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Connecting
Your Dog's Habits To Its Ancestors
There are
some things a dog cannot help doing. If he is going to bite someone, he
needs to look at his target, and he needs to bare his teeth. If he is
going to defend himself, he has to tuck his ears back and his tail down
and turn aside. In the dark unrecorded mists of wolf history, wolves
that had the wits to notice these things had an edge over their more
obtuse pack-mates.
Being on the lookout for the fangs or the intent
stare of a more powerful member of the pack was a way to avoid
unnecessary physical injury from a wolf one had no intention of
challenging anyway; being on the lookout for the cringe or the averted
gaze of a weaker member was a way to avoid the unnecessary trouble and
danger of fighting with a wolf who was prepared to give way without a
fight anyway.
Once wolves were on the lookout for unintentionally dropped hints, it
became possible to start dropping them intentionally. A wolf that can
accurately read a fang or a stare as a threat can avoid a fight and a
wolf that can show a fang or fix a stare can then express a threat
without a fight. This evolutionary feedback loop between receivers and
senders is what was almost surely behind the development and rituals of
the visual signals that wolves, and now dogs, use.
Most of these signals are directly related to the very serious wolf
business of dominance and submission within the pack. Dominance and
threatening signals include baring the teeth, pricking the ears, and
staring. Submissive and nonthreatening signals include laying the ears
back, averting the gaze, approaching obliquely rather than head on,
tucking the tail tightly under the belly, and (the ultimate gesture of
passive surrender to superior force) rolling over and lying belly-up.
Over sufficiently long time, these signals become ritualized.
Every time a wolf lifts his lips and shows his fangs, he is not
literally about to bite; rather this is a symbol of threatening
intentions, and, at this point in the evolutionary history of the wolf,
read as such by other wolves. Wolves are predisposed to read it that
way because of the indisputable fact of evolutionary history that fangs
really do bite. Wolves became in turn disposed to use a show of fangs
as a threatening gesture precisely because wolves were predisposed to
react to fangs as a threat.
Just about all vertebrate animals long ago acquired an innate
appreciation of another biological fact that is frequently exploited in
visual communication: big things out there are more dangerous than
small things. Thus threatening or dominance-asserting wolves try to
literally look big. They stand erect, sometimes astride the animal they
are attempting to impress, they raise their tails, they stiffen their
hackles.
Submissive or fearful dogs try to look small by crouching low,
sometimes even dragging themselves along the ground. It is important to
realize that this does not mean that the big- looking wolf is conscious
of how big he looks, nor that any other wolf is fooled into thinking he
really is big. Again, these are rituals. But they ultimately derive
from the fact that wolves have been wired to react in ways that make
these rituals effective.
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Connecting Your
Dog's Habits To Its Ancestors
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