Living Technology: Theoretical Perspectives on the Emergence of Sled Dogs.

Abstract

In recent years, the intersection of the history of technology, environmental history, and ethnozoology has generated new insights into human-animal relationships, particularly in Arctic contexts where survival has depended on close interspecies collaboration. Sled dogs, which have long played a central role in Arctic lifeways, exemplify how animals function as active participants in socio-ecological systems and can be understood as forms of biological technology. Through domestication, selective breeding, and sustained practices of training and care, sled dogs developed physiological, behavioural, and genetic traits associated with endurance, thermoregulation, metabolism, and cooperative work. At the same time, humans developed harnesses, sleds, and mobility practices designed to work in tandem with canine capabilities, forming integrated transportation systems. Building on this perspective, we propose a transportation hypothesis of dog domestication. Rather than viewing transport as a late application of already domesticated dogs, we argue that mobility may have been one of the principal technological functions through which the human-dog partnership became evolutionarily and culturally stable. Under this framework, domestication is understood not only as a biological process but also as a technological one, shaped through the co-development of animals, transport systems, and human knowledge. This perspective broadens technological and ethnozoological inquiry and highlights the role of domestication and cross-cultural knowledge in Arctic human-animal relationships.