9 ms·

Puppy Pregnancy in Humans: A Culture-Bound Disorder (2003)

17 points by tokai 5y ago

lazypenguin 5y ago
I did not expect this paper to be about people believing they literally can become pregnant with a puppy from interaction (e.g. bite) with a dog. I was hoping it was a paper on the modern obsession in American culture with owning a dog as a pet. Dog ownership is a phenomenon that feels pervasive in my social circles but not one I feel that I can explain beyond “people like dogs”.
- vodkapump 5y ago
  In my experience the explanation is, that people like dogs.
  - PaulHoule 5y ago
    and dogs like people. People have emotional needs that they might get from other people or might get from animals. I think the post though is talking about a syndrome that happens in India. I have seen many people get bit by a dog in the US and never heard anybody say they thought they were pregnant.
    - treeman79 5y ago
      Work around animals for a bit and you lean that a sweet critter that becomes pregnant or a new mother are often the nastiest things imaginable. Only to go back again after babies have moved on.
      - PaulHoule 5y ago
        yep. there was that time a woman walking her dog ran into a couple of giraffes protecting a baby and the male did a one-hit kill. when i was a kid I never was able to hang out with a peer group of other kids but I did run with a pack of dogs and I realized that was why I was much better with dogs than my wife despite the fact that she is a professional animal handler (teaches people to ride horses.) There was a time when I wasn't sure what it was I lived for and realized I get limitless joy from experiences with animals be it my pets or seeing birds, deer, battling with the beavers that try to plug our culvert pipe or otherwise.
- cpwright 5y ago
  People like dogs, and your dog at least appears to like you back. If they don't really like us, their behavior is enough of a facsimile that it doesn't even matter. I spend more time with my dog than anyone except my wife and kids; and it is pretty close to the amount I spend with my teenagers given that they have their own interests and activities. With that much time together, there is just naturally a bond.
  - cptskippy 5y ago
    I think the OP might have been speaking more toward the people who feel the need to take their dog everywhere. Things like carrying them in purses or bags, sneaking them into stores where they're not allowed and having verbal or physical altercations when challenged, getting documents (fake or otherwise) certifying they're emotional support animals to take them on planes, and the overall making them a part of your identity. It's not unlike the anti-maskers or anti-vaxx people presently during the pandemic. The difference being that current circumstances (i.e. the pandemic) are causing society to challenge those people and their behaviors but aside from Airlines banning emotional support animals, there really isn't anyone questioning the crazy dog people.
- aetherson 5y ago
  I was having a conversation about the pandemic with a friend who is a dog trainer, and she commented that the shelter she works with saw a lot of people get dogs during the pandemic when they were homebound, and now those dogs are starting to come back to the shelter. Note that this is one anecdote, not well sourced data.
- NoOneNew 5y ago
  Modern obsession in American culture? https://www.ucl.ac.uk/human-evolution/news/2018/feb/archaeologists-re-examine-famous-14000-year-old-dog-bonn-oberkassel-germany https://www.ucl.ac.uk/human-evolution/news/2018/feb/archaeol... Do a search on "oldest dog burial" and you'll find that humans, from many different cultures and regions for thousands of years, have had dogs in such high esteem (pets) that burying them was important. Theres even some studies that claim humans and dogs evolved together in some respects due to the high prevalence of interaction for 40,000 some odd years. Dogs as pets or even family/tribe members ain't new, by a long shot. As an American, yea, the USA is awesome, but we're not so awesome that we invented having pets.
- j4yav 5y ago
  Dogs and humans have been working and living together for quite a bit longer than modern America has existed, so I don’t think you can chalk it up to that or really diagnose it as a disorder after several thousand years of evolving together the way we have.
- Tade0 5y ago
  My former boss had an interesting explanation for this: it's sort of a safety valve. Trying to control every aspect of your life leads to suffering, so in order to keep such tendencies at bay you introduce some unavoidable chaos - and dogs are chaos incarnate.
  - germinalphrase 5y ago
    My dog seems to love me a lot, and that feels nice.
- kingsuper20 5y ago
  I just assume that humans and dogs coevolved.
- ceilingcorner 5y ago
  Having kids has become expensive and uncool. Pets make a sufficient substitute for many people. See: the huge and growing market for kids-items-disguised-as-pet-items.
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  Like all primates, we humans organize ourselves in social status hierarchies. Your hierarchy position is very important, and though we may not talk or even think much about it, we crave being on top very much. Of course this is a true Zero Sum Game. Half the people are by definition always in the bottom half. I think part of the attraction of dogs is that they happily will join your social hierarchy below you. Get a dog, and you get to fulfill that primal craving of having someone admire, obey and worship you.
slver 5y ago
If delusions are contagious with no biological carrier, and in otherwise healthy humans, what does that say about mental illness in general?
- indigochill 5y ago
  Memes (ideas/beliefs) behaving like viruses is the subject of lots of prior material. Delusions fit in this category just like things like fashion/religion/culture/language do. They don't directly spread physically, but by others being exposed to the concept whether via social media, in-person contact, books, whatever. I don't think you can extrapolate too much about physical/chemical mental illness aside from some people being more receptive to certain ideas/delusions than others (maybe from background/upbringing, or just personality).
rexreed 5y ago
The persistence and spread of psychological delusions explains how extremely irrational ideas such as conspiracy theories, even of them most ludicrous kind, can gain hold and even spread. If some people can believe that a dog bite will make a male pregnant with a puppy, and this irrational idea can gain hold and spread among a culturally-shared population, then even the most ridiculous idea can gain hold and spread among a culturally-shared population. Humans are capable of rational thought, but obviously there's some other cognitive process that overrides rationality in favor of some other preferred thought process, even if it's harmful to the person and their society.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  I think that rational thought is a subset of human pattern recognition, which is the more fundamental process. Some patterns are rational and some are not. But discerning the two takes special training beyond the basic human ability to notice correlations and infer causality from them.
  - rexreed 5y ago
    Rational thought seems to be a learned process that humans might not even be innately that good at, whereas reflexive / "biased" thought might be more the norm for how our brain operates. We operate more on intuition, reflex, and bias moreso than calculated, reasoned thought. It takes work and effort to be rational, in much the same way it takes work and effort to be good at any academic, professional, musical, athletic, or any other thing that we might have good latent ability, but not a well-developed natural ability.
    - BurningFrog 5y ago
      People have always had to solve difficult practical problems, which requires rational thought. Applying rational thought outside your own practical problems is maybe what needs to be learned.
      - ben_w 5y ago
hirundo 5y ago
In the U.S. we have an emerging cultural convention that someone who believes that they are a different gender should be treated as if they were that gender. I believe that is generally a positive thing, though it can be taken too far with biological males competing as females, and the removal of true female-only spaces. Should we do the same with people who have the puppy pregnancy delusion? Accept their viewpoint and wish them luck, rather than attempting to dissuade them? I suppose in both situations it should be case by case, offering help where the psychological stresses become unmanageable.
- rexreed 5y ago
  How would DSM-IV treat this delusion? Not too long ago, those with non-conventional or distored self-views and views of society would be put in mental institutions and treated as mental disorders. I'm referring to the puppy delusion above.
- justusw 5y ago
  What is a true female only space? That sounds like transphobic rhetoric.
  - nfyjnvxss 5y ago
    Womens' dressing rooms, ladies' bathrooms, gynaecologist offices, delivery rooms, battered womens' shelters, female sports leagues, do I need to list more? There are two kinds of gamete and one type of organism that produces each one. It's not transphobic to recognize the reality of biology.
    - thebooktocome 5y ago
      Intersex people exist. That's the "reality of biology". But for some reason you rarely see "biological realists" advocating for intersex rights.
      - slumdev 5y ago
        Intersex people exist at a rate of approximately 2 per 10,000: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/ Most people will go their entire lives without ever meeting one. Do you really think these 2 out of 10,000 people are driving the changes we're seeing in locker rooms and women's sports?
virgil_disgr4ce 5y ago
Is "puppy pregnancy" a medical term, or something? The way this is written makes it sound like it's a pre-existing concept in the space.
deleted 5y ago
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deleted 5y ago
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marcodiego 5y ago
Probably a new case that deserves to be in this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_hysteria_cases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_hysteria_cases
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

17 points by tokai 5y ago

I did not expect this paper to be about people believing they literally can become pregnant with a puppy from interaction (e.g. bite) with a dog. I was hoping it was a paper on the modern obsession in American culture with owning a dog as a pet. Dog ownership is a phenomenon that feels pervasive in my social circles but not one I feel that I can explain beyond “people like dogs”.

vodkapump 5y ago
In my experience the explanation is, that people like dogs.
- PaulHoule 5y ago
  and dogs like people. People have emotional needs that they might get from other people or might get from animals. I think the post though is talking about a syndrome that happens in India. I have seen many people get bit by a dog in the US and never heard anybody say they thought they were pregnant.
  - treeman79 5y ago
    Work around animals for a bit and you lean that a sweet critter that becomes pregnant or a new mother are often the nastiest things imaginable. Only to go back again after babies have moved on.
    - PaulHoule 5y ago
      yep. there was that time a woman walking her dog ran into a couple of giraffes protecting a baby and the male did a one-hit kill. when i was a kid I never was able to hang out with a peer group of other kids but I did run with a pack of dogs and I realized that was why I was much better with dogs than my wife despite the fact that she is a professional animal handler (teaches people to ride horses.) There was a time when I wasn't sure what it was I lived for and realized I get limitless joy from experiences with animals be it my pets or seeing birds, deer, battling with the beavers that try to plug our culvert pipe or otherwise.
cpwright 5y ago
People like dogs, and your dog at least appears to like you back. If they don't really like us, their behavior is enough of a facsimile that it doesn't even matter. I spend more time with my dog than anyone except my wife and kids; and it is pretty close to the amount I spend with my teenagers given that they have their own interests and activities. With that much time together, there is just naturally a bond.
- cptskippy 5y ago
  I think the OP might have been speaking more toward the people who feel the need to take their dog everywhere. Things like carrying them in purses or bags, sneaking them into stores where they're not allowed and having verbal or physical altercations when challenged, getting documents (fake or otherwise) certifying they're emotional support animals to take them on planes, and the overall making them a part of your identity. It's not unlike the anti-maskers or anti-vaxx people presently during the pandemic. The difference being that current circumstances (i.e. the pandemic) are causing society to challenge those people and their behaviors but aside from Airlines banning emotional support animals, there really isn't anyone questioning the crazy dog people.
aetherson 5y ago
I was having a conversation about the pandemic with a friend who is a dog trainer, and she commented that the shelter she works with saw a lot of people get dogs during the pandemic when they were homebound, and now those dogs are starting to come back to the shelter. Note that this is one anecdote, not well sourced data.
NoOneNew 5y ago
Modern obsession in American culture? https://www.ucl.ac.uk/human-evolution/news/2018/feb/archaeologists-re-examine-famous-14000-year-old-dog-bonn-oberkassel-germany https://www.ucl.ac.uk/human-evolution/news/2018/feb/archaeol... Do a search on "oldest dog burial" and you'll find that humans, from many different cultures and regions for thousands of years, have had dogs in such high esteem (pets) that burying them was important. Theres even some studies that claim humans and dogs evolved together in some respects due to the high prevalence of interaction for 40,000 some odd years. Dogs as pets or even family/tribe members ain't new, by a long shot. As an American, yea, the USA is awesome, but we're not so awesome that we invented having pets.
j4yav 5y ago
Dogs and humans have been working and living together for quite a bit longer than modern America has existed, so I don’t think you can chalk it up to that or really diagnose it as a disorder after several thousand years of evolving together the way we have.
Tade0 5y ago
My former boss had an interesting explanation for this: it's sort of a safety valve. Trying to control every aspect of your life leads to suffering, so in order to keep such tendencies at bay you introduce some unavoidable chaos - and dogs are chaos incarnate.
- germinalphrase 5y ago
  My dog seems to love me a lot, and that feels nice.
kingsuper20 5y ago
I just assume that humans and dogs coevolved.
ceilingcorner 5y ago
Having kids has become expensive and uncool. Pets make a sufficient substitute for many people. See: the huge and growing market for kids-items-disguised-as-pet-items.
BurningFrog 5y ago
Like all primates, we humans organize ourselves in social status hierarchies. Your hierarchy position is very important, and though we may not talk or even think much about it, we crave being on top very much. Of course this is a true Zero Sum Game. Half the people are by definition always in the bottom half. I think part of the attraction of dogs is that they happily will join your social hierarchy below you. Get a dog, and you get to fulfill that primal craving of having someone admire, obey and worship you.

slver 5y ago

If delusions are contagious with no biological carrier, and in otherwise healthy humans, what does that say about mental illness in general?

indigochill 5y ago
Memes (ideas/beliefs) behaving like viruses is the subject of lots of prior material. Delusions fit in this category just like things like fashion/religion/culture/language do. They don't directly spread physically, but by others being exposed to the concept whether via social media, in-person contact, books, whatever. I don't think you can extrapolate too much about physical/chemical mental illness aside from some people being more receptive to certain ideas/delusions than others (maybe from background/upbringing, or just personality).

rexreed 5y ago

The persistence and spread of psychological delusions explains how extremely irrational ideas such as conspiracy theories, even of them most ludicrous kind, can gain hold and even spread. If some people can believe that a dog bite will make a male pregnant with a puppy, and this irrational idea can gain hold and spread among a culturally-shared population, then even the most ridiculous idea can gain hold and spread among a culturally-shared population. Humans are capable of rational thought, but obviously there's some other cognitive process that overrides rationality in favor of some other preferred thought process, even if it's harmful to the person and their society.

shadowgovt 5y ago
I think that rational thought is a subset of human pattern recognition, which is the more fundamental process. Some patterns are rational and some are not. But discerning the two takes special training beyond the basic human ability to notice correlations and infer causality from them.
- rexreed 5y ago
  Rational thought seems to be a learned process that humans might not even be innately that good at, whereas reflexive / "biased" thought might be more the norm for how our brain operates. We operate more on intuition, reflex, and bias moreso than calculated, reasoned thought. It takes work and effort to be rational, in much the same way it takes work and effort to be good at any academic, professional, musical, athletic, or any other thing that we might have good latent ability, but not a well-developed natural ability.
  - BurningFrog 5y ago
    People have always had to solve difficult practical problems, which requires rational thought. Applying rational thought outside your own practical problems is maybe what needs to be learned.
    - ben_w 5y ago

hirundo 5y ago

In the U.S. we have an emerging cultural convention that someone who believes that they are a different gender should be treated as if they were that gender. I believe that is generally a positive thing, though it can be taken too far with biological males competing as females, and the removal of true female-only spaces. Should we do the same with people who have the puppy pregnancy delusion? Accept their viewpoint and wish them luck, rather than attempting to dissuade them? I suppose in both situations it should be case by case, offering help where the psychological stresses become unmanageable.

rexreed 5y ago
How would DSM-IV treat this delusion? Not too long ago, those with non-conventional or distored self-views and views of society would be put in mental institutions and treated as mental disorders. I'm referring to the puppy delusion above.
justusw 5y ago
What is a true female only space? That sounds like transphobic rhetoric.
- nfyjnvxss 5y ago
  Womens' dressing rooms, ladies' bathrooms, gynaecologist offices, delivery rooms, battered womens' shelters, female sports leagues, do I need to list more? There are two kinds of gamete and one type of organism that produces each one. It's not transphobic to recognize the reality of biology.
  - thebooktocome 5y ago
    Intersex people exist. That's the "reality of biology". But for some reason you rarely see "biological realists" advocating for intersex rights.
    - slumdev 5y ago
      Intersex people exist at a rate of approximately 2 per 10,000: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/ Most people will go their entire lives without ever meeting one. Do you really think these 2 out of 10,000 people are driving the changes we're seeing in locker rooms and women's sports?

virgil_disgr4ce 5y ago

Is "puppy pregnancy" a medical term, or something? The way this is written makes it sound like it's a pre-existing concept in the space.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

marcodiego 5y ago

Probably a new case that deserves to be in this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_hysteria_cases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_hysteria_cases

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]