Are dogs carnivorous wolves that need meat?

The recent craze to feed our dogs more and more meat (raw or cooked) in their diets comes from the untrue conclusion that dogs need an ancestral diet as they are perceived to be carnivores.

Wolves in the wild are so very different in every capacity to our domestic dog. They hunt in packs and will normally only make a kill possibly once a week so they would never eat a high saturated fat and high meat-based diet every day; let alone twice a day as pet dogs are being fed, without the physical effort of the hunt! Interestingly, wild wolves have been shown to ‘forage’ in the summer for berries as shown in the YouTube clip attached!

The most thorough published proof that we have that the digestive system of the dog is different to wild wolves was a fascinating study done at the university of Uppsala in Sweden in 2013 that shows that as dogs have evolved alongside us, their digestive processes have evolved too.

Our modern dogs produce longer chains of specific digestive enzymes that are adapted for digesting starches and grains – not meat. Dogs produce the enzyme amylase, which is present is the human digestive system (including our saliva) and allows us to digest carbohydrates. This is a result of thousands of years of evolution in conjunction with humans.

Want to hear more? Watch the full YouTube clip all about raw feeding here

Why is raw feeding so popular?

There are over 100 online pet food companies that have sprung up in the last few years selling raw food diets or very high meat or fish diets to our dogs as the online community influences people’s opinions. Feeding such a high meat content to our pets has brought about more issues with our pet’s health than the pet food companies realise. We are very aware of the dangers of eating meat but it is such a profitable business that these dangers are hidden in the flashy advertising presented to the public.

The very first incorrect advertising that has been presented is that dogs are descendants of the carnivorous wolf so they too must be carnivores. Our dogs are omnivores and have always been omnivores – feeding off our table scraps until pet food became big business in the 1800’s. They do belong to the order Carnivora, but then so too does our bamboo-loving panda bear belong to this order who has never tasted meat or fish and thrives on shoots and leaves!

Other descendants of the wolf over the years include not only our domestic dog, but also animals belonging to the order Hyaenidae such as the brown hyena (shown in the first attached image). They appear extremely dog like in their appearance but they have branched off and adapted to living in the harsh african conditions as natural scavengers with an acute sense of smell and apart from scavenging insects, small dead rodents and other prey; they obtain their protein source in the desert by sniffing out desert truffle – a type of fungus called Kalaharituber pfeilii.

The second image shows the beautiful and very shy aardwolf – another species that branched off in evolution just as our domestic dog did hundreds of thousands of years ago from the common wolf ancestor – it is a nocturnal feeder that feeds exclusively off 2 species of termites that provide it with all the protein and vitamins that it needs without any meat in its diet at all!

Brown Hyena that eats truffle in the desert as its protein source (a type of fungus)

Aardwolf - a shy african animal that resembles our domestic dog but only eats 2 species of termites!

“As a vet, I believe in a kinder, healthier way to feed our pets that does no damage to our environment, harms no animals and uses fresh, healthy plant-based ingredients for a balanced and delicious diet”

Arielle Vegan Vet 2020