brookcove
The Bouvier article was an excellent summary of what I've observed myself, and what most experts today agree.
That's not true. The Bouvier article perpetuates at least two major myths: that dogs form dominance hierarchies, with rank, status, ritualistic displays, etc. It also repeats the ridiculous notion that dogs bear the same basic relationship to wolves, behaviorally speaking, that humans do to chimps. Both ideas exist as part of the current dog world folklore, which some of the "experts" you speak of are sadly responsible for.
The truth is dogs do not form dominance hierarchies, social hierarchies, or any kind of hierarchies. Read "The Social Organization of the Domestic Dog" by Alexandra Semyonova, or "Is Your Dog Dominant?" by yours truly, Semyonova's 15 year study shows that dog social structure can be easily described in autopoietic terms as a self-organizing system, ruled from the bottom up, not the top down. In fact seeing it in those terms makes much more sense than the old alpha model.
My article points out the flaws in the philosophical basis of the alpha theory. One of those flaws is that wild wolves simply do not form dominance hierarchies. And since the idea that dogs form such hierarchies is based on the flawed premise that they've "inherited" this "instinct" from wolves...well do see where I'm going with this? How can dogs have inherited an instinct that never really existed in wolves in the first place? And yet one of the primary "studies" cited in the Bouvier article still relies on this myth. And the article is filled with more of the same untrue, badly outdated stuff.
As for the chimp : human :: wolf : dog argument, you could read my article "It's In His Blood," or you could just sample some of it here:
Ian Dunbar says that since humans share roughly the same amount of DNA (98.6%) with chimps as dogs do with wolves, then, logically speaking, trying to train dogs by studying wolf behavior is like learning how to raise a child by watching chimps, to “see how they do it.” This despite the fact that a mere 12,000 - 120,000 years of evolution separates dogs and wolves, while 6.5 million years separates us from chimps. And even when you parse that comparison down by the numbers of generations rather than the number of years, there’s still a significant difference. And here’s something even more disingenuous on Dunbar’s part: we don’t, in fact share 98.6% of our DNA with chimps; we share 98.6% of our nucleotide sequence. And as cognitive scientist Daniel Povinelli, of the University of Louisiana, puts it: “New research has shown that rough similarity in our nucleotide sequences obscures the fact that the same genes may have dramatically different activity levels in the two species. So even where humans and chimpanzees share genes in common, it turns out that there are what can only be described as major differences in gene expression.” In other words chimps and humans aren’t anywhere near as alike as Dunbar would have us believe, nor even remotely as alike as dogs and wolves actually are to each other.
Meanwhile Dunbar’s inapt analogy also crumbles when we consider that by some scientific forms of reckoning dogs are actually a sub-species of the wolf (canis lupus, canis lupus famliaris), while chimps and humans (pan troglodytes, homo sapiens) aren’t even in the same family. For instance, even though I dislike Jay Leno, I watched a wildlife segment the other night, just to see a gray wolf on The Tonight Show.
It was shocking to behold this gorgeous, majestic animal. We’ve all seen cheetahs and alligators and grizzlies on talk shows before. And they look dangerous and exotic and scary. But what was so shocking about seeing a wolf climbing into the chair next to Jay’s (technically Johnny’s) desk was that he looked very wild and yet very much like a cross between a big sweet German shepherd and a giant malamute. Leno’s wildlife expert even warned people about not making the same mistake and cautioned them not to try petting a wolf, if they should ever see one up close (presumably in a sanctuary; it’s doubtful you’d get a chance in the wild). The point is, we feel awed by something so wild and dangerous as a grizzly bear. The hairs on the back of our neck stand up when we see one in such close proximity to a human being. But while that same wild, dangerous energy is present in a wolf’s appearance and movement, he also looks so familiar and comfortable, like you actually could go up and pet him or kiss him on the nose. I think that’s what was so shocking about the one I saw on Leno.
Granted, you’d never mistake a pug or a dachshund for a wolf. But the point is that it is possible to mistake a wolf for a large dog. And would anyone in their right ever mistake a chimp for a human being, or vice versa? No. Despite the shared nucleotide sequence, the number of evolutionary changes in the two species, chimp and human, are huge.
As Povinelli says: "Chimpanzees have probably changed relatively little from the common ancestor they shared with us about five million years ago. Indeed, of all of the members of the great ape/ human group who shared a common ancestor about fifteen million years ago, none, indeed, has diverged as much as humans. A simple thought experiment may help to put this point into perspective: line up all of the species in question--gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees, bonobos, humans--and one of them immediately stands out. Guess which one?"
And that's only taking into consideration the differences in morphology between the two species. But Dunbar's argument (quoted nearly verbatim without attribution in the Bouvier article) is about the differences in behavior. Well, guess what? You can see a lot more of the wolf's ways of relating to the world in dog behavior and society than you can see of the chimp's relationship to the world in human behavior and society. In other words, dogs and wolves are much closer to each other than we -- with our big cities, cultures and civilizations, art and literature and music, religion, philosophy, and inventions -- are to chimps. Where's the chimp version of Edison, Shakespeare, Newton, or Mozart? Of course that's part of Dunbar's sophistry. There's soooooo much difference between humans and chimps, right? so according to Dunbar, given their shared DNA, there must be the same huge level of difference between dogs and wolves. But there isn't. Where is the dog version of Edison, Shakespeare, etc.? This is a terribly strained analogy that just doesn't fly when you really look at it.
I hope that clears up why I found the Bouvier article lacking and misleading.
LCK