Throughout evolutionary history, many different methods and ideologies have affected the gene pools and phenotypes of species, one of them being “artificial selection”. Artificial selection involves breeding animals of the same species together to create a specific overall trait. (Wikipedia, Learner.org, 2010) The history of dog breeding is a good example of artificial selection. Throughout history, humans have bred dogs to develop more ideal physical and behavioral characteristics, and through this we have obtained this wide range of domestic dog breeds that are very different from their ancestors, both physically and behaviorally. There are many theories about how dogs breeding began. One of the most popular is that humans would rescue orphaned wolf puppies and care for them. As the puppies were brought back to health, they then became accustomed to living with humans. From there, humans would use them as hunting companions, to control parasites, and as “guard dogs.” (Dogtime, 2009) Eventually, humans would see that some individuals were better than others at certain tasks. For example, an individual that ran very fast, but rarely barked, was a good hunting companion. However, another one that was not good at running, but would bark at strangers, made a good watchdog. People would see these characteristics and specifically breed individuals to concentrate certain traits, such as breeding two black-haired wolves to obtain one black-haired offspring, or two large, intimidating wolves to obtain one large, intimidating offspring. With the creation of these specific breeds, the offspring of the different pairs would either have very similar characteristics between one of them, or be a middle of the paper, which would have helped to expand the gene pool within the species. Through this, we have not only created breeds of domestic dogs that are very different from their ancestors, both physically and behaviorally, but also within all the different breeds. This resulted in a diversity of species that it would never have created naturally in nature. Works Cited. No. Internet. November 20, 2013... Np. Internet. November 18, 2013... No. Internet. November 21, 2013... No. Internet. November 20, 2013... Np. Internet. November 19, 2013... No. Internet. November 21 2013..