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What is a Dog?
- posterboy 9y agonoone here knows, but I am :D joking aside; in light of the text, I could imagine one dog defending a turf against intruding dogs would be a huge driver to their adoption.
- dcw303 9y agoAs a dog owner, I smirked when the author described dogs as only interested in humans because we supply the food. Yeah, that's probably true, but I don't care if my beloved pet only thinks of me as a meal dispenser, it's actually kinda funny. > But when they murmur and pump their legs while sleeping, they’re dreaming of freedom. But ouch. That really hurts.
- moonshinefe 9y agoI wouldn't read too much into that; the life of a wild dog is far more harsh and brutal than one that has a caring owner.
- Adirael 9y agoMine sometimes will also whimper while dreaming, but I guess that's part of the freedom too
- hyperpallium 9y agoDon't feel bad, your pet dreams of walks and running exurberantly around the park - dogs have been breed to love their servitude... as have we.
- cableshaft 9y agoMy dog got free and was lost for four days earlier this year. It was one of the most scariest experiences in my life, although nowadays from time to time I feel happy he at least got to experience a little freedom, especially when I neglect to take him out to an off-leash dog park for a few weeks.
- albertgoeswoof 9y agoI'm not sure I fully agree with the article's takeaway that dogs are only in it for the food. It's a bit of a crude summary. In addition to food, humans provide shelter, protection, love, attention, play time, and companionship - I don't think food is the only driver of the relationship. My dog will hide behind me if he's scared, and enjoys attention from people he doesn't know - irrespective of whether they provide food for him or not. And he'll cry and ignore food from others for hours if I'm separated from him. Maybe this is just anecdotal data, but seems doubtful.
- tragomaskhalos 9y agoI agree with you: if we are going to be so reductive, we could make the case that any animal species, humans included, is only in it for the food.
- Radim 9y agoonly in it for the food. Reproduction. Or, going one step further, universal optimization by means of more efficient use of energy. The end game is the heat death of the universe (maximum entropy, no more energy differentials), after all ;)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- 1_player 9y agoI've heard the quote that says, paraphrased: "the main reason we do anything is to have sex, and to feel great amongst our peers." Which is very reductionist yet has a shadow of truth behind it.
- moonshinefe 9y agoI think you're right. They massively over simplified the relationship between humans and dogs imo. Yeah, food is a huge part of it, but dogs even in my limited experience bond on way more levels than just that. Silly premise.
- srrge 9y agoI never was a dog guy. Always had cats during childhood. I used to find dogs scary and stinky. But then, at 38, a few years ago, I suddenly needed a dog. What was it? The kids growing older? Me, getting older? I don't know. But I wanted a dog. I contemplated the idea for one year. And then I adopted a dog from a shelter. Greatest thing ever. A dog is such a great companion. They say that a dog will make you laugh once a day. It's 100% true based on my experience.
- fern12 9y agoThis was my experience as well. I disliked dogs all throughout my teens. I thought they were dirty, smelly, annoying, etc. Then during college, my dad and sister (who both love dogs) decided to get an Old English Sheepdog. He was the most in-your-face, helpless dog, always needing someone to wipe his chin or pay attention to him. He was incredibly affectionate, and would literally shove his snout under someone's arm to force them to pet/hug him. After him, I was sold.
- ggm 9y agoIt isn't wrong to project our desires and fantasy of engagement on to specific dogs, in as much as mutuality can exist between us as good source and them as consumers. Symbiosis takes many forms and to imagine the butterfly feels no pleasure as the plant releases a drop of nectar is to deny we could build a probe fine enough to find out. But so what? They go on sucking nectar, and our dogs go on making eyes at us and whining for food, which we willingly and happily comply with. There is nothing intrinsically wrong here. There is something intrinsically wrong in claiming to be objective and denying the possibility and it's wrong to attribute all species enhancing behaviours purely to genes and acquired traits. If dogs are capable of making choices and we are capable of making choices is there no room for a happy medium? An equitable, biologically deterministic mutuality? PS not a dog owner but also not a dog hater. The book sounds like a good read.
- agumonkey 9y agoI have a funny metaphor about animal vs humans. Video games today are 1000000x more sophisticated, realistic than anything from the early 80s. Still 8 bit games were games, they had the same elements in them, except in low res, freq and count. The structure, the "quality", not the quantity. Same goes for computers. When I boot a win95 box, it's all there, minus the HTML5/CSS3 capable stack. I do believe that most life forms, above a level of complexity have most of the things we think as human exclusive. Surely when an animal spent so much time and effort into finding a source of feeding, as the nutrient come in, his system reacts and communicate "satisfaction" in one form or another. The butterfly just don't write a song about it afterwards.
- ggm 9y agoI think your analogy is good, but I do have some issues. The lower down the 8 bit scale you go, into greyscale graphics or black and white, the more it approaches the old cellular automata games, game of life. Which, we can show is turing complete now we have functioning instruction-set machine logic. But, GoL is not itself the turing, its the machine we build inside it. In that sense, the pleasure a butterfly feels as a commanding thing, set against its overall brain function probably is more at the cellular automota end of the scale. The mouse we're trying to kill, before it gets our cheese is a couple or more orders of magnitude up the food chain. Its decidedly not monochrome. Its where you draw the line which matters, in conversations about ethics and equity. Jains draw it a lot lower than I do.
- brndnmtthws 9y agoThis doesn't seem quite right. My Shiba Inu (her name is Doge, check her out: https://www.instagram.com/brndnmtthws/ https://www.instagram.com/brndnmtthws/) is generally quite disinterested in food. I often have to trick her or keep her leash on and attach it near her bowl to make her eat. When she gets excited, she can't be bribed with treats (she just ignores them). She likes food, but it seems like her main interest is playing. She'd rather run around in circles or play fetch than eat most of the time.
- cableshaft 9y agoOur Shiba, Kubo, loves human food and treats, and will bark and get up on his hind legs to try to get bits of our meals, but he's not super excited about dog food and we have to leave it out all day for him to eventually get around to eating it (he will though). At first we actually thought he wasn't food motivated, but that was before we started feeding him human food. He goes into full scavenger/hunter mode whenever he's outside too, and manages to find all sorts of junk on the ground that I swear isn't there until he has it in his mouth. He actually slipped his harness and ran away for a week earlier this year, and we were able to catch him again with the help of hot dogs and fried chicken (and a lot of hard work and a lot of help from local volunteer organizations). You can check him out here: https://www.instagram.com/kubotheshiba/ https://www.instagram.com/kubotheshiba/
- brndnmtthws 9y agoSo handsome! I love him!
- elboru 9y agoI think a lot of people who interact with dogs in a regular basis will disagree too. My girlfriend has a little female Chihuahua, and even though I never feed her she will go crazy every time I enter the house. Why would she do that if I'm not a food source?
- jchrome 9y agoI find it funnier the outrage of those who can’t bear to think of their dog’s love as contingent upon food. “But I need unconditional love from my pet!”
- dboreham 9y agoEven cats aren't only in it for the food. Although they will eat you if you die and they have access to your corpse..
- steveadoo 9y agoI think dogs will do this too.
- _jal 9y agoI'm done with it, what do I care? Although it is more traumatic for whoever has to deal with the body.
- LeifCarrotson 9y agoIt's traumatic for the dog, too. Often, when someone with a dog is found dead, the dog will have bitten (or eaten) their face, in the hopes of waking up their owner. > The dogs start biting and eating as a form of animal instinct. They notice you’re dead by your smell and lack of reaction, and they come and lick the unclothed areas to wake you up. If you’re dead and there’s no reaction, they switch and enter the next level—from licking to biting. That’s all. It is not a matter of hunger. Quite sad, really. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21533604 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21533604
- logfromblammo 9y agoBut there is also the possibility that your dog will guard your corpse and not let strangers or other animals near it (like Talero). And a lesser possibility that your dog will guard your grave until it dies [0]. Cats? They'll sit on your corpse to interview servants to replace you. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyfriars_Bobby https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyfriars_Bobby
- dboreham 9y agoCuriously I went to school around the corner from the Greyfriars church yard and must have walked past the statue thousands of times. I noticed that the statue has been defaced in recent years by tourists touching its nose for good luck.
- hyperpallium 9y agoWhat is dog, that thou art mindful of him?
- MentallyRetired 9y agoI couldn't even get through two paragraphs of this guys writing style. It reads like he has a word count on a school paper.
- elysian_eunoia 9y agoClearly the author is a cat person.
- elysian_eunoia 9y agoThe argument against this article reminds me of the notoriously tear-jerking Futurama episode in which Fry tells his dog to wait outside the building for a moment. Fry accidentally cryogenically freezes himself while in the building and wakes up in the future, but his dog had waited there for his owner for the rest of his life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XECQApj9IJs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XECQApj9IJs
- cableshaft 9y agoYeah, I teared up like crazy during that episode. So sad yet so loyal. Kind of like the legendary dog Hachiko in Japan that waited every day for his dead owner to return, for many years.
- goda90 9y agoHere's the actual clip for the end of that episode. So sad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK3PWHxoT_E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK3PWHxoT_E
- deerpig 9y agoThat is likely based on the Japanese story of the dog Hachiko, (sort of the Japanese version of Lassie) the dog who waited for his master at the train station every day. And when the master, a university professor, died while at school, the dog continued to go to the station every day until his death. There is a statue outside the train station where he waited. There were two movies made about the story, the Japanese original reduces everyone to tears. The American one with Richard Gere, not so much. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachik%C5%8D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachik%C5%8D
- MysticForce 9y agoWhat is a dog? A miserable little pile of biscuits!