Most people do not think about wolves when they see tiny, fluffy dogs trotting down the street, yet new scientific research suggests that many of them may carry more wolf ancestry than anyone expected. According to a team of U.S. scientists, nearly two thirds of modern dog breeds contain detectable levels of wolf DNA. What surprised researchers most was that this ancestry does not trace back solely to the original domestication event that occurred around twenty thousand years ago. Instead, it points to more recent interbreeding between wolves and domesticated dogs within the last few thousand years.

Researchers stress that this does not mean wolves are routinely approaching households or interacting with pets. Instead, the findings reflect rare but meaningful interactions between stray do

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