The Dog Present Themselves: Canine Language and Communication

For species living together as a pack, good communication is vital in order to survive. It is important for teamwork during hunting, bringing up offspring, and last but not least to maintain peace and avoid conflict within the pack. Conflicts can be dangerous, causing damage, leading to a weakening of the pack and decreasing their chances of survival. Wolves and dogs have developed remarkable ways of communicating, making them able to avoid or stop conflicts that may occur. ⁽¹⁾ 

A dog’s world in based on sensations from sight, smell, vocalization and hearing. ⁽²⁾ They leave messages of urine as a way of communicating, telling other dogs that this is their territory, or letting them know that they are in heat and ready to mate. A dog’s sense of smell and ability of hearing exceeds a human’s by miles, making it almost impossible for us to pick up any of their scented messages. However, dogs are also, in many cases, extremely vary of changes in behaviour and can detect tiny details and swift signals, making some of them experts at reading body language. Together with their other senses, dogs use this system of body language and signals as means of communications between themselves, and it is therefore naturally that they will try to communicate with other species in the same way, including humans.

Turid Rugaas, a Norwegian dog trainer and behaviourist studying canine social interaction, call some of these gestures calming signals, as they in many occasions are used to avoid conflict and sticky situations. According to Rugaas, there are about 30 signals or more, used as communication between dogs as their universal language. ⁽³⁾ Dogs will also try to communicate with their humans in the same order, and learning how to understand these signals will make life a lot easier for both dogs and humans.

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Yawning is a typical example used by dogs as a calming signal. It can signify that the dog is, in one way or another, displeased with the situation. ⁽¹⁾⁽³⁾ Excessive use of your voice (remember, dogs have an exceptional sense of hearing!), loud noises, stress, feeling uncomfortable or threatened, are all situations that may conjure a yawn. In similar cases, a dog might turn its head away and even start licking its lips to show discomfort, tying to calm down the situation. Licking of the lips is known especially to be commonly used by black dogs, or dogs with a lot of hair covering their face, as they don’t have the same portrayal of facial mimics as other dogs.⁽³⁾

A dog turning its head away when you go over to greet it, might mean that you have appeared too abruptly, making it feel insecure or even threatened.⁽³⁾ This is often typical when greeting an unknown dog for the first time; walking straight over to it and even standing or leaning over it, making it feel uncertain or threatened by your position. ⁽⁴⁾ One might therefore under these circumstances see the dog turn its head down or away, even turn its whole body, letting you known that you have come too close too quickly. It is therefore always advised to walk toward a dog from the side, instead of heading straight on, before crouching down by its side, letting it greet you first through sniffing before attempting to touch or stroke it. ⁽³⁾

 A sudden sniffing of the ground or surroundings, or abrupt scratching are also typical calming signals, and can, together with yawning and licking, be called “displacement behaviours”, where the dog seems to suddenly find other stuff to do to calm and avoid the situation.⁽³⁾⁽⁵⁾ Repeatedly ignoring these signals can turn into potentially dangerous situations; dogs who are seldom socialised with other dogs can end up loosing their language, leading to misunderstandings and possible conflicts when meeting other dogs. Conflicts can also occur between dog and human, were a dogs many attempts on calming or warning a human to stay away simply doesn’t work, sometimes forcing dogs to resort to aggressive behaviour such as snarling or even biting. Situations like these are of course something one would want to avoid at any cost, revealing how important it is to respect animals and their specific language or other means of communication.

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 It is highly important when reading a dogs body language and signals that they are done some by looking at the body language and expressions as a whole, as signals one normally would interpret as friendly could mean something totally different when taken out of context and not being red as a whole together with other signs of communication or body language.

When you have learned some of the basic forms of body language used by dogs, you will grow more and more aware of them, even using them yourself to calm your dog down, in situations of stress or excitement.

Learning the different ways of how your dog is trying to communicate with you is a crucial step in maintaining a healthy and peaceful relationship. After all, you have in most cases chosen to bring the dog inside your house, making it a part of your family, meaning that you should treat it and its individual needs with respect.

References

(1) http://www.doglistener.co.uk/language/language_canine.shtml

(2) http://puppies.about.com/od/BehaviorProblems/a/Dog-Language-How-Dogs-Communicate.htm

(3) On Talking Terms With Dogs: Calming Signals by Turid Rugaas. Dogwise    Publishing, 2005

(4) http://puppies.about.com/od/BehaviorProblems/a/How-To-Talk-To-Puppies.htm

(5) http://www.dogspelledforward.com/canine-body-postures/

Domestication - from Wolf to Dog

Dogs are thought to be one of the first animals to be domesticated by humans, and are today use in a wide variety of areas, including working dogs, hunting, herding, guarding, as companionship, and most recently as service dogs. On the basis of this, it can by the first glance seem as though humans were the first to pursue contact with the wolves, but can we really be too certain about this?

 The domestication on wolves and the development of today’s domesticated dogs did clearly not happen over night, and findings from Goyet Cave in Belgium, Chauvet cave in France and Predmosti in the Czech Republic suggest that the process of domestication started long before first imagined, as long as 35 000 years ago. However, the first indication of a working relationship between man and wolf can be found at the Bonn-Oberkassel site, approximately 14 000 years old. ⁽¹⁾

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There are two main hypothesis of how wolf and human came in contact with each other; this was during the time when humans were still nomads, following the migrating patterns of the animals they hunted. The wolves would have been one of the humans’ competition in the hunting game, and it is therefore thought that humans were to first to take contact, finding abandoned wolf cubs, or simply stealing them when possible, to tame them and use them for hunting purposes. This would most likely have happened over a long amount of time, and in geographically different areas, taming several various species of wolves. The wolves showing desirable traits, such as good hunting skills and submissive states of mind were then thought to be chosen for the process of selective breeding, making sure that these characteristics were passed on to the next generation.⁽²⁾

The other hypothesis believes that the wolves were the ones to seek contact with the humans, as their paths were more than likely to cross at several occasions, meaning that some wolves might have became less shy, seeking out food from the humans garbage areas, or even over time from the humans directly. The less shy a wolf became, the more of an advantage it would gain by being able to feed for longer. A natural selection of the more contact seeking wolves could have occurred, making them more and more used to humans, eventually living and working together as the humans control increased. ⁽²⁾

Domestication lead to morphological and behavioural changes, such as changes found in the skeleton. Skeletons were showing a form of juvenile regression; meaning that it returned to a less developed or juvenile state, know as pedomorphism.⁽¹⁾⁽³⁾ The same could be said for the behaviour, meaning that after generations the wolves would decrease in size, as well as exhibiting a more juvenile and playful temperament, eventually leading to the domesticated dog. ⁽¹⁾

References

(1) http://www.kursagenten.no/artikkel/354/Domestisering-1868.aspx

(2) Dominique Grandjean & Franck Haymann, Dog Encyclopaedia by Royal Canin, p. 6 – 8. Published by the Royal Canin Group, 2010.

(3) http://9e.devbio.com/article.php?id=223

The Story of Dogs

Dogs are kept as pets or used for other purposes in most parts of the world, and in the UK alone, there are over 10.5 million dogs. ⁽¹⁾ Taking these numbers in to account, and the dogs importance and increasing role in today’s society, one cannot simply stop wondering where these remarkable creatures originated, and how they came to tie such close relations to human beings.

Dogs, as we know them, belong to the family Canidea. The Canids consists of 38 species ⁽²⁾, as well as several sub species, including Canis familiaris, mans best friend. The exact origin of the domestic dog is still unclear, making the development from wolf to dog a much-debated topic. Some think the domestic dog should be classified as Canis lupus familiaris, as it might have descended from the Grey wolf, Canis lupus.

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The most common perception of the origin of the domestic dog, is that they descend directly from wolves. However, newer research looking into dogs’ genetic information reveals this as only half of the picture. Robert Wayne and his co-workers at UCLA show through genetic research that wolves and dogs share everything but 0.2% of their genetic information,⁽³⁾ supporting the theory that dogs really do descend directly from wolves. On the other hand, Wayne also reveals that the genetic information of dogs might originate from other species of wild canids.

Although there are few specific details of the domestic dog’s history and origin, it is known, on the basis of genetic and behavioural studies, that the dog is a domesticated wolf. But what species of wolf is the domestic dog’s closest relative? Zeuner argumented in 1963 that the Indian wolf Canis lupus pallipes was the closest relative due to its smaller size and less tendencies of aggressive display, making it less of a challenge to tame. ⁽⁴⁾ The European wolf, Canis lupus, and the west Asian wolf, Canis lupus arabs were recognized by Clutton-Brook in 1984 as the domestic dogs most likely ancestor, as they both have a greater representation of genes in the genetic information of arctic dog breeds.⁽⁴⁾ The actual fact may be that dog’s as we know them, and their waste differences in size and appearance is due to the fact that the domestic dog may have been influenced by several types or species of wolves.

There are several plausible theories concerning the origin of the domestic dog, and one can only hope that research eventually will uncover the missing links that may give us more concrete answers than we already have today.

References

(1)  http://www.dognews.co.uk/uk-domestic-dog-population-is-larger-than-originally-thought-3/

(2)  http://entomology.cornell.edu/cals/entomology/extension/outreach/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&PageID=1033768

(3)  Dominique Grandjean & Franck Haymann, Dog Encyclopaedia by Royal Canin, p. 2 – 5. Published by the Royal Canin Group, 2010.

(4)  http://www.kursagenten.no/artikkel/354/Domestisering-1868.aspx