Why dogs like to roll in shit and carcasses?

Dummy,

Yes.

Just goes to show that you're talking out of your ass then.
Just because you don't know what you're talking about, doesn't mean that others don't know.
People have stated repeatedly having seen dogs roll in dead, rotting things.
So.
Just go away.
You've admitted to knowing nothing about the subject at hand.
Goodbye.

Do you know how retarded you sound everytime you use the royal 'we'?

Anyway. I like how you're trying to weasel out of your argument now.
Trying to drop all mention of all the rolling behavior in favor of the one specific type of rolling behavior that accords with your idiotic theory.
That's called bad science, in case you didn't know.
Jerk-off.

Been spending a lot of time googling, eh?
Bet you're about ready to start up some wikipedia pages about dogs rolling in shit for camoflauge, aren't you?

You're such an idiot.

 

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Yes Invert, when I come home at night, I analyze data with the t.v. on, watching the news, and science and nature channels, and am always on the computer researching. Although Google is not the only search engine that I use. Sometimes I get befor luck with Vivismo because it categorizes. Google often returns too many results that are much too time-consuming to sift through.

Hhere's another interesting view that I just came across:

"In the answer to the original question [Why do wolves scent roll] is to do with wolves' desire to possess things. Wolves are born to possess; quoting from our previous article on wolf aggression: "How a wolf gains and maintains its rank within the hierarchy is a whole subject on its own but one of the major factors is the extent to which a particular animal can claim and control access to resources. The more control it has and the more it can keep for itself the more important it is - and 'importance' is obviously a key concept in rank and status. Wolves are born to possess. Anything which is of use or even just of interest is a desirable item to them and they will do their best to take possession of it and keep it…. to possess something is to be important, to investigate and understand it is to be even more important".

To a wolf, a smell is a fascinating and possessible - even beautiful - item; the equivalent to us of a beautiful painting or picture. The information it may contain is also important and ownership of that information confers importance upon the bearer. But the problem is that, unlike a material object such as a rotting, dead bird, they can't physically pick up a smell so how can they take it away ?

Simple! Roll in it.

Wolves and dogs are often seen to roll specific areas of themselves in smelly stuff and it is possible that they are accentuating the scent highlights of parts of their bodies as part of their status body language - or, in this case, scent language.

So, the answer to the question "why do they roll in smelly stuff?" is twofold. Firstly, the consequence of it is that they get to 'possess' it because they a) like it - it's a beautiful thing to them and b) think it important to own. Secondly, the function (evolutionary outcome) is that the scent may inform other pack members of new game or intruders in their territory or it may indeed conceal their own odour whilst hunting and thus improve their survival prospects - although the wolf is probably not at all consciously aware of any of these particular factors." http://www.anglianwolf.com/d_front_page/articles/general/scentrolling/scentrolling.htm

 

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"Scent-rolling is a peculiarity of canids which is thought to be a means of bringing information about interesting scents back to conspecifics which may not have accompanied the animal to the oderiferous site. All canids scent-roll to some degree: the animal first puts its nose in the smell and then slips down onto one shoulder, sliding first one flank through the smell and then the other, pausing in the middle to vigorously rub its back into the scent. Given the usual pattern of social sniffing, i.e., starting at the head and moving down the flank to the tail, a greeting animal would get a good sniff of everything the other animal had rolled in on its way from one end to the other." http://www.soappuppy.com/wolf/behaviour.html

 

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"Scent rolling is a behavior we believe is a form of non-inciteful communication. Basically, they roll in something stinky so they can bring that smell back to the rest of the pack so they can 'tell' everybody what they found."

 

It seems there is another forum going on about this subject at http://www.petoftheday.com/talk/showthread.php?p=1270313

"When I worked at Wolf Park during my college days, we were told that the wolves do this type of behavior in order to bring information back to the pack. It is called "scent rolling". It's also not only limited to foul smelling odors. They tried different types of scents on the ground in the enclosure, and the wolves rolled on all of them!"

"Rolling in foul-smelling scent is another olfactory joy of the dogs. "Scent rolling is an esthetic thing." Dogs will roll in raunchy odors just so they can wear a different and exciting smell. It brings attention to them selves. It's like us wearing some new clothes."

 

The problem, Valich, is that you come across as if you believe yourself to be speaking God's Own Truth.
But you're just talking shit.

Do you, or do you not, see how your authoritarian stance is detrimental to what you state as your passion for essential lifelong learning?

You act as though the world exists in a stark black and white fashion. You can learn something and that's that.
But that's not that.
Knowledge is theory.
Some areas of knowledge are on more solid ground than others, but all epistemological framework is inherently theoretical. It's an approximation. It's a best fit. It's a 'to be continued'.

This would be, in my opinion, the best thing that you could ever learn.
Every time you have run into problems, it is because you have gone off 'researching' and come back with the fruits of your research and proclaimed to be the authority or speaking for the authority. But you always get it wrong.

Hell.
Look.
Now you're starting to understand that this rolling behavior is more complicated than you once claimed. Look at the recent fruits of your labors.
They speak of other motivations behind the behavior than the one which you tried to force down our throats as the end all and be all.
The scientific consensus.

Do you realize that these last posts you have made give credence to statements which we have made against you earlier in this thread?
And, do you realize, that they have just as little authority behind them as any other?

It's all theory.
It's all conjecture.
There is no way of determining why this behavior exists.
There can only be models.

Is it possible that you will ever come to understand this?
If you do, I will stop calling you a fool.
Until then.
You're a fool.

 

And, it would also help if you apologize.

 

There seems to be a lot of varying views. What are you suggesting that I apologize for? There is no decisive view on this matter but I'm coming across a lot of other different plausible assumptions. In any case, we do know that it is an ancestral trait passed down as either a shared primitive characteristic or a shared derived characteristic.

"I think you're right in that this is an evolutionary adaptation, [becaues] wild canids partake in the same behvior. In "Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation" Edited by David Mech and Luigi Boitani there is a mention of "Scent Rolling" and I'll pariphrase it here. I think it'll help. They mention four reasons wild canids (especially wolves) might roll in the stink.

1) Familiarization with novel odors or changes in odors (Fox 1971a; Ryon et al 1896).

2) Strong attraction or aversion to particular odors (Ryon et al. 1986).

3) Concealing one's own scent with something more pungent (Zimmen 1981). (This seems the most plausible to me.)

4) making oneself more attractive by applying a novel odor (Fox 1971a).

There is also mention of female African wild dogs rolling in the urine of males whose packs they are trying to join. Presumably this would make them more familiar smelling and thus more easily accepted by the pack (Frame et al. 1979)." http://dhanks.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_dhanks_archive.html

 

For one thing, you could start by apologizing for editing those quotes you made back at the start of the thread. You know, the ones where you edited out the parts that said 'thought' and stuff like that? That was where you took a turn towards the vile in your lust for being seen as a scientific authority.

After that, you could apologize for being such an ass while demanding that there was only one answer to the question and that is camoflauge. You have a habit of doing this. Stating things as fact, and then when shown that you're being an idiot, you simply pretend that it never happened.


You're not going to apologize though, are you?
You're going to play the same stupid game you always play.
A pity for you, really. If you would only realize how much your hampering your ability to learn with this 'scientific fact' nonsense.

But, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

Drink or not.
Your choice.

 

"One early theory was the 'scent rolling' was used to camouflage the wolf's
smell during hunting. Most of what they roll in smells much stronger than they do when clean, and in the wild, anything "out of place" like running moose poop smell would cause prey animals to be on the alert.

I have also seen wolves roll in stuff they obviously didn't want to. I
think it's a reflexive action, sort of like regurgitating food for pups.
They don't seem to enjoy it, but also don't seem to be able to avoid it when
presented with the right stimulus."

"Rank order is not always linear and may be somewhat flexible in certain circumstances. Puppies and yearlings, for example, have a rank order, but this order may change from month to month, week to week, or even from day to day in the case of young puppies. (The rank order for adult wolves is usually more stable.) "Playing" wolves, who are engaging in behaviors such as chasing and running for fun, may "switch" rank temporarily, and a lower-ranking wolf will be allowed to mock-dominate a higher-ranking one. Some rank orders may be circular, with wolf A dominating wolf B who dominates wolf C who dominates wolf A, but this is rarely permanent. Also, low-ranking wolves of one gender may be able to dominate high-ranking wolves of the other, without changing their rank in the social order of their respective sex."

"Hvis det er noen trøst, så elsker de fleste hunder å spise menneskeavføring, og nesten alle ruller seg i det. Denne rullingen kalles "scent rolling" (duft rulling) og er en av de atferder vi ikke vet noe sikkert om. Ulver gjør det, og hunder gjør det, på nesten alle sterke og uvanlige dufter, men vi har ikke klart å finne ut HVA de egentlig gjør. Hva som er hensikten med denne atferden. Ta med duften tilbake til flokken å si: "Se hva jeg fant" - kanskje? Kamuflere sin egen lukt i jaktøyemed - kanskje? Vi vet rett og slett ikke. Jeg kan få alle ulver til å utføre denne atferden ved å dryppe en dråpe parfyme eller gni litt deodorant på bakken. Det behøver altså ikke være, for oss "vond" lukt, bare sterkt eller uvanlig."

I thought the last article was in German but I can't translate. Maybe someone else can.

This is all I could find on the internet and I ordered a thesis and two articles on the subject through our ILL.

My Elkhounds always are most anxious to roll in anything right after I give them a bath. This leads me to believe that they are persistently anxious to hide their own smell after all the other smells have benn removed. There's no doubt that this is an inherited instinctive behavior passed down from ancestral wolves (Canidae from Caniformia from Miacids and even possibly from dinosaurs). Still, the question is why? I do think that they are doing this to either hide their behavior or to mix it with a variety of smells. As I said, my dogs seem to be the most anxious to do this as soon as they come out of the bath tub - after I dry them off. I have to wait a few hours before I let them outside, else they'll roll in anything. Then, after time goes by, this urge subsides.

 

You misunderstand something vital, Valich.
Even if your camoflauge theory were true, your elkhounds wouldn't roll in scents to camoflauge themselves. They would do it because they enjoy it. Because their instincts demand it of them. They have no conscious thought of 'camoflauge' (or any of the other more likely motives).

 

An added consideration for rolling after bathing is dirt baths. Many animals roll in dirt and mud to remove parasites. Wet fur might be a stimulus to roll in order to dry the fur.

 

Invert: I'd have to look back to see if what I edited out was my own quote or from another source, but either way, you are referring to the above repost where you quote: "it is thought that this is an ancestral trait." Again, I clarify this post using my own words to clearly state that "it IS an ancestral trait." So why would you expect me to apoligize for clarifying my position???

Okay. I apologize for the apparent forcefulness in my initial posts that seem to imply that there was only one explanation. As I said yesterday - not today. Yesterday I replied to Roman's lengthy posting complementing him for it and I did the same today. Read my above reply's to Roman's post where I respond to him by saying: "Roman: That's a good point." 7 pages long from the initial posting and Roman finally does come through with a possible alternative explanation. I was not aware of this explanation and I appreciate Roman's respectable posting. I do not appreciate your nonsense, belittlement, and destructive useless condescending remarks, which you always have a nasty bad habit of doing. What the hell is your problem that you have to always resort to uncivilized rhetoric on a science forum. Sometimes you can post a good post, yet your postings always seem disintegrate into condescending sewer language.

Invert: You have an intelligent brain that can be chanelled to post respectable, insightful and intellectually helping and guiding replies. But equally, you have this dark that seems to always show through more than the good.

 

It is a shared derived or shared primitive allelomimetic pack behavior. Primitive means that it was present in a common ancestor. Derived means that it was not present in a common ancestor. Allelomimetic means that it was originally learned from watching another do it. Those that did this were most likely more successful in the hunt and survived better to breed, hence evolution of an ancestral trait.

My neighbor has a stable with two horses and a dog that is half wolf. I watched it today rolling around in the dung, enjoying every moment of it to the point where she stopped and just stayed there, belly up, lying on her back on top the dung, savoring the moment. There is no pack. She seldom plays with my dog and never leaves the stable. Clearly the is an inherited behavior. The question is why is first arose. What made this behavior give the species such an advantage so that the trait became established and passed on as a genetic instinct.

 

Yes. But you're the one who mentioned bathing.
The two stimuli merge.

Seriously.
Is your brain broken?
You posted a whole list of quotes that all stated, in black and white terms, that rolling in shit and carcasses was about camoflauge. I went to the links you provided and found that not only did you edit the quotes to remove all mention of words such as 'thought', but these sources were just stupid forums and pet advice web sites. None of them had a shred of credibility yet you edited them and presented them as if they were.

Need I link you to the post?

[post=1179371]Link to lies[/post].

This is another issue altogether.
What you did here was state something true: That this is an inherited trait. And then tack onto that something that is not true: That the dog's ancestors used this as camoflauge.

I didn't ask you to apologize for this in particular. It's just a point to argue over.
The problem being that you generally refuse to argue. You instead insist on your point being right and everyone else wrong.
You insist that you are the authority.
You are not.

Imply?
Hardly.
You stated it quite clearly. For it to qualify for 'imply' and also for 'apparent' you would have to be a bit less authoritative in your statements. You stated quite bluntly that you are right and everyone else is wrong. Your entire contribution to this thread up until the past few posts has been from an authoritarian stance with not a shred of argument to back up your stance.

However, that aside, I accept your apology and commend you for making this first step.
I hope that you bear this in mind in the future. You might be able to avoid future confrontations if you stay away from the arguments from authority.

And this shows the level of commitment you have to the discussion.
Roman repeated things that were said time and time again in this thread.
It's nobody's fault but yours that you refused to read the thread. You were so sure that you were right and everyone else was wrong that you wouldn't even condescend to read anyone else's post.

Useless?
Hardly.
You finally got the message.
You were the one to resort to vile behavior first in this thread, Valich. You lied. My disdain for you only grew as a result of your tampering with the quotes.
I have no regrets for any of the words I've said to you.
And I'll say them again should the need arise.

As I've said before, profanity has nothing to do with anything. I can swear and insult til the cows come home and this won't detract from the content of my posting.
It's your problem that your mind turns off at certain stimuli.
Not mine.

Why should I show respect to someone I don't respect?
I don't respect you, Valich.
There are some few things about you that might merit respect, but they are outweighed by the things that I find disgusting about you.

When I insult you, it is to attempt to lead you away from your idiocy.
And look.
It works.
At last.

I can only hope that it sticks.

 

It is a shared derived or shared primitive allelomimetic pack behavior. Primitive means that it was present in a common ancestor. Derived means that it was not present in a common ancestor. Allelomimetic means that it was originally learned from watching another do it.

Those that did this were most likely more successful in the hunt and survived better to breed, hence the selection for this beneficial mutation. Another possibility is that it gave them an elevated hiearchy position in the pack (I doubt this) or that it gave them an advantage to attrack the female to breed (again, highly doubtful). So what other possible origin could it have had? Now it is just an unwanted vestigial trait in dogs.

Again, it would be interesting to know if foxes, coyotes and jackals do this too. I've never seen a dog or another Canidae roll in a carcass.

My dogs are anxious to do it more quickly after a bath so as to get a different smell, or hide or mix their own smell quickly. This only shows the intensity of the instinctive drive to do this behavior of hiding or mixing or acquiring a mixture of differnt scents as quickly as possible. But for what purpose? The answer cannot be found in domesticated dog behavior. It can only be found through observations in the wild or evidence from the Canidae ancestral past. What was the advantage of this mutation that allowed it to be so beneficial for survival?

 

I disagree.
By the way.
Do you think you're taking an authoritative stance once more?

Your loss.

I only insult those who merit it.
I can't help it that you merit insulting so often.
I am more than sure that I am not unique in your life. I am sure you are insulted quite often.

 

sorry invert but you seem to be contradicting yourself here

in extract 1 you reply to my comment that experts do not appear (due to lack of any good sources on this topic) to be much interested in this trait, with a protest that they should be interested.

Then you acknowledge (as did I) that you can't really do anything other than speculate with this apsect of behaviour and critisise Valich for attempting to state he has the answer as FACT. Which I agree is a nonsense given no one else KNOWS this fact and as a fact it cannot ever be known.

Even humans cannot ever really know why we do what we do, even with the power of introspection and language.

So which is it?
You acknowledge the answer can't be known hence not much point trying to FIND the answer, or the answer is Known and thus valich may or may not be correct?

Note, 'investigating' the answer with a view to finding the correct answer is not the same as speculating about the answer. No doubt behavioural experts have speculated (hence my vague sources) but can't go beyond that, so do not try. Which makes good sense.

Are you going to try to find the footprints of god knowing full well they do not exist?

 

Sigh.
I never said that the answer is known and thus Valich is wrong. I was chastising Valich for acting as though he knew the answer. For arguing from authority. For failing to, even once, provide a logical rationale for his pet theory.

My every post in this thread has been to demonstrate that this is all theory and that's all it can be.

I'm frankly amazed at how you managed to interpret that second quote as you did. I don't understand how you were capable of it. It seems quite clear to me.

I do believe that Valich's camoflauge theory is wrong. And the reasons for this belief have been given time and time again.

When one cannot absolutely prove or disprove a theory, one can only argue for the merits or dismerits of it. One can provide logic behind why any particular theory fits any particular phenomenon.

This is what we have all done in this thread. We've discussed, logically, why it is that dogs might express this rolling behavior. We've all, except Valich, decided that, for various reason, the camoflauge theory fails. It is the least likely scenario of all those listed.

Valich never once managed to put forward an argument for his theory. He's lazy. He simply stated that this is the scientific fact and that we're all stupid, argumentative, and wrong to even think otherwise.

He has finally managed to get it through his thick skull that there are other possibilities. He's gone out searching for them and cut and pasted them into the thread. So, he's made progress. Unfortunately, he seems utterly incapable of thinking for himself still. But, perhaps he's learning.
One step at a time.

And I never once stated that there is no point in trying to find an answer.
That's ridiculous. Defeatist.

You do realize that, in the end, absolutely no knowledge is absolutely justified? This is a 'fact' of science. We can never prove anything. We can only place theories up for inspection and see how well they fit.

Does this mean that there is no point to trying to learn anything about the world in which we live?
No.

Look at everything that science has accomplished despite its failure to justify its knowledge in absolute terms.

One merely has to recognize the tentative nature of our theoretical framework. This allows us to alter our theories as new information comes in.
Valich's flaw is that he holds the scientific framework as sancrosanct and holy. Untouchable. He believes that the answers are known and he can find them in research papers. He thinks that he can be the authority handing down decrees of right and wrong.

Perhaps this is a legacy of his 'english teacher' past. English is a constructed system and thus can be said, in many ways, to be composed of a stricter framework than science. Math is the same way. However, both systems have their own fuzzy ends.

Language is ambiguous. It is not purposefully created, but rather adaptively created over time. Blindly. English teachers fail to realize that temporary nature of language. They have a distaste for slang, but slang is the sign of language's life. English teachers would kill their language in order to know it. Dismember it. Freeze it. Make it a specimen.

As to math, Godel kinda tore that apart.

But, regardless of all this.
There is a point to learning.
Just that one must understand the nature of learning.

 

Invert: If anything you owe me an apology for your condescending insults and belittlement that you always seem to resort to at the end of a forum just to put other people down. Do you find enjoyment in this? It serves no useful purpose, stifles learning, and demotivates those of us who are trying to pursue scientific facts and truth. Further, I never read your's or anyone elses lengthy, taken-out-of-context, dissected cut-and-post replies where you then just go on to do nothing usefull and just continue to further cut the person down line-by-line. So what's the purpose in wasting your's and everybody else time by doing this? I have laid out all the views that I could find. Some of these are even contrary to my own, which you of course you are then so eager to jump on just to insult me further. And this is your usual inherent practice of perverted unscientific "sadism."

If you look over the first 5 or 6 pages of this forum, I think that - against all forms of criticism and some very bazaar ridiculous postings - I have authoritatively - Yes! I work in the field and consult with some highly prestigious world reknowned experts in this field, so I say "authoritatively" - established the fact that this is a:

Shared derived or shared primitive allelomimetic pack behavior (primitive means that it was present in a common ancestor: allelomimetic means that it was originally learned from watching another do it). Those that acquired this allelomimetic pack behavior were more likely to survive, breed and reproduce, hence evolution of an ancestral trait - the continuation of the trait - through a beneficial adaptation or Darwinian natural selection.

Roman's view on the middle of page six was the first post to add further substance, credence and better direction. He stated: "The caribou is out there, grazing. According to the camo theory, the entire world smells like rot, death, shit and despair. And by rolling in shit or dead animals, a dog can smell like everything else in a caribou's habitat....And the characterstic of all those places? It's not the overwhelming smell of rotting carcasses. It's the smell of shit....So I can see a dog rolling in cow dung to masquerade as a cow. Or at least blend into an environment already reeking of thousands of animals worth of shit....The only case I can see for scent camo is when hunting herd animals, which hang out around a lot of their own crap."

But he discredits the notion that Canidae (wolves) do the same thing by rolling in carcasses because this gives the smell of death: "Who's left? The one with the smart genes that figured out that the smell of carcass is associated with predators." Further, "rotting meat in the wild is rare." And so is the persistent smell of a carcass rare." I am unaware of a herd of elk or caribou staying away from a pile of bones

Do we know for a fact that wolves roll in carcasses? Or just shit?
Do we know if coyotes, foxes and jackals do this too?

This forum is now much more productive and fruitful compared to the first 5 1/2 pages because we are now all looking at this behavior as a being a beneficial "pack behavior," possibly to benefit the predator's ability to catch prey. But there are other competing views that we now need to look at:

1) A behavior to mask the Canidae's own scent from the prey.

2) Wolves do this type of behavior in order to bring information back to the pack. They roll in something so they can tell everybody what they have found. Scent-rolling is a peculiarity of canidae as a means of bringing information about the interesting scents back to conspecifics which may not have accompanied the animal to the oderiferous site. This hypothesis has merits in that it would give others in the pack information worth pursuing about a possible still existent food source, or the potential location of nearby prey.

3) Esthetics: To a wolf, a smell is a fascinating and even beautiful item; the equivalent to us of a beautiful painting or picture. The information it may contain is also important and ownership of that information confers importance upon the bearer. But the problem is that, unlike a material object such as a rotting, dead bird, they can't physically pick up a smell so how can they take it away? Simple! Roll in it. Wolves and dogs are often seen to roll specific areas of themselves in smelly stuff and it is possible that they are accentuating the scent highlights of parts of their bodies as part of their status body language - or, in this case, scent language."

4) As aa way of gaining statis in the pack to increase one's rank order by showing off and flaunting a greater variety of scents than the others. Thus proving to other pack-mates that he's the best at finding the prey?

Can someone translate this last quote?

Finally, we cannot know the full spectrum of what a Canidae wolf interprets from what it smells. We know that the olfactory sense of smell in wolves and dogs is somewhere between 1000 and possible even more than 10,000 times or more better than ours and that a very large percentage of the wolf's brain is devoted to analysing the information it gets from a smell. Their scent information is processed in the rhinencephalon located at the front of the brain and is much larger and much more developed than in humans. The neural activity that goes on in this region is activated whenever the Canidae species has to solve a problem; so you could say that they reason with their noses. In fact, wolves' sense of smell should be counted as a different sense from ours. Wolves see details in scents that have no equivalent for us in any other sense than our sight. Our perception of the world is much more centered around our sense of sight. By contrast, the information and sensory experience which a wolf gets from a smell is unimaginable and is central to its perception of the world. The olfactory sense of a wolf is a world of scent landscape full of patterns, hues, shadows, impressions and tons of information - a fraction of ours. To a wolf, the scent mark of another wolf conveys details about the age, sex, hierarchy status, health and fertility of the wolf which it left there. Thus, to a wolf, smells are a source of information for the predator-prey hunt, a source of important information about its own species, and a source of pleasure and fascination.