ron2:
Lee Charles Kelley: The attempt to hump is nothing more than a strong feeling of social attraction that feels thwarted in some way (like a bad past experience). And it's definitely a predatory-based behavior.
I will agree that dogs, being predator-like, could use such a move in a hunt. But the intention is different.
I never meant to imply that the motor pattern involved in one dog humping another is in any way relevant to any kind of predatory motor pattern. If it is, I don't see the connection you do. And as for the dog's "intention," you may remember from some of my previous posts (but probably don't; I give people a lot of seemingly off-the-wall stuff to absorb), dogs don't, in fact they can't, form the intent to produce a behavior. That comes from intellect, and dogs don't have any intellectual capacities, only rudimentary pre-cursors to certain
forms of intellect.
So if I were arguing that humping is somehow consonant with a predatory behavior (which I'm not) I would say that the behavior may be similar but that the underlying feeling state, not the "intent" of the dog, is different. But that's moot because I'm actually saying the opposite, sort of. The feeling is the same but the behavior is different. In both cases -- dog humping another dog, dog chasing a squirrel -- the dog is attracted to the other through his prey drive, which means that on a certain level, the prey drive is somewhat (perhaps very) sexual in nature.
It helps if you look at what the reproductive instinct entails, where it stands in the level of importance to other instincts, how it's different in dogs than in wolves, and how it interpenetrates social and predatory behaviors in both predators and prey animals. In fact all of nature is quite sexual, even down to the way winds and storms behave and rivers and ocean currents flow. Poets have made a living off this stuff for countless eons.
That sounds very Gaia-esque, I know, but I think we can agree that there are two basic polarities to the sex drive in mammals: life and death, eros and thanatos, creating life and having the means, aggressively speaking, to protect it. In other words the ability for a mammal to be aggressive, the energy that drives its natural aggression, at least in terms of protecting one's young, comes from the reproductive instinct. That's what gives it its oomph, And on the most basic energetic level, of attraction and resistance, attraction/desire is a sexually based energy (connected to the reproductive instinct--the drive to create life, pass on the genetic code, etc., and to protect life, keep the genetic code from being eliminated), while resistance/fear is designed to keep the individual organism safe, to protect his ability to remain a viable, potential reproductive being. So while fear/survival of the individual reflects the first biological imperative, reproduction is the second. And although we can differentiate between the two, there are some ways in which they overlap, just as they overlap with the social and predatory instincts.
Along those lines, and knowing how strong the attraction to prey animals is in wolves (and in some dogs, many of whom are actually more indiscriminate, wanting to chase and bite not just real prey animals but cars, joggers, motorcycles, leaves caught in a breeze, etc.), it seems only natural that hunting is, in some ways, a sexual activity. In fact, on a certain level it's highly sexual, highly arousing for both prey and predator. (Why would a deer's tail flip up in the air the instant he takes off on the run and is being chased--does he want to be a target?)
Here's some of what Kevin Behan says: "That the prey instinct has a sexual component to it, and that the prey instinct was amplified through domestication, is why, in my view, modern breeds of dogs are so much more sexual than the wolf. Wolves breed once a year and in general are not sexually active until about two years of age. Dogs, on the other hand, will breed promiscuously."
Also, in wolves (and dogs) remember that the simple prey instinct found in most mammalian predators has another layer of complexity to it: it's a group activity, which requires that the urge to bite not be indiscriminate, that it be suppressed and sublimated into social behaviors, and then only channeled outward (usually) to actual prey animals or rival packs. In other words dogs are socially attracted to one another on a certain level through their prey drive. You can't get complex group predation without that happening.
So if the urge to bite is somehow linked not only to the predatory instinct but to the sexual instinct as well, and if playing with other dogs is one form of expressing predatory energy (whether it prepares young mammals for the hunt physically or not), and if one dog feels attracted to another through his desire to play, and the other dog isn't interested, then that first dog might find his inner cogs slipping into another gear, which may cause him to hump his disinterested play "partner." This may cause the other dog to flip around and air bite, or take off running, or whatever. And a game may ensue. If it does often enough, it becomes a learned play strategy (which we see in many dogs). It also explains why females will hump males, males hump males, and females hump females. It's not really sexual, and it's not about dominance. It's a frustration of that feeling of attraction to a potential prey animal, or its playful alternative.
Anyway, that's why I said what I did above, that humping is connected to the prey drive.
LCK
"Clicker training has not taught me a whole bunch, other than that people can get wrapped up in fads and catch phrases." Bob Bailey
"If a lion could talk we would not be able to understand him." Wittegenstein. "If a lion could talk we would understand him perfectly, but we would learn very little about ordinary lions from him."Daniel C. Dennett
"Dogs don't care who's alpha and who's not. Only emotionally dysfunctional owners and trainers do." Jack Field