Our New Dog Is Teaching Us About Life
There are six questions good journalists try to answer when writing a news story: Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How? Of these, What? and How? are the most important from a scientific point of view if So what? is added to the mix.
The WHAT? question
I have long been suspicious of the claim that it is possible to craft — genetically select — not only the size, appearance, and emotional stamina, say, of different dog breeds, but also their typical behavior traits.
Websites listing the characteristics of different breeds often include information about their supposedly breed-specific behavior. The information given, however, is generally vague and open to wide-ranging interpretation.
For example, if you compare what the American Kennel Club says about the American Staffordshire Terrier and the Chihuahua, you are told the former is smart, confident, and good-natured, while the latter is graceful, charming, and sassy. Similarly, Dogtime.com reports that a pit bull doesn't like being left alone, isn't sensitive about being reprimanded, and has a tendency to nip, chew, and play-bite.
Maybe you disagree, but these descriptions strike me as not just vague but vacuous. If this is the sum of it, are the behaviors of dogs labeled as different breeds truly different? When there is reason to say this is true, what makes them so? Are the differences genetic? Due to differences in diet and metabolism? Or how we train them to behave differently? For herding rather than hunting? Or as our companions rather than warehouse watchdogs?
What are we really talking about?
When someone leaves our house, Emma rushes upstairs to see where they are going and what they are doing.
The words behave and behavior can mean so many things that, as the saying goes, you could drive a truck through them. For the latter, the Oxford dictionary provides three definitions:
how one acts or conducts oneself, especially toward others.
how an animal or person acts in response to a particular situation or stimulus.
how a natural phenomenon or a machine works or functions.
Although my saying so may seem odd given how often I have been talking about no. 2 in this series about Emma — the third definition strikes me as the most helpful.
Why? Because thinking about dogs (or people) as machines underscores how most of the variation among modern dog breeds is little more than visual. Having such a wide variety of choices when it comes to having a dog may make us happy — and perhaps, if we are status-conscious, also delighted to own this or that breed of showy hound. But is there something beyond how they look that explains why today there are hundreds of dog breeds here on Earth?
Consider this fact. Dogs available for adoption at animal shelters are often described as "mixed breed." Does this ambiguity hint that when given the chance, dogs (regardless of their relative size, shape, coloration, etc.) are happy to go "off breed"? (Although another explanation is possible. Being equivocal about "breed" in the absence of official AKC certification may be a way for shelters to avoid legal complaints about false advertising should a dog later prove to the new owners to be genuinely "mixed," genetically speaking.)
The HOW? question
Let's grant perhaps some dog breeds do differ at least somewhat in how they are given to behave under some conditions and in certain situations. When their supposedly inherited differences are described as vaguely, say, as "active, affectionate, friendly, good-natured, intelligent, protective, and loving" vs. "affectionate, devoted, dignified, friendly, loyal, and playful," this is taking a lot for granted. Yet even scientists studying the behavior of dogs seem willing to go along with such fuzzy thinking, so who am I to object?
Several years ago in the journal Genetics, the animal geneticist Joanna Ilska and her colleagues argued that although the "distinct behavioral predispositions of individual dog breeds clearly indicate a strong genetic component to dog personality," and "personality traits are extremely important for the well-being of both the dog and its owner," how a dog's genetic heritage may help determine its behavior is "still largely unknown."
An easier way of saying this is that even though dog-breeders and dog owners may be convinced dog breeds differ in their "behavioral predispositions," nobody knows — even scientists! — what drives such differences. That is, not just what they look like, but how they "work or function" (no. 3 above).
Once upon a time, why humans differ in their ways was commonly attributed to the inherited weaknesses of the immaterial part of human beings called their soul and the Devil's well-practiced guile. Nowadays, at least until recently, the popular explanation instead for why people do what they do has been more cerebral than spiritual. After all, Sigmund Freud wasn't the first, and certainly not the last, to do what I like to call "brain blame" when it comes to our own misbehavior as earthy beings.
In recent years, however, this one-sided and brain-centric view of human behavior has come under challenge. For instance, there is now evidence suggesting that what's living in the microbiome in the human gut — do you know that more than half the cells in the human body are not human? — may play critical roles in such "mental afflictions" as autism, anxiety and depression, and Alzheimer’s, a neurodegenerative disease.
If this is true for humans, then why not also dogs?
The SO WHAT? question
Source: John Terrell
The pit bull is not a breed. Any dog that looks like a pit bull as popularly imagined can be called a pit bull.
Nonetheless, many people are convinced today that pit bulls are dangerous animals.
The logic of this belief is clear but simplistic: if a dog looks different, then surely it must behave differently, too.
More often than not, the genetic inheritance of such antisocial behavior is simply assumed by those who believe this to be so. Not considering other possible explanations isn't fair to these dogs, and isn't the way to get to the bottom of things.
Why do we need to know not just What? but Why? dogs do what they do? I will answer this So what? question in the fifth and last installment in this series about Emma. There's a hint (below) about what my answer will be:
A little humility goes a long way.
Lesson 5 — A good explanation may not be the right explanation.. To find the other lessons Emma has taught us, please go here.