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what type of dogs are hunting dogs
The domestic dog is a hunting species
when his ancestors discovered human rubbish dumps as a new source of safe and
easy food. It’s possible that these first dump animals were able to exploit the new
food source because they were especially smart. It’s also possible that they were
just especially lazy. Which explanation you prefer will depend on your opinion
about present day dogs.
In any case, the decision to switch from their old habits to living on
human food waste was an extremely important one. The dump animals had to dare
to come fairly close to humans, and to be able to eat in the presence of our smell.
This led to the relative isolation from the members of their kind who did continue
to roam and to shun humans. In the beginning, as humans roamed to hunt with
their bows and arrows, the domestic dog’s ancestor could probably trail along at
some small distance, waiting until we moved on to descend upon our waste pile.
This new ecological niche he’d found meant he was subject to a different kind of
natural selection than the ancestor who continued to live far away from us. Our
dump animal may still have supplemented his diet by roaming occasionally, but
even the occasional hunting of small prey was much less important to him now.
At this point, he still needed a body fit for travelling long distances since we still
did, but Nature was already selecting for a brain that dealt differently with both
aggression and fear.
food production, which enabled us to fan out across the Earth, meant that we
threw away much more still edible food. The dog’s ancestor could now abandon
roaming and hunting altogether and take up permanent abode near the dump. This
meant he had to come live very close to us. We weren’t leaving dumps behind and
moving on anymore. The village dweller doesn’t feel like walking very far with his
rubbish, and it was probably still dangerous to do so, so dumps were established
close to where we lived. This meant that the pre-domestic dog had to be able to eat
while we were just around the corner and could show up any minute with a new
load of rubbish. The fact that he could do this means that the fear parts of his brain
had already changed. It also meant that he wouldn’t run into relatives anymore
who did still shun humans and their smell.
Reproductive isolation was now a fact. The pre-dog’s genes now became
subject to a completely different regime of natural selection than in the old
roaming, sometimes hunting niche. This animal no longer needed to be fit for the
travelling or the hunting life. The pre-dog’s skeleton, muscles and brain could now
start adjusting to the sedentary life. He no longer needed to kill even occasionally
to eat. The ability to deliver a crushing bite, necessary to grab and kill prey, began
to disappear. His jaws and teeth became smaller, as did his head and his brain.
But it wasn’t just the change in food that caused the killer bite to disappear.
Humans do not, right up to the present day, tolerate animals in their surroundings
who are a danger to themselves and their cattle. Our ancestors probably added
their own selective pressure to Nature’s by killing off any of these pre-dogs who
attacked humans or the animals they kept. If he wanted to be able to stay near
humans and eat easily and safely at our dumps, the early dog had to get rid of
aggression altogether. He not only had to refrain from attacking humans, but
also from attacking our chickens, sheep and cows. Killer aggression was not only
superfluous; it was now actively dysfunctional, working to reduce the early dog’s
chances of survival. The dog lost the inclination to kill anything at all.
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