. So the mechanics aren't amazingly cute but the result is!

Ah, that's a really cool species to start off with! Would be interesting to see how they adapt along with their humans :D

@@NakariSpeardane Thanks! Wild bush dogs are excellent swimmers and many of the tribes living in my world exploit the jungle rivers for food and trade, so I think we are bound to see some breeds naturally or artificially selected to hunt aquatic prey. I’m still not sure exactly what an aquatic dog would look like, but maybe something similar to a river otter.

I expect they would look more cat like since hyenas are closer related to cats than dogs

your here I'm subscribed

@@brighamhellewell6479 I am, Nakari is a friend of mine! Thank you very much!

Are you on conlang amino? I think I've seen you there lol

@@retvolution I am, I'm a leader! I'm normally only super active in the summer though.

@@Dracheneks ohh, ok! I thought your username looked familiar

Yes!

I'm totally going to have to draw a painted dachshund now... I don't know if I can introduce it into worldbuilding without a black hole of cuteness occurring though.

@@NakariSpeardane haha yep! Dachshunds are adorable

Ah thank you so much, I'm glad you enjoy my stuff :D I'm studying archaeology right now, used to study Classics - would recommend archaeology much more though!

Honestly I'm not sure :P I think the fact they're working together with humans would allow them to survive in new climates long enough to adapt to them a bit. If they're too cold in a new environment - oh well, we have fire! But also, it's just more fun to have them spread even if it might not really happen :P

@@NakariSpeardane yah, for the fun factor it's fine :D. But I also came up with another theory, why it wouldn't work at all (sorry for picking it apart, but it might help you, if you want to exploit this topic further). African animals generally can't be domesticated (In our world most domestic animals are from places, where we migrated, despite simular animals being in africa as well) and are much better in dealing with hominins then in test of the world (most megafauna in rest of the world is long extinct or domesticated, but in africa it lives on). So I think that despite the simularities with gray wolves they wouldn't cooperate with humans, however counterintuative it may be. I mean really, how it's not a real thing, 2 species of persistence hunters living alongsie each other for so long and no cooperation, c'mon.

@@matejdostal9992 She addressed this issue on the video about how states form or something like that. You should watch it, it’s a really interesting video!

Hyenas are actually closer related to cats, than dogs, so they probably wouldn’t get domesticated