I’ll start off by saying I really enjoyed reading Terrill’s Part Wild, even if I didn’t agree with her life choices at times. I have had a lifelong fascination with wolf-dogs, so reading about Inyo and her life was entertaining. The book didn’t necessarily stimulate any new thoughts or questions about the relationship between wolves and dogs and how dogs came to be domesticated, but it did reinforce some theories I’d already had.
I liked that Terrill kept coming back to looking at the process of domestication of the dog from all different aspects: behavioral, morphological, and genetic. To me, wolf and dog are the same species, but I feel like a wolf is more like a breed of dog (albeit a very estranged breed) than an ancestral link in the chain. While we were domesticating dogs in all shapes and sizes, wolves were undergoing their own changes as a species, and most of these changes were probably the exact opposite of what we bred into the domestic dog: distrust of humans, tendency to avoid human civilization, and looking at us as predators more than providers. This brings me back to something I’ve been wondering since talking about Belyaev’s foxes: the researchers bred the foxes into two distinct groups- domestic, and aggressive. Could this be what happened to the common ancestor of dogs and wolves? Those with the slightly higher tendency to be curious about their neighbors the humans, who didn’t mind their company, and who could develop a bond with them would be those whose descendents became the domestic dog. On the other hand, the tendency to avoid human society and distrust what could be perceived as threat was exacerbated in the strain which became modern-day wolves. I see their common ancestor as on more of a middle-ground behaviorally, with wolves and dogs at the two polar extremes, due to inbreeding and selection (natural or artificial).
One thing that does irk me is that people have a tendency to refer to all domestic dogs in a general sense, as one entity whose behavior is constant between individuals. Dogs are more complex than that. Different breeds show different behavioral traits- how could a Chihuahua possibly show the same behavioral tendencies as a St. Bernard? But even deeper than on a breed level, different individual dogs have different personalities. They aren’t as complex as human personalities, to be sure, but anyone who has owned dogs, who has watched them interact and watched other dogs can tell you that they exist. Dogs have personal preferences, distastes, and habits which start developing as soon as they’re born. From research papers I’ve read on behavioral analysis in wolves, it appears they have something akin to personalities as well, however the research is not generalizable enough to be sure. Given the circumstances, we can’t expect wolves to have as much individual differences- it wouldn’t be a good survival mechanism for pack animals.
Discussion of personality is a good segue into what really interests me when discussing wolves and dogs: intelligence. Terrill believes that dogs are the mentally retarded cousins of wolves, bred only to be blindly obedient and want only affection and care. After her experience with Panzer, I can understand her point of view. After all, who should we consider more intelligent, the wolf-dog who avoided the cars, or the dog who got hit and was killed? But I disagree with her train of thought. After all, dogs ride the subway in Russia (http://abcnews.go.com/International/Technology/stray-dogs-master-complex-moscow-subway-system/story?id=10145833) with no problems. So which is really the more intelligent- dogs or wolves? I guess the truth is that it doesn’t really matter. In the human world, dogs will come out on top; in the wild, a wolf is definitely more able to survive. Knowing this makes it all the more heart-wrenching when reading about Inyo, who doesn’t belong in either place. It supports the belief that the practice of purposefully breeding wolf-dogs should be put to a stop. It will not fix the issues that have cropped up in modern dogs, as Leda believes; only give rise to a breed who can’t survive in either world.
February 25, 2014 @ 10:50 am
Studies of stray / feral dog populations offer additional insight on how quickly the domestication process can be reversed and how many gradations there along the continuum of socialization with humans: Sternthal, S. (2010, Jan 16). A wolf in dog’s clothing. Financial Times. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.lib.vt.edu:8080/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/250253043?accountid=14826
(you’ll have to sign in on the proxy server to see the full text.) Also, I forgot to thank Corinne for mentioning my favorite subway riding dogs in Moscow. I posted about them last year here: http://blogs.lt.vt.edu/domesticate/dogs/moscow-strays/
February 24, 2014 @ 8:56 pm
Sorry. Forgot to post the site about brain size: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subspecies_of_Canis_lupus
February 24, 2014 @ 8:51 pm
>>I see their common ancestor as on more of a middle-ground behaviorally<>One thing that does irk me is that people have a tendency to refer to all domestic dogs in a general sense, as one entity whose behavior is constant between individuals.<>After all, dogs ride the subway in Russia with no problems. So which is really the more intelligent- dogs or wolves?<<
Well, you'd have to place a population of wolves into Russian cities and see whether they'd be able to learn how to use the subway system. My guess is they'd have no problem. If they did, it would be because of behavioral tendencies they have (e.g., excitable aggression) that would prevent them from learning, not any real deficiency.
I may be in the minority here on the intelligence perspective. According to this page, the average domestic dog has a 30% smaller brain than many wolf subspecies. Brain size doesn't have a perfect relationship with intelligence, but the relationship does exist. While dog behavior is more successful in a human context than that of wolves, I think it is premature to label this higher social intelligence. Behavior is highly malleable using simple learning processes (e.g., conditioning), and combined with artificial selection for tameness and companionship, the dog becomes more apt in the human environment simply as a result of processes that, in my opinion, are separate from the overt construct of intelligence.
Intelligence is a poorly defined construct and few people agree on its meaning in the psychological community, but if I am to describe words I associate with intelligence, these are some that come to mind: systematic thinking, mental adaptibility, swiftness of thought, ability to "connect the dots," and the ability to emulate others' behavior. These are just a few, if we follow this line of thinking on intelligence, I think wolves win easily.
Remembering Alika | Free Range
February 24, 2014 @ 4:48 pm
[…] was different. (See Corinne’s reminder that we need to consider animals as individuals as well as representative of a species.) Her powers of perception could be extraordinary, but I […]
February 24, 2014 @ 4:27 pm
I think that the example of who got hit by a car isn’t the best in terms of intelligence. It could have had nothing to do with intelligence, and instead to do with Inyo being first, and as a result the car swerved to avoid her and hit Panzer. I agree that there are different types of intelligence though.
Regarding the opposite trails of evolution, once the animals that were unsociable and aggressive did not seek out humans and stayed away from them, they’re interactions with humans would have ended and they’d no longer be selected upon for aggressiveness. Evolution persists over a period of time in response to continual selection pressure. Remove that pressure and the driving force for a particular trait disappears. The animals that would avoid human contact would by default be removed from the evolutionary pressures (both sociable and unsociable) of humans.
February 24, 2014 @ 1:42 pm
It’s so hard for us humans to keep our own anthropocentric preferences in perspective and this discussion of wolf-dog “intelligence” really brings that out! Kara does a good job of reminding us that intelligence is situational and in the eye of the beholder. Inyo (and wolves, and wolf-dogs) do have more “smarts” in terms of their resourcefulness and perception of the environment (i.e. moving cars), while dogs have evolved to communicate with humans and in many situations to rely on them for direction. In some contexts we think the dogs are smarter because they display a higher level of social-interspecies intelligence. And yet the wolves clearly prevail in other settings. It’s complicated!
February 24, 2014 @ 1:06 pm
Your post definitely gave me a lot to think about. I have to admit I’m not much of a dog person, so I’m glad I read your post and started thinking more about all different types of dogs. I did somewhat think about these differences while reading, however, in the context that I can imagine many dogs that act differently between breeds. The behavior of Inyo doesn’t really seem too far off from an untrained black lab I once knew, for example. Like you, thinking about the vast differences between breeds really makes me questions how domestication happened. I like your thought that it’s similar to the fox experiment in that some animals were selected for their natural inclination towards human companionship. Perhaps this happened at varying degrees and led to the behavioral differences between dog breeds? I’m no scientist, but it seems to make sense.
February 23, 2014 @ 12:58 pm
I agree completely about the intelligence of the dog being underplayed in the story. I think it goes back to our last class discussion about what environment and personal strengths have in relation to success. We mentioned the quote Everybody is a genius. But, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it’ll spend its whole life believing that it is stupid.” – Albert Einstein to This relates to the dog/wolf intelligence comparison and how it is the environment that determines who is more or less intelligent. Like you said the wolf wins in the wild but the dog wins in the domesticated world.