Are dogs not our faithful furry friends, but canine chameleons who behave the way they do simply because it’s in their interests? How do you know what your dog is really thinking? Are you its wonderful master or mistress who deserves its allegiance, or an easily manipulated food source that’s good for a comfy bed and a square meal?
We don’t know for sure exactly when or why dogs started hanging out with us. Perhaps it was an arrangement that suited them by providing a short cut to the basics - or perhaps it suited us when we realised that there were some useful jobs this efficient hunter could do while also being a good boy, “yes he would, yes, yes, yes he would be such a good boy”.
Whatever its exact age, the dog-human connection is not that old. We were making pottery, using bows and arrows to kill animals and painting on the walls of caves long before the first dogs were domesticated around 15,000 years ago.
We do know for sure that dogs are a kind of wolf – the two animals have 99.8% of their DNA in common. At some point, some wolves realised that groups of humans were a pretty good food source and began to ingratiate themselves with our ancestors. Gradually they became less wolfy – reducing the “lone” part of “lone wolf” - and the dog as we know it evolved.
It was only a moment in evolutionary terms before the once mighty wolf, born to be wild, was reduced to the now ubiquitous fur baby, bred for style not practicality, primped, pompadoured and prettified and carried in front packs or taken for walks in prams through city streets.
It’s possible this is just fine with the descendants of wolves. Perhaps dogs have realised that there are such things as free rides and free lunches and they’re happy to take them.
There is no denying they are happy in general. Neuroscience has recently been providing some surprising insights into what is going on in your dog’s head. According to the American Kennel Club website, MRI has revealed that, “A dog’s reward centre is as active when the dog is praised as when they’re given a hot dog”. Which has to be an evolutionary blip as far as the dog is concerned - it started all this to get the free food, but now it will settle for a bit of, “Who’s a good boy?” and a scratch behind the ear.
It gets worse. Dogs share a gene with humans who have Williams-Beuren syndrome, which causes people to be indiscriminately friendly. So, yes, the dog probably likes you, but only because it can’t help itself.
In fact, if handled correctly, dogs will stick like glue to just about any animal. In one study, dogs even bonded with sheep when they were raised with lambs, and they have been made to form connections with chickens.
They can even be trained to get along with penguins. On Australia’s Middle Island, dogs are used to protect a penguin colony from predators such as foxes. The 2015 movie Oddball was inspired by this interspecies odd coupling.
It’s probably just as well this doesn’t come up often, because a puppy-penguin combo would reach a quantum level of cuteness that could well be powerful enough to disrupt the time-space continuum.
Canadian psychologist Dr Stanley Coren believes dogs are apparently free with their favours because we humans have bred them to form strong bonds and that capacity is easily transferred to other species. They’re just so darned good at bonding they don’t know when to stop.
The neuroscience works both ways. If a dog stares at us with its big brown – or occasionally blue – eyes, it triggers the same response we have when babies gaze at us. As US canine expert Brian Hare puts it, “Dogs have hijacked the human bonding system.”
One easily overlooked similarity between the two-legged and four-legged members of the pooch-person partnerships is that they are pack animals on both sides. Dogs and their relatives in the wild stick together in groups for protection and food sourcing. Humans – in theory, at least – do something similar. So, when we and our dogs get together, we are both operating along very similar lines.
There is much more to be discovered about the strong bonds that unite dogs and humans, but nothing is likely to alter the conclusion that, whatever else happens, we are stuck with each other, and very happy about it.
