Owning Pets

Bear in mind that the two most common species of companion animals, dogs and cats, domesticated themselves.

Wolves have a psychology very similar to ours, pack-social hunters, but like their close cousins the coyotes and jackals they also have a strong scavenging instinct. About fifteen thousand years ago in central China, a few of the more gregarious, adventurous, opportunistic individuals sidled into our camp after noticing our habit of leaving perfectly good food lying on the ground. The ones who found this to be a sweet deal and could resist the temptation to eat the babies were warily welcomed because garbage was becoming a bit of a problem. Their hunting skills also turned out to be complementary to ours (faster running and more sensitive noses vs. more elaborate planning and those amazing pointy sticks), and together we were able to bring home much more meat than either species could do separately. Their night vision kept the camp safe, they were great bed-mates in cold weather, and our kids entertained each other to the great relief of the adults. Talk about symbiosis!

All dogs are descended from that one pack of wolves. They have become a distinct subspecies, Canis lupus familiaris, distinguished by smaller brains (adaptation to a less carnivorous diet), teeth that are not quite as well suited for tearing flesh, and an immensely more gregarious nature that even welcomes pack-mates of other species. Large dogs occasionally interbreed with wolves, and even with coyotes, a different species.

Cats, on the other hand, are not very much like us. They're solitary hunters, not social by instinct. About seven thousand years ago when advances in agricultural technology in Egypt gave rise to granaries, the local cats couldn't help noticing the rodents who were munching on that bounty of grain. They followed them in and for purely selfish motives began providing a valuable service to us. People began attracting cats to their towns, leaving out water and extra food, letting them sleep indoors, and helping take care of their lovable little babies. To this day cats are more independent than dogs, and are more likely to be earning their keep by hunting rodents.

This is another case of symbiosis. Cats have not been selectively bred for as long as dogs so they have not become a distinct subspecies of Felis sylvestris libicus. All domestic cats are descended from the Egyptian population, although there are other subspecies of Felis sylvestris on other continents (even in Scotland), and domestic cats interbreed with them, muddying up the gene pool.

I just did, but it was inspired by your post so you get the credit.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

Yes, we breed Lhasa Apsos (one of the very oldest breeds and one that was, apparently, specifically bred to clean up garbage, obviously not for hunting), but it's the AKC that we want to take the stick to. You can thank them for hip dysplasia, pancreas failure, and large American breeds with a life expectancy of seven years. The AKC rewards breeding for conformation to show standards rather than health and temperament, and they will cheerfully register a litter that is the result of ten generations of inbreeding. We gave up on the AKC years ago and we've become legendary for our happy, healthy dogs who don't always look exactly like the ones in the picture books.

Depends on what you want. The breeds have certain traits and when you get a mixed breed you don't know which of those traits you're getting. Lhasa Apsos, for example, are aloof and inactive but have an unerring ability to tell you whether you should allow the person at the door to come in. Spaniels aren't happy unless they're in a group of twenty. Border collies will herd your children into a corner of the yard. A retriever will always stand in front of you handing you a ball to throw. Maltese will run you ragged teaching them new tricks. A French bulldog will insist on going everywhere with you but not doing anything once he gets there. Our Anatolian was such a faithful livestock guardian that the deer jumped into our yard at night for protection from the bears and cougars.

You mix these instincts up in a mongrel and you have no idea how that dog will behave when he grows up.

An illustrative example. Just how far would you have to travel to find a natural environment in which it would thrive?

 

We know this about dogs because prior to the Neolithic Era humans didn't have the technology and ability to domesticate predatory species. There is some evidence of Mesolithic tribes possibly experimenting with the domestication of herbivores--pastoral nomadism. But the paradigm shift that defined the Neolithic was the Agricultural Revolution: the cultivation of plants and the domestication of animals, which made the building of permanent settlements both possible and necessary. This began around 9000BCE, several millennia after the self-domestication of wolves.

I'll leave the detailed history of cats to a cat person.

Considering that we have selectively bred ourselves, your argument is a little weak. DNA analysis allows us to avoid having children with dire conditions. And before we knew about genetics we simply chose mates with the characteristics we wanted to propagate in the tribe.

Q, why do you so readily veer off into asshole behavior when everyone around you is being polite and non-confrontational? Too much caffeine? Maybe you don't have a pet to trigger some soothing endorphins? Why do you have to call something "nonsense" that has already been elaborated in this very thread? It makes you sound like cranky old Baron Max, with your own thread on the Moderators' board.

If you disagree with something, please be a proper scientist and say why, so the discussion can move forward. And dial back the hyperbolic and inflammatory language. This is a place of science so we're free to talk that way about religion, but not much of anything else.

Dogs are a pack-social species. Their instinct is to stay with their pack, not to go off on their own for very long. If you earn the status of alpha of the pack by bringing home a dead pig, several dead chickens and a big chunk of a dead cow every month for everyone to share, you've gone a long way toward earning their loyalty. If you also treat them with affection and return their loyalty, you've got it made. Dogs are quite capable of love and if they receive it they'll return it. That is their big attraction, in an era when the demand for livestock protection, game retrieval and detritus removal by alimentation has dropped off dramatically.

But in addition, we've changed the world. There isn't as much room for hunters as there used to be. Wolves were the most successful predators in history and populated every continent except Australia and Antarctica, but now they're extinct in many places.

The rain forest is vanishing and captive breeding is the salvation of many species of birds. There are probably more hyacinthine macaws (the huge long-tailed purple parrot that is the poster child for the endangered species movement) in North American living rooms than in South American jungles. The same is undoubtedly true of the European polecat in its increasingly urbanized homeland--the animal better known as the ferret.

That's not what "companionship" means--at least not all of it. You have a qualitatively different relationship with a dog than you have with a human. They are extremely empathetic and know exactly how you feel when you're able to hide it from your family and friends--and even from yourself. (Some of that may be due to pheromones of course; they have a million times as many receptors as we do.) They love you even when you don't love yourself, and they are far more forgiving than most people can be. You can't lie to a dog and they don't lie to you. They remind you to laugh more, cry more and play more, and give you the simplicity and clarity to figure out what things are really important. All they ask in return is love, food, kindness, and not to be left all alone very often (except Lhasa Apsos, which are dogs for cat lovers). Such a bargain.