About Adolf Hitler, dogs and being a scary person

My objection is not based on history but on the detailed DNA analysis of dog breeds performed in this century. National Geographic published the best popular article on the subject about two years ago, but URLs to more scholarly reports have been posted on SciForums. Reconstructing the transition of wolf to dog, determining whether it happened in one place or many and at one time or many, and tracing the lineage of the different breeds since the transition were the primary purposes of the project. The dogs' DNA was carefully sifted for the genetic markers of the various wolf populations, and the markers of one and only one population were found throughout the entire species: the central Chinese wolf pack.

Of course dogs have occasionally interbred with wolves (actually both members of the same species as I described previously) -- as well as coyotes and jackals (different species of the same genus) -- throughout their history. But there is no evidence in the DNA of any breed of consistent contamination with the genetic markers of other wolf populations. The findings do not support the theory that this was ever more than accidental "mis-mating," to use the breeders' term, much less deliberate hybridization to reintroduce the very traits that humans have spent more than ten thousand years carefully culling from the gene pool.

There are many breeds with "wolflike" appearance and behavior to match the shepherds, particularly the Arctic working breeds. We must keep in mind the revelations of the last few years that stood centuries of wisdom on its head: there is really very little difference between wolves and dogs, and the dog breeds we have created differ more from each other than the dog does from the wolf. Almost every lupine trait that you might want to select for in a dog can be gotten from the domestic gene pool by patient selection.

There are three significant differences between the dog and the wolf, all of which bear directly on the dog's fitness for human companionship.

1. Dogs have smaller brains. This is consistent with the diet of a scavenger rather than a hunter. A larger brain requires too much protein. For thousands of years humans needed dogs that could subsist on a diet much like ours, which the dogs could get by keeping the campgrounds clear of garbage.

2. Dogs don't have the blade-shaped teeth between the molars and the canines (sorry I don't know remember what dentists call them) that wolves have. Their molars are shaped for grinding food presented in manageable pieces, not for quickly ripping the flesh off of a fresh kill before the hyenas and vultures arrive. Again, dogs are poorly equipped to subsist as hunters, but well equipped to eat our food.

3. Dogs are instinctively inclined to accept humans as pack leaders. Wolves are not. Wolf pups raised in captivity are not as trustworthy, statistically, as dogs, even though many captive wolves have indeed made fine pets.

These are the characteristics that could be brought back into the domestic gene pool by irresponsibly cross-breeding the descendants of the wolves who chose to live among humans with their distant cousins who decided to remain in the wild. There is no sensible reason for wanting these traits in a domestic animal, no matter how macho, nefarious, or anti-social the duties he is expected to perform.

As a dog breeder I'm quite familiar with all of our guild's dirty little secrets. We don't share them with outsiders.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

There is no IEEE, AMA, or Bar Association to maintain standards for dog books. The AKC and its counterparts in other countries are better than nothing but that's about all I can say on their behalf.

Yes they will. And virtually all pharaoh hound enthusiasts will tell you that their dogs are descended from the identical dogs depicted in the art of ancient Egypt. The DNA tests prove otherwise. The breed had apparently been extinct for ages. Sometime in the last two or three hundred years a group of breeders managed to crossbreed the many remaining breeds of sighthounds and succeeded in recreating the image -- but not the DNA. The genome of the pharaoh hound is as new as that of the Labrador retriever, which is to say: as new as the geographic name "Labrador." Pharaoh breeders are not lying, they believe what they are saying, and I do not for a moment doubt the honesty of shepherd breeders either. All good legends seem so obviously truthful that no one thinks to question them.

Yes, you've got me on that one. I was being facetious in the middle of a dissertation in which I meant to be taken seriously. Sorry for that. All dogs are equally distant from the wolf. The fact that some breeds were developed earlier than others does not mean that their descendants eight thousand years later are somehow more closely related to their ancestors.

We breeders of small dogs have to use dirty tricks to hold our own against the big guys.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

You're right again. This time I was merely using the imprecise language that is in vogue colloquially. We all talk about the "alpha gene" as though it were a single gene. Obviously if that were true each dog would be either an alpha or one who unquestioningly follows the alpha. Whereas each individual falls somewhere on a spectrum that could more appropriately be labelled alpha-to-omega. Lhasa Apsos tend to fall more toward the alpha end; even our females are likely to walk into a park and go try to hump the biggest spike-collared stud dog they can find. We don't take them to leash-free parks.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

Maltese -- the lap dogs of the Roman empresses -- are quite the opposite and will run at the rear of any pack if there are no humans handy to hang out with.

Yes, and that does not include having a brain larger than its diet can support, having teeth also unsuited to that diet, and, worst of all, not naturally regarding humans as its leaders. Those are the traits that would have been acquired by hybridizing with wolves, and none of those would be remotely suitable for military duty.

I'd venture that 95 percent of the German shepherds in this country are pets, not guard dogs. They have to be unfailingly gentle with children and other pets, a behavior that is nearly always found in herding dogs who have to be gentle but protective of their charges.

Dogs have a huge number of chromosomes compared to humans, and it's pretty easy to bring out traits that have been suppressed for a hundred years. The original herding instinct of the German shepherd is still there after all this time and modern breeders select for it. Those who think they're still in the Kaiser's army are easy to spot as puppies and are happily snapped up by the people who want guard dogs, but they and their owners are today a minority.

Nonetheless your remarks about the AKC not being in touch with reality are quite accurate. We don't show our Lhasa Apsos because we're trying to tame that uncivilized behavior that's a throwback to their unsupervised guard dog ancestors. (Notwithstanding the tales with which I've regaled you of some of their hard-headed antics and a few brawls worthy of an Irish wedding.) We think that selecting for that is more important than, for example, not having beautiful blue eyes or one speck of pink nose leather, which disqualifies them from the ring. The fact that the AKC even recognizes the shar-pei, a decrepit inbred population with a frightening taste for small humans, is deplorable.

Yes they are. I did not say that they are docile and patient. I said that they were docile and patient two thousand years ago when the Romans first developed them (or perhaps discovered them among the neighboring Alpine Germanic tribes). The fact that such a sweet dog, who would be a perfect pet for people with older children, has been turned into a monster dog is a damn shame.

People who have a legitimate need for man-eating guard animals should just get wolves. Cougars and hyenas have also been tamed well enough for this job, although one might run into a problem with the licensing authorities in this effort.

People who want dogs for fighting and killing other animals should be rounded up and thrown into a pit full of wolves, cougars, or hyenas. Or perhaps a hundred rambunctious Lhasa Apsos who think they're still guarding the Dalai Lama's priceless treasures.

 

Much of what you say is thought-provoking and you've done a good job of finding the lapses in my writing style. I hope you're a professional editor.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

Of course you're right about wolves, in principle. Still, wolves are the same pack animals that dogs are and they are fiercely loyal to their pack. A domesticated wolf would probably be as selflessly and bravely devoted to the defense of his human pack mates as a dog, but you're right that there's no reason to suspect he would as good, much less better, than the breeds bred and trained for guard duty. The premise (which you articulately argue against further down) that wolves are on the average slightly more intelligent than dogs might give them a slight advantage, but who knows.

Hmm. I've read in several places that they were originally draft animals. Large dogs were often used throughout history where a goat or an ass might have been just as well suited for the job if they were available and already domesticated in the region in question -- such as North America, where the Indians used dogs to haul travoises. The rottweiler story could just be one of those legends that we've both become wary of. You'd think that the meticulously bureaucratic Romans would have records of their work with rottweilers, perhaps it will turn up (or has).

Now you're engaging in the hyperbole that you've caught me on. Lap dogs have been in demand since people have existed who lived lives in which lap dogs had a place. Such people have existed since the earliest days of civilization. The digest of the DNA research I read specifically named the Lhasa Apso, the shi zi (shih-tzu in 19th century spelling), and the Pekinese, as three of earliest breeds created around 6,000BCE. This corresponds to the time when the first cities were about a thousand years old and had enough merchants, artists, teachers, and bureaucrats to support a market in small dogs whose only job was companionship. The Maltese is well documented in ancient European history as the lap dog of the aristocracy, although there's no proof that it actually originated in Malta. The Aztecs already had their little chihuahuas when the Europeans invaded Aztlán, and chihuahua DNA has been proven to be of relatively recent Chinese vintage, descended neither from the dogs brought by the second wave of Asian migrants in 4,000BCE, who, unlike the first wave, already had dogs when they departed, nor from a domestication of native North American wolves that never occurred. This leaves a big mystery about pre-Columbian contact between Chinese explorers and the Indians, but it proves that the desire for small companion dogs was fairly universal in human civilizations. (And no, I've never heard of evidence being found that they were bred for sacrifice.)

I didn't mean to imply anything different. All dog people know that. We don't want pitbulls in our neighborhoods because they go around killing our dogs and cats, not our children.

Interesting. You seem to know what you're talking about. The scuttlebutt I've heard is that they were relatively recently (admittedly, in China that could mean a thousand years) bred down from chows, who as you say are one of the least reliable companion breeds in the world. That of course doesn't really conflict with your version of their history.

You don't have to tell me that. We live with a pack of small dogs and a bunch of parrots and other tasty little birds out in the forest with the bears and cougars. We have a 90-lb Anatolian Guardian who keeps everyone safe. Archeology shows that they've been protecting livestock in the Middle East for at least 4,000 years. They're purely guardians, not herding dogs. In Africa they've been breeding them a little larger and using them as a Greenpeace-approved way of keeping farmers from having to kill lions by simply driving them off. In the U.S. they've proven themselves against wolves, coyotes, boars, bears, and cougars. Yet they're as gentle as a lamb with humans and the rest of their pack. One of our less civilized Lhasas kept attacking her and after a couple of years of this she finally picked her up in her mouth and tossed her across the room, doing a bit of damage, but that just proves how far they have to be pushed to become aggressive.

I've never heard the term before but it's a good one. In the 1960s and 1970s, when Americans began having smaller (or no) families and moving into tiny apartments, Lhasa Apsos became very sought-after because of their solitude-tolerance and relatively inactive nature. The puppy mill farmers got hold of the breed and ruined it. There was one year in the mid-1980s when more Americans were bitten by Lhasa Apsos than any other breed. We've been working diligentlly for fifteen years and about four generations, with a "virtual kennel" that kept the good bloodlines pure, to weed out those throwback traits and turn them back into dogs that would have been welcome in a community of Buddhists.

A huge proportion of the brain cells are devoted to controlling the body and its functions, so what we think of as "raw intelligence," especially in animals with much lower IQs than ours, is contained in a relatively small volume of the brain. I'm told by zoologists who know more about this than I do that the amount of brain cells required to exhibit what we think of as intelligence is just as proportional to overall size as the rest of the brain. I don't understand it but I believe it. Our African Grey parrot, with a brain the size of a walnut, is the most intelligent animal I've ever met, certainly a better problem solver and more curious than a few humans I've known.

Dogs were hunters only during the first two or three thousand years of our relationship with them. Even then, one of the things that attracted the particular individuals who came into our camps was the bounty of garbage on the ground. The animals who had a predilection for scavenging selected themselves out of the pack, and the dedicated hunters stayed aloof. Once humans and their dogs erected permanent settlements, discovered agriculture, and began to breed prolifically, not to mention becoming considerably less active, our diets became less protein-intensive. Throughout the history of civilization I think it's safe to say that the periods when meat was something of a luxury far outnumber the ones in which everyone feasted on flesh. Even as recently as the Dark Ages, when Europe descended into unspeakable squalor and the concept of public health was unknown, dogs were kept around as much to cleanse the floors and the streets of garbage as they were to control vermin, a job traditionally pre-empted in cities by cats. Dogs have been living on a lower-protein diet than wolves for many millennia.

I've got no problem with that. Our one Maltese is almost as clever as the parrots, but our entire pack of Lhasa Apsos don't have ten IQ points total. You'll never see one trained to do tricks.

I'll have to concede to your experience there. I've never had the pleasure of looking into the mouth of a wolf. I just saw the photographs in the article.

I went into that in my original post. You may poke holes in the arguments, but for what they're worth they're based on the need for dogs to be content to live on a scavenger's diet rather than a hunters, and to instinctively accept the authority of humans.

It takes a great many generations to change the shape of teeth, more even than bones. Longer than the two or three hundred year history of the dogo argentino.

I don't disagree that there has been some interbreeding. I'm merely parroting to you what I read in the summary of the research: There is no statistically significant vector of the genetic markers of any wolf population except central China in any breed of dog that was studied. Since it would obviously have been impossible to prove or disprove interbreeding with wolves in the Chinese breeds, the possibility was exhaustively explored in the European breeds. They not only expected to find the evidence because of all these legends, but they also knew that their research would be challenged by certain European dog fanciers who are convinced that their dogs have more wolf blood than others. The research simply did not support that hypothesis. I don't know what else to say. I'm no geneticist, perhaps there were huge errors in the research methods that will come to light. I'm just telling you what the accepted wisdom among zoologists is today, and it has more going for it than the largely oral history handed down by dog breeders and embellished with every retelling, made more believable by the occasional instance of actual hybridization.

Yes, your scenario makes sense. Lhasa Apsos were almost certainly bred originally to be pets, and it wasn't until about 1,000CE that they appeared in Tibet. At that point the monks, who might have brought them over to be companions may have discovered that the hard-headed personality they were permitted to develop would be handy as a burglar alarm. I doubt that pest control was ever in their job description because their only keen sense is hearing. They have very poor noses compared to most dogs and their eyesight would qualify as legally blind in most countries. That makes them good watchdogs and not much else.

I don't have any real argument with most of what you say, except for the few specifics where I believe I happen to have more information and the occasional point of logic. You've corrected my inaccuracies and disabused me of some off-base assumptions. Your skeptcisim of the DNA research is nothing improper. These days a lot of bad science has been performed in the cause of nefarious governments and corporations. It's hard to trust scientists any more.

 

No. The first dogs were domesticated (actually it was voluntary, but that's a topic covered at great length on other threads) in what is now China. That was one of the major findings of the DNA analysis. That gene pool of wolves is still intact in China because the expansion of human settlements broke them up into non-contiguous populations. To repeat for the third time: there is no statistically significant incidence of the genetic markers of wolf populations from any other area in today's dogs.

Since then it was the dogs who spread more or less freely throughout the world, as the companions of human migrants and as trade goods, while the wolves were gradually reduced to staying within specific regions.

Many breeds (not "many species," the single species Canis familiaris includes all dogs and all wolves and possibly dingoes too) were indeed bred in other areas, particularly in the areas where other civilizations sprang up or spread out to: Egypt, Mesopotamia, later the Caucasus and still later Europe. But they were all descended from that original domesticated wolf pack in east-central Asia, not from the local feral canines except, as no one disputes, the accidental result of inter-species dating.

I don't see any reason to accuse scientists of not understanding the process they defined: speciation. It was quite a stroke of iconoclasm to break with thousands of years of orthodoxy and declare that wolves and dogs are a single species because their DNA is more closely related than that of a man from Iceland and a man from Borneo. We can hardly complain about clearing that up. I've always wondered how a new species could have developed in less than 20,000 years and the final answer is that it didn't.

The scientists do a proper job of sub-speciation too. Several sub-species of Canis lupus are defined where the populations have been separated for thousands of years. The dog is now classified as subspecies Canis lupus familiaris.

What I do have a problem with is the current chaos in the redefinition of genus, which is also a byproduct of DNA analysis having become relatively cheap and fast. How can they change their minds and tell us that housecats and ocelots belong in two different genera, when people have been hybridizing them for at least twenty years and are now into the second or third generation of ocicats? The definition of "genus" used to be a group of species that could interbreed and have live, healthy offspring, even though under normal circumstances in the wild they might not choose to do so.

We also breed birds and have learned that captive breeding programs have succeeded in producing hybrids of the blue and gold macaw (genus Ara) with the gigantic hyacinth macaw (genus Anodorhynchus). It seems to me that it's time to reclassify the big guy but I don't see any ornithologists taking the initiative to do that.

I can tell that you live in a country with no bears. Which is sad because second to the dog, the bear is probably the most important animal archetype and occurs in the dreams, legends, and art of all cultures. You would not run off a bear with your foot-stomping technique. The way to survive an encounter with a bear who isn't too hungry is to fall to the ground and grovel; they really enjoy respect. (Forest rangers give this advice to inexperienced hikers, although if you see them from far enough off you might drive them away by simply turning up the volume on your boom box.) If it's a polar bear, just forget it and say your prayers.