Beginning at the start of human civilization with the Ancient Egyptians, humans started to deliberately breed dogs to help with everyday tasks. The tasks Egyptians used dogs for included hunting and guarding. Thus, traits for strength and swiftness were selected for breeding so they were strong but fast. This allowed them the ability to catch prey and thieves. This act of choosing certain traits to enhance a dog’s ability to perform a set task is known as artificial selection. Charles Darwin talked about this in the On the Origin of Species: “nature gives successive variations; man adds them up in certain directions useful to him”. Artificial selection is the reason we have the variety of dog breeds we have to today. These different breeds
