If dogs are pretending to love us, then they are damn good actors.
I have some issues with Masson’s work. I would have loved it if he’d included a description a dog preying on some animal in Dogs Never Lie About Love.
He covers every part of their natural behavior but that one. If you see a dog acting as a predator, it can be a moving experience. It can also be terrifying if you’ve deluded yourself into believing that they don’t have these instincts. For someone like Masson, I think he would find it rather disconcerting.
He’s also one of those animal rights people who talks about these issues in a way that reminds me of how the Christian right talks about abortion.
The fact that he’s on the left makes no difference. It puts me off.
I think a better discussion of the issues can be found here.
That said, I do believe most birds and mammals do have emotions and can experience pain and suffering. And all of them will experience a certain level of suffering at they live their lives.
Most wild animals die horrific deaths. A hunter’s bullet causes far less suffering than the other “natural” ways these animals die.
We have to accept that this world is partially maintained through death. Despite our intellect, man has not created a world that transcends the simple realities that all things die and in most deaths, there will be some pain and suffering.
We can either deny these realities, or we can work to mitigate them.
And that’s where our focus should be.
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Why is it that dogs are able to form bonds with species other than humans?
It has more to do with agriculture than the fact that dogs just like making friends.
When we domesticated other species, we culled those dogs that tried to eat our sheep and goats.
Those dogs that formed bonds with our sheep and goats and protected them from predators were given special treatment.
Charles Darwin noticed that most Western dogs learned very quickly to leave domesticated stock alone, while dogs from South Pacific and Australia could never be trusted around sheep. Darwin, like Masson, believed that it was the love of man that caused Western domestic dogs to leave stock alone.
I think it’s more likely the result of this early selective breeding.
Of course, Western dogs are not universally safe with stock, but I have known some fierce hunting dogs that learned to leave pet ducks alone.
When I was growing up, a predatory Norwegian elkhound and even more predatory farm collie learned to never touch my pet Muscovy ducks. The elkhound did kill one duck because it was eating out of dog’s food bowl. The elkhound wanted to discipline the duck for breaking pack rules, and the duck didn’t survive the punishment.
I also know of Walker coonhounds that can kill a raccoon in less than a minute but think the world of their owner’s cats.
Somewhere in domesticating the dog, the animal has evolved an ability to recognize which animals are prey and which animals it should befriend. For a predatory animal, that is quite an accomplishment.
I think some study is needed on this aspect of dog behavior. Maybe this will fit in nicely with the theory that dogs are very good at following rules. Rule following in dogs is being extensively studied in Hungary at Eotvos Lorand University’s Department of Ethology.
This finding is several years old, but I had not heard of it until now.
In that scenario, horses would be more closely related to dogs than they are to cows.
Remember my post on the enigma of the warrah or Falkland Islands wolf?
I stated that we didn’t have the foggiest clue what its ancestry was, although early studies of its DNA suggested that it was derived from something like a coyote.
It has been speculated that the culpeo and the other zorros or wolf-like foxes of South America are its closest relatives.
Well, a new study was released yesterday that suggests that the warrah’s closest relative was the maned wolf. The lineage of the two species split 6 million years ago, when the ancestors of both species lived in North America.
Yes, South America might have a great diversity of wild dog species today, but all of its wild dogs descend from North American ancestors. Canids moved to South America 2.5 million years ago.
So the enigma of the warrah has been solved. This evidence fits nicely with the etymology of the name warrah, which is believed to have been derived from the Guaraní word for the maned wolf– “”aguará guazú.” That tells us that the warrah probably looked more like the maned wolf than the various taxidermied specimens suggest. (However, a better photo this specimen is definitely suggestive of something like a maned wolf.)
However, no one has found any North American canids that could be considered the ancestors of the warrah or maned wolf.
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I need to say here that the maned wolf is one of the more bizarre wild dogs. In fact, I can’t think of a stranger animal for the warrah to count as its closest relative. Remember, the warrah looked like a dingo, a culpeo, or a coyote. Its appearance wasn’t that strange. It was the fact that it was located on isolated island that made people wonder about it. If it had been found on the mainland, it would have been instantly grouped with the South American zorros.
They stand over three feet at the shoulder but weigh only about 44-55 pounds. Their long legs are an adaptation to living in their grassland habitat, where the grass often grows too tall for a shorter-legged dog to see its prey.
Maned wolf
Unlike other large wild dogs, the maned wolf does not form packs. A monogamous pair shares a territory, but they normally are not seen together in that territory. They apparently come together only to mate.
Also unusual for a wild dog of this size, over 50% of its diet is vegetable matter. One particular species of fruit, the “wolf apple (Solanum lycocarpum) is named because maned wolves like to eat it. In captivity, these animals have been fed like normal canids and then have developed bladder stones. Their bodies simply cannot metabolize such high protein diets.
Even more strangely, their urine smells like marijuana. Their urine contains a pyrazine, which also occurs in marijuana. It is possible that their urine gets this distinctive odor from the pyrazine.
The warrah’s only living relative is much stranger than it was!
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Speaking of South American wolves.
