Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Back to the book. The author goes on to say that a number of scientists now agree with the theory that natural selection created dogs from wolves around the environment of human trash heaps, as the wolves with the shortest “flight distance” when confronted by man, therefore the less fearful or the “tamest,” were able to eat the most of the food on the trash heaps and thrived, therefore they interbred with each other and produced smaller bodies with shorter legs and smaller brains and skulls which required less food, and tails that curled over their backs, i.e. dogs. According to this book humans were living in semi-permanent camps, though with perhaps seasonal movement to another camp and back again, rather than aimless wandering, in Western Asia and Eastern Europe around 25, 000 years ago. Therefore there would be good sized trash heaps at each encampment for the wolves to come to. By 15,000 BP the earliest dogs could have evolved. I think it wouldn't take that long. Humans, being basically artistic and emotional, are drawn to the young of other animals with the desire to touch their fur and stroke them. It's a fairly short leap from a half-evolved dog to a purposely bred dog, if the prehistoric people were as much like us as I think they were. I don't think they were brutes.

The author goes on to say that the thyroid gland, which regulates growth, the characteristics of the hair, synchronizes the response to stress and the timing of gene expression, could be the key. In other words, the thyroid gland, which varies in its degree of activity from individual to individual within a species, could control how evolutionary changes are triggered by controlling gene expression.

According to the author the earliest dogs may have been like the dingo. He says that the dingo has several wolf-like characteristics, such as a tail that does not curl up, once a year mating rather than twice like most modern dogs, and hunting in packs made up of an alpha pair and their offspring. Also, like wolves, they can bark but rarely do. They have been tamed in some instances. Konrad Lorenz had a dingo and said that it “harbored the warmest feelings, but submission and obedience play no part in these feelings.” The author goes on to say that the Australian Aborigines have made little effort to domesticate the dingos, that obviously came with them in boats to Australia. They never feed the dingoes, allowing them to live on kangaroos and smaller marsupials, but they do fondle them and even sleep with them. It's more like a friendship. When the Europeans came to Australia they tried to exterminate the dingos because they ate the settlers livestock. They were not able to exterminate them, and they have bred with domestic dogs to a high degree. The purest blood lines of the dingo are now called “the Australian national breed.” Dingoes “moan, howl and bark-howl.” The dingoes have never been on Tasmania, so they must have come to Australia after about 12,000 BP, which is when the sea level rose with the warming of the glaciers and cut off access between the two islands.

A genetic study links the dingo with three types of domesticated dogs in SE Asia, and therefore probably was brought to Australia by peoples from China around 5000 BP, the date when the migrations from China are thought to have occurred. Also a dingo-like dog called the New Guinea Singing Dog, named for its melodic howling, was also brought to New Guinea around the same time period. The people in New Guinea and the Australian Aborigines look a lot alike, but they don't look like any modern Chinese people that I can think of. That doesn't mean they couldn't have been living in China, though. But it does look like a racial difference.

The “Singers” when brought to a zoo in Sydney, Australia, in 1957 were given a new species name, with some features that are unique among canids – their eyes are as reflective as a cat's, they are as flexible as a cat, they are great jumpers, and have several types of vocalization that are different from most dogs or wolves. They have a structure in their throat, a “long palate” that hangs down in their throat like a human uvula, that is related to their vocalization, No other dogs or wolves have this structure. They come into heat once a year like wolves.

Amazingly, there is a species which seems to be related (scientists are not sure) to the dingo which was noticed in the 1970's at the Savanna River nuclear site in South Carolina. They have been named Carolina Dogs. They are said to look like the southern “yaller dogs”. An ecologist at the University of Georgia noticed how much like dingoes they look. Their coats are colored in a range from reddish brown to golden, and they have a sharp nose and a curly tail. Brisbin the ecologist began collecting them, thinking they may have come across the Bering land bridge with Asians from China. The Carolina Dog is “a dead ringer” for a Korean breed called the Chindo-kae from Chindo Island, where they roam freely and have not hybridized with domestic dogs. The Carolina Dog breeds three times a year, unlike any other canid, and they characteristically dig little holes in the ground the size of their noses, probably to get extra nutrition by eating the soil, like some humans around the globe do. They hunt in packs, even killing and eating venomous snakes. The author said the dog may be the most primitive or “basic” of the dog types, or it may have bred in its wild condition back to a lower evolutionary, or “basic” state. Some of them have been successfully tamed and adopted into homes, but most avoid humans. They have interbred with domestic dogs to a high degree, and the Carolina Dog Association is seeking to sponsor them as a distinctive breed.

Another breed called the Canaan Dog is a domesticated dog that was developed during World War II from the “Pariah Dogs” in modern day Palestine. They are adapted to the region because they need little food or water. Those selected from the local pariah dogs resembled collies, and were used in the military as war dogs, as seeing eye dogs and as sheep herders. They are a recognized breed in Israel.

Other “pariah dogs” include the Rez dogs of the Hopi and Navaho reservations. They are not domesticated and are actively killed by the Indians. Rez dogs, like most pariah dogs, vary greatly in their physical appearance, depending from time to time on which dominant male sired most of the puppies. The Navaho's do use sheep dogs, selected from the pariah dogs when they are born. They keep the dog in the pen with the sheep and no one in the family pets them or takes them into the house, and the dog goes with the sheep everywhere, defending them against any kind of threat. The author of this book said he and his family have adopted several of the Rez dogs successfully.

News – Diana Nyad, a sixty-some year old woman, has set a swimming record, crossing the ocean between Cuba and Key West, FL, over a hundred miles, without a shark cage. She had a team of divers who helped clear the water of sharks and jellyfish, and a boat from which she was fed during the swim. She tried five times and finally made it. It took her 53 hours. Congratulations!!

Dog sense – A test was done comparing dogs with wolves and chimpanzees as to which could read human signals better. The scientist put food into one of two boxes and then brought the test animal in, signaling either by pointing or gazing at the box that contained the food. Dogs, including small puppies, found the food at an “above chance” rate, while the very intelligent chimpanzees didn't, nor did the wolves. I had thought that wolves might be more intelligent than dogs because their brains are bigger, but they don't follow human cues as well.

On page 69 of this book there are two drawings of dogs running which are described as cave art, so that puts them back to the Cro Magnon period of mankind. Of course, they may not have been domesticated at that time, but they didn't look like wolves. Maybe another argument for the wild development of dogs from wolves around the “kitchen middens” or garbage heaps of humans. I'm looking up “cave art dogs” on the Internet and have found only two entries. One is a site in India of rock and cave art thought to go back as far as twenty thousand to fifty thousand years, and it includes a man walking a curly tailed dog on a lead! There is also one of a horse with its mane braided into tufts along its neck, clearly the work of man. This is at Bhamabetaka south of Bhopal. Rock carvings and paintings in some parts of the world, Australia in particular, are still being renewed and supplemented with new drawings by the tribesmen there, so rock art may not be old, but some sites show signs of use going back many years. Human culture has elements that have been preserved a long, long time. That's why I love folk art, music and stories. But back to the dogs.

Another piece of evidence is from the Chauvet Cave in France. It is a set of bare footprints in mud of an 8 to 10 year old child and a large canine print which could have been either a tamed wolf or a dog. The age of the footprints is disputed. This article also mentions evidence of some sort (he didn't say what sort) in Belgium, the Czech Republic, the Ukraine and southern Siberia, some of which have been dated back 33,000 BP.

According to another Net article, the Chauvet Cave wolf-dog was linked to another site of the Aurignacian culture known for producing cave art, at which a fossil from a large dog or dog-wolf was dated (with what method?) at 31,700 BP. That was from a research team in 2008. Another recent dating to 26,000 to 27,000 BP was a dog (not wolf-dog) found buried with a bone in its mouth. Clearly a beloved pet, hunter or companion. It was large and had a shorter nose and broader face than a wolf. The author of this particular article said that the evidence leads to the companionship of “highly socialized wolves” and early dogs with nomadic hunter-gatherer peoples rather than just those dwelling in semi-permanent locations, using the dogs for hunting, and that this was a common practice. The author of this article is Mark Derr and is called From the Cave To the Kennel.

12:30 PM Cedric the Entertainer has bombed badly, or so it seems, because “Do You Want To Be a Millionaire” has been replaced on channel 12 NBC by a local talk show called “The Chat,” with a panel of very ordinary-looking women – not celebrities. I usually don't watch that kind of show, but if they will stick with topics of general interest rather than “girl talk”, as they are so far today, it will keep me entertained while I eat lunch. 1:09 “The Chat” wasn't bad. It was a spontaneous conversation about several different subjects. I am only sorry they didn't replace “Days Of Our Lives,” which I think has been on the air since the 1950's. It would be interesting to see how long it has continued. Back to my reading.

One interesting dog breed was the Wool Dog of a people called the Salish in Washington State, also called the Flathead Indians. It was small and long-haired, built like a spitz, and it's white fur was spun for weaving blankets and other cloth. This was in pre-Columbian times, but knowledge of the breeding practices were handed down to modern times. The first white contact with the Salish was in 1805 the Lewis and Clark expedition. European settlers brought in diseases that diminished the Salish population and also brought sheep which replaced the Wool Dog as a source of fur and in time the breed was no longer kept separate from other dogs, causing the breed as such to disappear. The last known Wool Dog died in 1940. This last is from Wikipedia. The author of my book Jake Page credits an archeozoologist named Susan Crockford that the breed was extinct by 1858. Maybe Wikipedia is wrong. It does seem unlikely that the breed would have been continued so long after the native culture broke up. According to Wikipedia the Salish Wool Dog is the only true breed developed in North America in prehistoric times.

3:22 PM I just went down to go to the grocery store and my car won't start. I thought it was the battery, and I had a man jump it. The battery is fine. He said it may not be getting any gas, or it may not be getting “any fire”. He said it could be the distributor cap or the rotor button. I've never heard of a rotor button, but I called Quality Tire and Auto and the owner MIke said he can bring a truck and trailer over tomorrow morning about 10:00 and get the car. That will cost $25.00. I hope this is an inexpensive repair, but even if it isn't I'll have it done. I want to keep the car running as long as I can. I may have to go into my savings account. Oh, well. Life is full of ups and downs, and it is my experience that you just don't know when you're about to have one of its downs! At least I have some money in savings. So, back to my reading.

Dogs have only 2000 taste buds, while humans have 9,000. Dogs don't respond at all to salt. They like sweets, and hate sour or bitter tastes. It is interesting that in humans the sense of taste is greatly influenced by the smell of food, whereas dogs' sense of smell is many times as sensitive as humans, but their sense of taste is much less developed. Yet, I have noticed that a hungry dog will eat things that are either totally obnoxious to humans, such as spoiled food, so it can't be for the taste. This author doesn't say it, but I read years ago that dogs are immune to salmonella. Let's see if I can verify that on the Net. Okay. Salmonella can make dogs and cats sick, though “sub-clinical levels” of the bacteria can be tolerated by a dog. Both dogs and cats can spread salmonella that is in their systems through feces and saliva. So it is potentially dangerous to let animals lick you. I have been licked many times in my life. So far, I'm not sick.

It's supper time. Enough reading for today.