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Title: Dogs : A Startling New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior & Evolution by Raymond Coppinger, Lorna Coppinger ISBN: 0-684-85530-5 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 27 May, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.67 (27 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A jewel -- with a few flaws
Comment: The authors are trained ethologists with a life-long interest in dogs. Their views are also shaped by visiting and studying dogs in many parts of the world. That's further enriched by their experience in training and working with many different types of dogs -- in particular, herding dogs and herd guard dogs, sled dogs, and village dogs.
Ethology is a branch of biology that studies animal behavior. It emphasizes evolutionary principles in behavior, often identifying continuity and change in patterns from studying closely related species. It also emphasizes studying the behavior in the natural context or setting. (Comparative psychology, by contrast, had grown to primarily favor the laboratory method and setting -- until the revolution of ethology and Eckhard Hess's work shook it up.)
This book is a work for the serious student of canine behavior but written in a style that's readable by anyone with an interest in a scientific approach to and understanding of dogs. It greatly expands (and makes far more readable) the material in the Coppinger & Schneider chapter in "The Domestic Dog", James Serpell (Ed.) published six years earlier, but it also extends it into other areas.
Its most important thesis is that dogs probably derived from wolf-like animals which hung around mesolithic villages and were scavengers, quite similar to "village dogs" in many parts of the world. They were not wolves, captured as puppies and then tamed. Wolves do NOT ever become tame or trainable. I found their argument on these point to be extremely convincing.
The serious student of dogs will also find their ethological observations and comparisons of dogs valuable.
Despite its great worth and contribution, the book is not without some petty flaws.
I'd have liked more discussion on how the sequence of actions, like beads on a string, of orient/ eye-stalk/ chase/ grab-bite/ kill-bite/ dissect/ consume becomes fragmented so that some elements disappear while others remain. And how the differences arise for different dog "types". As ethologists, they know that there are many different behavior sequences in a species of which the predatory game killing pattern is only one. What about various social behaviors? Play behavior? Reproductive behavior? Adult attitude toward puppies?
I became frustrated at the authors' lapses in consideration for their readers in their word usage, "transhumance" being one example. They used it several times before it was ever defined. It means the shepherds or drovers making seasonal migrations with their flocks in the Mediterranean region. Either explain it sooner or, even better, use terms familiar to English speaking readers. (On a websearch for "transhumance," the first 30 hits were all French except one, translated into English, from a Swedish university.
The authors' descriptions of genetic processes are neither models of exposition or of clarity. E.g., I think once a claim was made that a behavior cannot be genetically controlled because there are alleles at the same locus. (An allele is a gene's partner at the same locus on the companion chromosome.) In a single gene model, one can, for example, have a dominant or recessive gene as an allele. That makes it not genetic? The reader interested in genetics should not look to this book for understanding. Use a basic college biology text.
Another example is discussing how experience "shapes" the developing neurological "wiring". But "shape" then becomes so often used as a noun, and such a big deal is made about it altering the shape of the brain, that I found myself writing in the margin, "Are they reintroducing phrenology??!!" (Phrenology was the pseudo-science popular in the early 1800s; it purported that the abilities, characters, and deficits of a person could be ascertained from the bumps and valleys on the skull since the skull would reflect the underlying volume of the brain.) Basic introductory tests in psychology will cover this relation between early experience and brain function far more clearly.
The authors rile some sacred cows, possibly deliberately, perhaps to provoke discussion (and maybe controversy and publicity?).
They take aim at restricting the gene pool in AKC registered breeds. This gradually develops more genetic abnormalities and health problems -- eyes, hips, skin conditions, etc. Also, they
suggest that AKC breed clubs, by presenting a picture of the ideal dog with little or no behavioral measures of excellence, inevitably tend to accentuate some characteristics more and more. This leads working dogs to lose their superior abilities in some areas and become unhealthy caricatures of their ancestors. The bulldog, with continual respiratory problems and unable to breed on its own, is given as an extreme example. This is a worthwhile topic to discuss, IMO.
They also question whether people are dogs' best friends or are dogs being used as robots or slaves. While they raise some interesting questions in this area they give no answers. (I found myself wondering, would they include or exclude themselves -- and their history of dog ownership and use -- from such an indictment?) But also a worthwhile topic for discussion.
Rating: 3
Summary: thought-provoking, but some points overstated
Comment: The first half of the book was quite enjoyable and thought-provoking. The authors describe how dogs evolved from scavenger village dogs, rather than directly from wolves. They argue that dogs are a distinct and extraordinary creature, not an inferior subspecies of wolves, with behavioral traits that are different from and often surpassing wolves.
I found the second half of the book, however, to be a bit preachy, pessimistic, and overstated. One main premise seemed to be that keeping dogs as household pets (as opposed to working dogs) is a lose-lose situation for the dog and the owner. Humans lose because pet dogs take valuable resources, time and money, away from our species, resources we should be investing in our offspring. Pet dogs rarely give back to us in terms of affection or whatever enough to make up for what they take from us. Dogs lose because they are slaves to our every whim, often subjected to inadequate care and boredom, and purebreds are being bred for appearance at the expense of their own health and genetic vitality. The author lashed out at showdog breeders.
Point taken, but I think the authors overstated their case, throwing the baby out with the bath water. I don't believe dogs tap us out of resources to an unhealthy degree. If anything the huge dog industry (food, supplies, vet care...etc.) benefits our economy. I know many families who find great joy in owning a dog as a pet, and I think dogs add to a parent-child relationship rather than detract.
I also thought it quite hypocritcal, given the author's use of dogs for sled racing, when the author ripped on the use of dogs to assist people with special needs, such as people bound to a wheelchair. The author argued that it is unhealthy and unnatural for the dog, but that sled dog racing was somehow exempt from the criticism.
Rating: 5
Summary: I don't care!
Comment: I don't care what the rest of you guys say - except for the others who gave this book 5 stars - it's a great, wonderful read. If you love dogs and especially if you have wondered a lot about how wolves turned into dogs, read it, you'll like it.
True, it's probably an exaggeration on the part of the authors to say that they have had close relationships with all those dogs - what do they claim, 3,000 or so? And then they just sold off all their sled dogs and went on to something else. But the research they've done is never-endingly-fascinating. I feel I understand my dogs better than before, and what more could you ask?
Review by Janet Knori, author of Awakening in God
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Title: The Domestic Dog : Its Evolution, Behaviour and Interactions with People by James Serpell ISBN: 0521425379 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 21 September, 1995 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: The Truth About Dogs: An Inquiry into the Ancestry, Social Conventions, Mental Habits, and Moral Fiber of Canis Familiaris by Stephen Budiansky ISBN: 014100228X Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 02 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Other End of the Leash by Patricia McConnell ISBN: 0345446798 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 04 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Genetics and the Social Behavior of the Dog by John Paul Scott, John L. Fuller ISBN: 0226743381 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: February, 1998 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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Title: The Cautious Canine by Patricia B. McConnell ISBN: 1891767003 Publisher: Dog's Best Friend, Ltd. Pub. Date: 01 June, 1998 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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