Roman, you got it right in your first long post above, but why do you think there is a difference between rolling and shit and rolling in carcasses?
Have you ever been to a place with a lot of large herbivores? I have. Seen cows in the Australian bush, caribou on the North Slope, buffalo in the taiga, farms, zoos.
And you know a 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.
That means the dogs could get that much closer to the prey before rushing out, even though most canines don't hunt like that.
Have you ever seen a canine hunt? They don't hunt like cougars or cats. They're runners. They run their prey down. Dogs don't need to camo themselves, as they're going to chasing their quarry for the next half mile.
Back to the difference between shit and a dead animal.
Have you ever smelled the dung of a large herbivore? Have you ever smelled the rot of a carcass?
Very different.
Would not a prey animal, especially one in a large herd, be far more suspicious of the smell of death, which is relatively rare, than then the smell of it's own feces?
And if animals only rolled in the shit of prey, camo theory would make sense. But dogs roll in road kill, dead salmon, all sorts of stuff. Stuff that doesn't camoflage them, but makes them stinkier and more noticable.
1. If it is a shit, it smells like shit.
2. A camo helps a dog (or you) because it covers the true identity of the hunter. It doesn't matter if it is shit, carcass or tree, as long as it doesn't smell like a hunter, it does its job.
Consider you are turkey hunting. It doesn't matter if you pretend to be a bush or a tree or a deer, as long as the turkey thinks you are not a danger to him.
You are thinking of going the extra mile and camoing the hunter in a way that could be attractive to the prey. But rolling in shit/carcasses doesn't necessery meant to do so...
Man, this thread got way too long...We should ask a dog...
Birds have bad smell, good sight. If you're a pussy hunter with a rifle, of course you hide like a little pussy cat. Dogs dont have to. They just runt he turkey down, pounce, and tear it open. Do you know anything about animal behavior?
Also, animals are extremely suspicious of the smell of death. Especially the dead of their own kind. Furthermore, carnivores can get a peculiar stink. They have a far different diet than their prey, and hence, different gut flora. They smell more like dead animal, as that's what they eat.
Furthermore, carcasses are rare. The smell of rotting meat in the wild is rare. Carrion has a lot of energy in it, it gets eaten up quick by scavengers. Animals aren't dumb. Do you know anything about animal behavior? If a prey animal smells walking death before getting jumped by a pack of wolves (nevermind the wolves have been tracking the caribou for many miles, and will now mercilessly run it down, and don't need to hide), do you think in the future they'll be suspicious of the scent?
If you were in a house, and every red triangle in it was electrocuted (camoflaging the electricity from you
), would you stop touching the red triangles? Or since the red triangles aren't electricity, you wouldn't learn that they hurt when you touch them.
so you are asking for something you know does not exist? Why?
you have already acknowledged we can never know for certainty anything regarding why animals do what they do. I imagine their reasonning comes from yrs of study of what can be observed re animal behaviour and then they just offer the most likely opinion based on what can be observed.
Perhaps you would like to give me evidence of the origin of life, rather than these educated opinions based on what has been observed since etc etc as an answer.
You know an animal rolling in shit can only have a few reasons for doing so
1) camoflage
2) story telling back at doggy camp
3) they like the smell
4) the shit and carcasses attract flies which they have some sort of weird relationship with
or
in the case of carcasses
5)the smell of blood or 'death' wards off larger predators
predators tend not to attack things already dead
(I like this one- my own unless its already been mentioned here)
What more do you think there is?
what is your reasonning for it?
Meanwhile from my googling it seems animal experts really don't give a 'shit' ('scuse the pun) about dogs rolling in shit, hence you are unlikely to find a research paper on this subject. I have though founds lots of replies to this question which actually read like my list above
ie, camoflage, or they like the smell.....
I don't think (and with good reason) that dogs rolling in poop is high on any experts agenda for investigation.
THUS no papers, no evidence. It's anecdotal only.
1. camoflage theory is not consistent with the method for which dogs hunt, nor their other rolling behaviors
2. most plausible explanation
3. they like it because...? because they eat different things than we do, and so certain stuff smells better to them. It's also a way to boast to other dogs "hey guys, look what I found."
4. unlikely
5. unlikely
there are a great deal of predators (big ones) that like dead stuff. Bears. Wolves. Jackals. Hyenas. Wolverines.
