Coevolution of dogs and people
We've had Sheba for about a month now. She's getting used to us, and we her. I think the most interesting aspect is how natural, in some sense, it all feels. Yes, she snitches food, chews up valuable objects, and has angled her way into jumping on our couches and sleeping in our bed. But it feels like a normal experience, of primates and canines living together, setting up shared housekeeping with a companion animal. Not normal in the sense of us being used to it, quite the contrary, but normal in the sense of everyone does it, there are lots of dogs, lots of dog owners, it's a primary experience. Normative, perhaps. The state of our household, before dog, could have been called "dog deprived", as a moving Slate piece describes the family in an adoption.
(I learned from another Jon Katz Slate piece that the phrase, "companion animal", is thought by some to be a kind of newspeak for pet. It never struck me that way. I learned it from a vet, for whom the domestic animals his profession cares for fall into two classes: companion animals, and food animals. What we take from each is different, body vs. soul, but we take regardless.)
One of the dog books we got has an extended section on the evolution of domestic dogs. Dogs and people have been hanging out together for longer than was previously though, about 100,000 years or so. (I should really look this up, and get the story from the primary literature. Till then, you get it third hand, hopefully not too distorted.) 100k years is a long time, extending back to before we became quite what we are, in a biological sense. And some of those changes -- loss of excellent sense of smell, etc. -- are exactly the kind of thing which is well balanced by working canines. So it's not exactly the previous story, where dogs showed up, people domesticated them and used them. Rather, dogs and people got together earlier, before we were quite human yet. And sharing life with dogs is part of how we became what we are. So it should feel natural, being with dogs.
It's a comforting thought, particularly when she does some doggy thing, and we react in a natural manner, in contradiction to the carefully thought through guidelines of the training books. No, getting mad may not be optimal. But it probably does work okay, if somehow humans and dogs have been getting along fine, for thousands of generations before the training books were written. Unlike say computers, where one's natural tendencies (fist through screen, eg) may align particularly poorly with problem solving.
(I learned from another Jon Katz Slate piece that the phrase, "companion animal", is thought by some to be a kind of newspeak for pet. It never struck me that way. I learned it from a vet, for whom the domestic animals his profession cares for fall into two classes: companion animals, and food animals. What we take from each is different, body vs. soul, but we take regardless.)
One of the dog books we got has an extended section on the evolution of domestic dogs. Dogs and people have been hanging out together for longer than was previously though, about 100,000 years or so. (I should really look this up, and get the story from the primary literature. Till then, you get it third hand, hopefully not too distorted.) 100k years is a long time, extending back to before we became quite what we are, in a biological sense. And some of those changes -- loss of excellent sense of smell, etc. -- are exactly the kind of thing which is well balanced by working canines. So it's not exactly the previous story, where dogs showed up, people domesticated them and used them. Rather, dogs and people got together earlier, before we were quite human yet. And sharing life with dogs is part of how we became what we are. So it should feel natural, being with dogs.
It's a comforting thought, particularly when she does some doggy thing, and we react in a natural manner, in contradiction to the carefully thought through guidelines of the training books. No, getting mad may not be optimal. But it probably does work okay, if somehow humans and dogs have been getting along fine, for thousands of generations before the training books were written. Unlike say computers, where one's natural tendencies (fist through screen, eg) may align particularly poorly with problem solving.
posted by TFox at
8:31 PM
