{"id":768270,"date":"2022-05-15T07:33:52","date_gmt":"2022-05-15T11:33:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=768270"},"modified":"2022-05-15T08:01:47","modified_gmt":"2022-05-15T12:01:47","slug":"wonderdog-are-we-taming-dogs-or-are-they-taming-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=768270","title":{"rendered":"‘Wonderdog’: Are we taming dogs, or are they taming us?"},"content":{"rendered":"\t
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Jules Howard's message is profound. It is simply that the more compassionate we have become in our explorations into the minds of dogs, the more intelligent they have shown us to be.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/blockquote>\n\n

ZOE WILLIAMS:<\/strong> While you doubtless don\u2019t need to be reminded of the aeons we\u2019ve known dogs and loved them, zoology has had a tendency to neglect them. \u201cFor decades in the 20th century,\u201d [Jules] Howard writes, \u201cdogs were considered unworthy of rigorous study,\u201d since focusing on them for insights into the animal kingdom was \u201clike trying to understand the adaptations of a chicken\u2019s egg by studying the crumbs of a wet cake\u201d. Dogs were somehow rendered inauthentic, almost processed, by their emotional and physical proximity to us.<\/em><\/p>\n

In fact, counters the author of [Wonderdog: How the Science of Dogs Changed the Science of Life], not only do dogs warrant close study \u2013 \u201cnothing else on Earth has such a wide range of variations within the same species category\u201d \u2013 but every time we\u2019ve done so, we\u2019ve unearthed incomparable wisdom about ourselves. Except when we\u2019ve been wrong: Rudolph Schenkel\u2019s 1947 paper on wolves, hypothesising alpha behaviour and its attendant hierarchies, was applied for years in the fields of both dog and human behaviour…<\/em><\/p>\n

While Howard includes these moments of playful humility on behalf of earlier science, his message is profound, though he insists that it\u2019s \u201cstraightforward\u201d: \u201cIt is simply that the more compassionate we have become in our explorations into the minds of dogs, the more intelligent they have shown us to be”…<\/em><\/p>\n

Does he mean we can apply what we learn about dogs\u2019 brains to our own? Or that the leap of trying to empathise with another species is one that builds our compassion? Or that only by extending our imaginations to take in how intelligent a dog could be can we unlock our own intelligence? He means all these things, and more. Pavlov\u2019s famous discovery of classical conditioning in dogs was the first real departure from the previous understanding of the mind as a \u201cblack box\u201d that would always remain mysterious…<\/em><\/p>\n

One of the most fascinating chapters concerns the anti-dog vivisection movement, raging for almost a century from the mid-1800s, which distilled not only a clash between science and morality, but also the mobilisation of middle-aged women against the establishment and its permitted cruelties, bisecting as it went the Suffragette movement and that of the rights of the child. Are we taming or being tamed? Both, the author insists throughout. It would churlish to force a choice, when it\u2019s worked out so well for us all. <\/em>SOURCE…<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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