What is a Dog?
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What is a Dog?
1–10 of 47 posts
Re: What is a Dog?
#2noone here knows, but I am :D
joking aside; in light of the text, I could imagine one dog defending a turf against intruding dogs would be a huge driver to their adoption.
Re: What is a Dog?
#3As a dog owner, I smirked when the author described dogs as only interested in humans because we supply the food. Yeah, that's probably true, but I don't care if my beloved pet only thinks of me as a meal dispenser, it's actually kinda funny.
> But when they murmur and pump their legs while sleeping, they’re dreaming of freedom.
But ouch. That really hurts.
Re: What is a Dog?
#4I'm not sure I fully agree with the article's takeaway that dogs are only in it for the food. It's a bit of a crude summary. In addition to food, humans provide shelter, protection, love, attention, play time, and companionship - I don't think food is the only driver of the relationship.
My dog will hide behind me if he's scared, and enjoys attention from people he doesn't know - irrespective of whether they provide food for him or not. And he'll cry and ignore food from others for hours if I'm separated from him. Maybe this is just anecdotal data, but seems doubtful.
Re: What is a Dog?
#5I'm not sure I fully agree with the article's takeaway that dogs are only in it for the food. It's a bit of a crude summary. In addition to food, humans provide shelter, protection, love, attention, play time, and companionship - I don't think food is the only driver of the relationship. My dog will hide behind me if he's scared, and enjoys attention from people he doesn't know - irrespective of whether they provide…
I agree with you: if we are going to be so reductive, we could make the case that any animal species, humans included, is only in it for the food.
Re: What is a Dog?
#6I never was a dog guy. Always had cats during childhood. I used to find dogs scary and stinky. But then, at 38, a few years ago, I suddenly needed a dog. What was it? The kids growing older? Me, getting older? I don't know. But I wanted a dog. I contemplated the idea for one year. And then I adopted a dog from a shelter. Greatest thing ever. A dog is such a great companion. They say that a dog will make you laugh once a day. It's 100% true based on my experience.
Re: What is a Dog?
#7It isn't wrong to project our desires and fantasy of engagement on to specific dogs, in as much as mutuality can exist between us as good source and them as consumers. Symbiosis takes many forms and to imagine the butterfly feels no pleasure as the plant releases a drop of nectar is to deny we could build a probe fine enough to find out. But so what? They go on sucking nectar, and our dogs go on making eyes at us and whining for food, which we willingly and happily comply with. There is nothing intrinsically wrong here. There is something intrinsically wrong in claiming to be objective and denying the possibility and it's wrong to attribute all species enhancing behaviours purely to genes and acquired traits. If dogs are capable of making choices and we are capable of making choices is there no room for a happy medium? An equitable, biologically deterministic mutuality?
PS not a dog owner but also not a dog hater. The book sounds like a good read.
Re: What is a Dog?
#8It isn't wrong to project our desires and fantasy of engagement on to specific dogs, in as much as mutuality can exist between us as good source and them as consumers. Symbiosis takes many forms and to imagine the butterfly feels no pleasure as the plant releases a drop of nectar is to deny we could build a probe fine enough to find out. But so what? They go on sucking nectar, and our dogs go on making eyes at us and…
I have a funny metaphor about animal vs humans.
Video games today are 1000000x more sophisticated, realistic than anything from the early 80s. Still 8 bit games were games, they had the same elements in them, except in low res, freq and count. The structure, the "quality", not the quantity. Same goes for computers. When I boot a win95 box, it's all there, minus the HTML5/CSS3 capable stack.
I do believe that most life forms, above a level of complexity have most of the things we think as human exclusive. Surely when an animal spent so much time and effort into finding a source of feeding, as the nutrient come in, his system reacts and communicate "satisfaction" in one form or another. The butterfly just don't write a song about it afterwards.
Re: What is a Dog?
#9This doesn't seem quite right. My Shiba Inu (her name is Doge, check her out: https://www.instagram.com/brndnmtthws/) is generally quite disinterested in food. I often have to trick her or keep her leash on and attach it near her bowl to make her eat. When she gets excited, she can't be bribed with treats (she just ignores them).
She likes food, but it seems like her main interest is playing. She'd rather run around in circles or play fetch than eat most of the time.
Re: What is a Dog?
#10I'm not sure I fully agree with the article's takeaway that dogs are only in it for the food. It's a bit of a crude summary. In addition to food, humans provide shelter, protection, love, attention, play time, and companionship - I don't think food is the only driver of the relationship. My dog will hide behind me if he's scared, and enjoys attention from people he doesn't know - irrespective of whether they provide…
I agree with you: if we are going to be so reductive, we could make the case that any animal species, humans included, is only in it for the food.
only in it for the food.
Or, going one step further, universal optimization by means of more efficient use of energy. The end game is the heat death of the universe (maximum entropy, no more energy differentials), after all ;)