Apes and Canines
“Please excuse me,” I said as I got into bed, my legs displacing dogs and cats as I wrestled myself under the covers, “I can’t help having such a gangly ape body.”
Madeline
The little red dog called Madeline wriggled under the covers too, nestling her body into the curves of mine before falling back asleep. It was chilly outside but she was very warm. Cats prowled the perimeter of the bed. Outside, the feral roosters up in the trees began to crow, as they do sometimes if something disturbs them in the middle of the night.[*]
Madeline loves to snuggle, especially when she’s sleepy. Holding her tightly to me, I acutely felt myself to be an ape clutching a canine for warmth and comfort in the middle of the night. In the background, I heard cats going about their nocturnal occupations as birds called to one another up in the trees. It felt very jungly and primordial.
Muddy Madeline
The association of people and dogs is written into our bodies.
Humans and dogs co-evolved. Like plants and their pollinators, the progenitors of dogs and humans got together for mutual benefit. The latest data suggest that Canis lupus and Homo erectus were in close relationship with one another for thousands of years and that this relationship helped to determine the details of our evolution into Canis familiaris and Homo sapiens.
Writing in Evolution and Cognition, Wolfgang M. Schleidt and Michael D. Shalter note that “sometime during the last Ice Age, our ancestors teamed up with pastoralist wolves” and that the initial contacts between those species were “truly mutual.” According to Raul Valadez Azúa, writing in Revista Asociación Mexicana de Médicos Veterinarios Especialistas en Pequeñas Especies, the period of mutual aid lasted until about 40,000 years ago, when people broke the balance, taking advantage of familiarity to bring the reproduction of dogs under human control.
Think about it: There might not be any people were it not for the extra evolutionary edge provided to our progenitors by those friendly wolves on those icy nights. Yet there came a time when people felt free to turn around and make slaves of their trusting friends. Thus to all of the other evils associated with so-called “domestication,” when it comes to dogs, we must also add betrayal.
The violation is shocking but not singular. Think about the development of patriarchy, wherein men made slaves (aka wives) out of the women in their lives. Even now, in some places, men think of their daughters, lovers, sisters, and even mothers as their rightful possessions.
That’s the kind of thinking that has led us to the brink of climatic catastrophe, not to mention bringing us warfare, genocide, and slavery. Only truly mutual aid — among ourselves and between ours and other species — can save us.
Mutual aid among animals of different species is not at all uncommon in the wild. Flying squirrels nest with birds in the cavities of hollow trees. Song birds of different species band together to chase off predators. Sentries at watering holes warn everybody when danger comes calling.
We see a lot of mutual aid here at the sanctuary too, both within and across species. Right now, I see that rooster from a family that lives in the coops has appointed himself as the guardian and guide of a feral hen with an eye injury. Last week, I saw the Muscovy duck we call “Seagull” herding a confused chicken newcomer into the coop on his first night. She and her family stayed outside in the twilight until the new bird got himself safely inside.
Madeline does her part too, washing cat faces and keeping their ears clear of mites and debris. Sometimes, when she’s cleaning one cat, another will line up waiting for his turn.
Mutual Aid
In such small moments, I find hope. And so I find myself, as so many before me have been, endebted to a dog.
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[*] I knew everything was okay because they would have been making alarm cries rather than crowing if anything was wrong. Crowing is a kind of a-okay signal for roosters. If a rooster awakens in the night, he checks around to see if anything is wrong. If not, he crows before falling back asleep. But his crow often wakes up another rooster, ultimately setting off a cascade of crowing before everybody goes back to sleep.
January 30th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
I watched a PBS documentary about the origins of dogs and this one suggested a new theory , presumably gaining ground, that argues against the older idea about people kidnapping wolf babies and nursing them into subjagation. The doc argued that the wolf-to-dog leap happened when early human civilizations started producing trash piles— in doing so, they opened up a new niche. Wolves with a long flight distance, the ones who would run really far when they spot a human,– those wolves stayed wolves and stuck to hunting. But the wolves with traits that allowed them to be comfy enough around humans to survive through eating trash– they mated and created the proto-dog. Its an interesting idea, suggesting that the human dog-makers were not so much slavers but that trash production had immediate consequences for other animals, creating dependency relationships soon to be molded into outright domination, coercion, and all of the other atocities of how things were coming together. . .
August 30th, 2008 at 11:44 am
[...] to my house last week for an extravaganza of examinations and vaccinations, in the course of which dog Madeline became very afraid. Soothing her so that the vet could draw blood, assuring her that this was to [...]