In order to help meet the conditions for joining the Single European currency, all citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland must be made aware that the phrase ‘Spending a Penny’ is not to be used after 31st December 2013 .
From this date, the correct terminology will be: ‘Euronating’.
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To all readers who are unfamiliar with the phrase ‘spend a penny’ it effectively means going to the bathroom, in American speak.
An English penny, circa 1912
My understanding is that when the first public lavatories were opened in the cities of England, one had to place a penny in the mechanism in order to open the door to the toilet. Hence the expression of spending a penny.
A fascinating study on human empathy strikes a chord with man and dog, perhaps.
Let me start with a true account from the evening of Monday, 19th August.
That evening, at 7pm, I had an appointment with my doctor in Grants Pass. Jean stayed at home looking after our guests and preparing the evening meal.
The journey from the doctor’s clinic back to home, a distance of 20 miles, takes a little over half-an-hour. The last 3 miles are along Hugo Road; about 6 minutes including opening and closing the gate across our driveway.
Anyway, according to Jean shortly after 8pm Pharaoh sprang up barking and went across to put his nose against one of the windows that looks out over our front drive and garden. Jeannie looked at the clock on the kitchen wall and made a note of the time: it was 8:10pm. She also came over to the window that Pharaoh was looking out of and searched for any reason for his outburst of barking: squirrels, deer, any kind of wildlife or other distraction. There was none.
A little before 8:20pm Jeannie saw the headlights of my car pull up and moments later I came in through the front door.
It appeared that Pharaoh had sensed the point where I had turned into Hugo Road.
One could easily dismiss this, perhaps by thinking that Jean had unconsciously signalled to Pharaoh that I was on my way home. But Jean had only the vaguest idea of when I might be back.
Or one could be drawn to the research undertaken by Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, as this extract from a post back in May, 2011 explains.
What an amazing book this is.
Amazing!
I have written about Dr Rupert Sheldrake a few times on Learning from Dogs for pretty obvious reasons! You can do a search on the Blog under ‘sheldrake’ but here are a couple of links. Serious Learning from Dogs on January 10th, 2011 and Time for a rethink on the 14th April, 2011.
Anyway, I am now well towards the end of Sheldrake’s revised book, Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home and it is more than fascinating. Bit short of time just now so please forgive me if I do no more than show this video which sets out some of the background to the book. Sheldrake’s website is here, by the way.
Anyway, what’s this all leading up to?
I can’t recall where it was that I read about a report posted on the Forbes website about the new findings of the power of human empathy.
Study: To The Human Brain, Me Is We
A new study from University of Virginia researchers supports a finding that’s been gaining science-fueled momentum in recent years: the human brain is wired to connect with others so strongly that it experiences what they experience as if it’s happening to us.
This would seem the neural basis for empathy—the ability to feel what others feel—but it goes even deeper than that. Results from the latest study suggest that our brains don’t differentiate between what happens to someone emotionally close to us and ourselves, and also that we seem neurally incapable of generating anything close to that level of empathy for strangers.
The research revealed:
“The correlation between self and friend was remarkably similar,” said James Coan, a psychology professor in U.Va.’s College of Arts & Sciences who co-authored the study. “The finding shows the brain’s remarkable capacity to model self to others; that people close to us become a part of ourselves, and that is not just metaphor or poetry, it’s very real. Literally we are under threat when a friend is under threat. But not so when a stranger is under threat.”
The findings back up an assertion made by the progenitor and popularizer of “Interpersonal Neurobiology,” Dr. Daniel Siegel, who has convincingly argued that our minds are partly defined by their intersections with other minds. Said another way, we are wired to “sync” with others, and the more we sync (the more psycho-emotionally we connect), the less our brains acknowledge self-other distinctions.
Later in that Forbes article Professor Coan is reported:
“A threat to ourselves is a threat to our resources,” said Coan. “Threats can take things away from us. But when we develop friendships, people we can trust and rely on who in essence become we, then our resources are expanded, we gain. Your goal becomes my goal. It’s a part of our survivability.”
So if science is discovering that our subconscious minds are connecting “psycho-emotionally” with the minds of others whom we trust, then it doesn’t seem like too great a leap to embrace human minds psycho-emotionally connecting with the animals that we trust, and vice versa. Because for thousands upon thousands of years, the domesticated dog and man have depended on each other for food, protection, warmth, comfort and love.
Footnote.
References for those who wish to follow up on this article are:
Professor Robin Ian MacDonald Dunbar, British anthropologist, evolutionary psychologist and a specialist in primate behaviour. His theory known as Dunbar’s Numberexplained here.
I was doing some research for another writing project about the history of the domestication of the dog and came across a peer-reviewed article on The National Center for Biotechnology Information website, here in the USA. The article was entitled: Genome-wide SNP and haplotype analyses reveal a rich history underlying dog domestication. The website link is here. (As an aside, if you drop in here and look at the NCBI sitemap it may well serve as an excellent resource.)
Anyway, the dog domestication article is, of necessity, highly scientific but nonetheless worth the read. Here’s a taste from the Abstract.
Advances in genome technology have facilitated a new understanding of the historical and genetic processes crucial to rapid phenotypic evolution under domestication 1,2. To understand the process of dog diversification better, we conducted an extensive genome-wide survey of more than 48,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms in dogs and their wild progenitor, the grey wolf. Here we show that dog breeds share a higher proportion of multi-locus haplotypes unique to grey wolves from the Middle East, indicating that they are a dominant source of genetic diversity for dogs rather than wolves from east Asia, as suggested by mitochondrial DNA sequence data 3
But what really caught my eye was Figure 1, a wonderful illustration of the links between all the breeds of dogs and the grey wolf.
Neighbour-joining trees of domestic dogs and grey wolves.
Branch colour indicates the phenotypic/functional designation used by dog breeders 8,9. A dot indicates ≥95% bootstrap support from 1,000 replicates. a, Haplotype-sharing cladogram for 10-SNP windows (n = 6 for each breed and wolf population). b, Allele-sharing cladogram of individuals based on individual SNP loci. c, Haplotype-sharing phylogram based on 10-SNP windows of breeds and wolf populations. d, Allele-sharing phylogram of individual SNPs for breeds and wolf populations. For c and d, we note breeds where genetic assignments conflict with phenotypic/functional designations as follows: 1, Brussels griffon; 2, Pekingese; 3, pug; 4, Shih-tzu; 5, miniature pinscher; 6, Doberman pinscher; 7, Kuvasz; 8, Ibizian hound; 9, chihuahua; 10, Pomeranian; 11, papillon; 12, Glen of Imaal; 13, German shepherd; 14, Briard; 15, Jack Russell; 16, dachshund; 17, great schnauzer; and 18, standard schnauzer. Gt, great; mtn, mountain; PBGV, petit basset griffon vendeen; pin., pinscher; ptr, pointer; ret., retriever; shep., shepherd; sp., spaniel; Staf., Staffordshire; std, standard; terr., terrier. Canine images not drawn to scale. Wolf image adapted from ref. 31; dog images from the American Kennel Club (http://www.akc.org).
The diagram on its own was a bit of a struggle but looked at in conjunction with the research paper was much better understood. Another reason for going to the original article on the NCBI website is the interesting range of links to other scientific papers that may be seen to the right-hand side of the screen. For example:
The mean sequence distance to ancestral haplotypes indicates an origin 5,400-16,300 years ago (ya) from at least 51 female wolf founders. These results indicate that the domestic dog originated in southern China less than 16,300 ya, from several hundred wolves. The place and time coincide approximately with the origin of rice agriculture, suggesting that the dogs may have originated among sedentary hunter-gatherers or early farmers, and the numerous founders indicate that wolf taming was an important culture trait.
Mitochondrial DNA sequences isolated from ancient dog remains from Latin America and Alaska showed that native American dogs originated from multiple Old World lineages of dogs that accompanied late Pleistocene humans across the Bering Strait. One clade of dog sequences was unique to the New World, which is consistent with a period of geographic isolation. This unique clade was absent from a large sample of modern dogs, which implies that European colonists systematically discouraged the breeding of native American dogs.
If you needed a reminder of the Pleistocene period, as I did, there’s a helpful Wikipedia entry here.
The final link that I wanted to highlight was this one, for all dog owners who worry about the health of our dogs.
Dogs exhibit more phenotypic variation than any other mammal and are affected by a wide variety of genetic diseases. However, the origin and genetic basis of this variation is still poorly understood. We examined the effect of domestication on the dog genome by comparison with its wild ancestor, the gray wolf. We compared variation in dog and wolf genes using whole-genome single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data. The d(N)/d(S) ratio (omega) was around 50% greater for SNPs found in dogs than in wolves, indicating that a higher proportion of nonsynonymous alleles segregate in dogs compared with nonfunctional genetic variation. We suggest that the majority of these alleles are slightly deleterious and that two main factors may have contributed to their increase. The first is a relaxation of selective constraint due to a population bottleneck and altered breeding patterns accompanying domestication. The second is a reduction of effective population size at loci linked to those under positive selection due to Hill-Robertson interference. An increase in slightly deleterious genetic variation could contribute to the prevalence of disease in modern dog breeds.
Have to say that there are some fabulous learning opportunities from the enormous range of websites available nowadays.
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
So said Albert Einstein.
The reason I went searching for a quotation on reality was that our, as in humans, ability to see the world in grossly distorted ways jumped ‘off the page’ at me when I was reading a recent essay from George Monbiot. Followers of Learning from Dogs will know that Mr. Monbiot has featured before; most recently just under a month ago in a post Returning to Nature. Before then in April when George gave permission for the full republishing of his essay The Great Unmentionable.
“Comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable.”
Why the notion of humans seeing reality in grossly distorted ways? Simply because in George Monbiot‘s following essay he challenges what we mean by the word ‘wildness’ and I immediately realised that my own idea of wildness was badly corrupted.
See if you react the same way as you read The Naturalists Who Are Terrified of Nature by George Monbiot, republished in full with the kind permission of George.
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The Naturalists Who Are Terrified of Nature
July 16, 2013
A radical challenge to British conservation and its bizarre priorities.
I’m writing this on the train home, after visiting two places in the north of England celebrated for their “wildness”. One of them is Ennerdale in the Lake District, now officially known as Wild Ennerdale, a valley in which the river has been allowed to move freely once more, and in which native trees are succeeding naturally up the hillsides(1).
The other is the Sheffield Moors (in the Peak District), from which most of the sheep have been removed and where the structure of the vegetation has been allowed to change a little. I found both visits fascinating, not least because of the eruditon and enthusiasm of the people who walked me through these places.
But sitting on the train, watching the chemical deserts of the English lowlands flash past, I’m struck by how pathetically grateful I feel. For what? For the fact that, in two small conservation areas, located in national parks, a few natural processes have been allowed to resume.
Were I to explain to a foreigner that these places are now celebrated by conservationists in Britain for their radical approach, he or she would think I had gone mad. “What?,” they would say, “you are telling me that this is the cutting edge of nature conservation in your country? Where have you been for the past 50 years?”
I don’t know if there is any other country in which people – including conservationists – are as afraid of nature as they are in Britain. I don’t know if there is anywhere else in which conservationists are so convinced that if they relax their intensive management of the natural world, something dreadful will happen.
Nowhere else do conservationists subscribe more enthusiastically to the biblical doctrine of dominion: that we have a holy duty to control and corral nature, in case it gets out of hand. Nowhere else does conservation look more like a slightly modified version of the farming which trashed the land in the first place.
In my view most of our conservation areas aren’t nature reserves at all. They are museums of former farming practices, weeded and tended to prevent the wilds from encroaching. The ecosystem’s dynamic interactions are banned. Animals and plants are preserved as if they were a jar of pickles, kept in a state of arrested development, in which little is allowed to change.
But nature is not just a fixed assemblage of species, maintained as if it were a collection in a museum. It is also the ever-changing relationships between them, the successional processes, the shifting communities: all of which, in many of our reserves, are prohibited.
The problem begins with designation. The “interest features” of a site of special scientific interest – its species and habitats – must be kept in “favourable condition”. Often this means the condition in which they happened to be when the reserve was created. In most cases that’s a condition of dire impoverishment and depletion: ecosystems missing almost their entire trophic structure, most of their large herbivores, all their large predators, in many cases even the trees. They have to be kept like this by extreme and intrusive management, in order to sustain the impacts which reduced them to this woeful state.
In Wild-ish Ennerdale and on the Sheffield Moors, there has been a partial relaxation of this draconian regime. But even in these places, there is much that I question.
On the Sheffield Moors, for example, cattle are kept: at much higher densities and for far longer periods than large herbivores would exist in a self-willed ecosystem. In many parts of the moors, trees, if they have the temerity to return, are cleared. The effort, even here, is to ensure that the landscape remains farmed, open and bare.
This is done partly to favour breeding populations of wading birds(2). It’s likely that these species are being maintained at artificially high populations(3). A tendency I’ve noticed among some groups is to try to make all their target species common, even if they were naturally rare. Perhaps some species ought to be rare. Those which lived in open habitats – which would have been small and occasional before people started cutting and burning the forests – are likely to have been rarest of all.
Think of the varying fortunes of grouse populations in Britain. The palaeontological evidence is extremely sparse, so this is guesswork, but during the Boreal and Atlantic phases, 9,000-5,000 years ago, when closed-canopy forest covered most of Britain, the commonent grouse species in this country might have been hazel hen. Perhaps the second commonest would have been capercaillie, followed by black grouse, followed by red grouse, which are likely to have been very scarce.
That likely sequence has now been reversed. Hazel hen is extinct, capercaillie extremely rare, black grouse are sparse and in severe decline and red grouse are bloody everywhere. The red grouse is the magpie of the uplands: it benefits from human intervention, which in this case means the clearing of land.
Arbitrarily, conservation groups in the uplands of England and Wales have decided that their priorities are, for example, dunlin and curlew, rather than capercaillie and pine martens. I’m not insisting that this is always the wrong decision. But it’s a decision that should be rigorously questioned, especially if this intensive management means the destruction of habitats which would have sheltered a much wider range of species.
Spend a couple of hours in an open upland nature reserve, and count the diversity and abundance of the birds you see. Then spend a couple of hours in a bushy suburban garden and do the same thing. In my experience you’re likely to see more birds of more species in the garden. That’s hardly surprising: most birds – indeed most wildlife – require cover to survive. Am I the only one who thinks that something has gone badly wrong here?
It’s not just common species I’m talking about. Many of those excluded by our brutal upland management are not just rare in Britain; they are extinct.
Whenever I meet a conservation manager, I find myself acting like a 3-year old: I keep asking “why?”. Why are you preserving this and not that? Why is this site designated for moorland flea beetle and pearl-bordered fritillary, rather than blue stag beetle and lynx? Why are you protecting the wretched scrapings of life that remain here, rather than reintroducing the species which would once have lived here, but have been excluded by the kind of interventions that you – the conservationists – have sustained?
When I worked in the Amazon, the conservationists I met were fighting to defend the rainforest against cattle ranching. In Britain the conservationists are – literally – defending cattle ranching against the rainforest. Britain was once covered by rainforest: woodland wet enough for epiphytes to grow. (Epiphytes are plants which root in the bark of trees). Our closed-canopy rainforest was likely to have been richer in species than any of our remaining habitats. Given half a chance, it would return. But it isn’t given half a chance, even in conservation sites, because conservationists keep clearing the land and running cattle on it, in case the wayward and irresponsible ecosystem does something that isn’t listed in the rules. In doing so, they preserve a burnt, blasted and largely empty land with the delightful ambience of a nuclear winter.
Conservation groups in this country are obsessed by heather. Heather is typical of the vegetation that colonises land which has been repeatedly deforested. You can see similar vegetation – low, scrubby, tough, thriving on burnt ground and depleted soils – covering deforested land all over the tropics. There, the dominance of these plants is lamented by ecologists, for it is rightly seen as a symptom of ecological destruction. Here it is fetishised and preserved.
Even in the Eastern Sheffield Moors management plan, published by the RSPB and the National Trust, “cutting and burning” are listed as the requisite tasks for managing heather(4). Imagine what a tropical ecologist would say if she saw that. “You people have been telling us for decades that we should stop cutting and burning. You’ve been sending us money and lobbying our governments to discourage us from doing it. And all the while you’ve been telling yourselves that cutting and burning are necessary for the protection of wildlife.” If she concluded that we are hypocrites, that we are unambitious, irrational, anally retentive and ecologically illiterate, she would not be far wrong.
The same plan reveals that these two august conservation bodies will maintain cattle on the moors at their current level, but keep them there for longer. “Their grazing and trampling will manage the vegetation in a way which should improve the condition of the habitats and benefit wildlife.”(5) What does this mean? Yes, it might benefit some wildlife, but only at the expense of other species. Yes, it might “improve the condition” of a habitat, if by improvement you mean a better representation of the state of arrested development you’ve chosen. It sounds uncomfortably close to the 19th Century agricultural meaning of “improvement”: which means draining and clearing land to make it more suitable for farming.
It astonishes me to see statements like this left unpacked. Asserted without qualification, they create the impression that all wildlife benefits from management of this kind. Of course, all interventions (including a complete cessation of management), are better for some species than for others. But in my view, the losses inflicted by cattle ranching – here, as in the Amazon – outweigh any gains.
An even starker example is provided by a report commissioned by the RSPB on changing livestock numbers. It contends that “undergrazing and loss of vegetation structure is now occurring in some areas, with adverse impacts for some species such as golden plover and other waders.”(6)
“Undergrazing” is an interesting concept. The report seems to be referring to “undergrazing” by sheep. How can a native ecosystem be undergrazed by an invasive ruminant from Mesopotamia? Is our wildlife underhunted by American mink? Are our verges underinfested by Japanese knotweed?
I would question what undergrazing by any domestic animal means. “Not farmed enough” is what the term appears to signify, “or not sufficiently damaged”. Sure, the golden plover is among a small group of species that benefit from scorched-earth policies, but a far greater number are harmed by them. So why is the golden plover the priority? And how can a report for a conservation organisation blithely use the term undergrazing without qualification or explanation?
Another RSPB report advocates “the eradication of invasive tree species” from the bare uplands of Wales and claims, without citing any evidence or explaining what this means, that “extensive grazing, ideally mixed grazing, is important in maintaining upland pastures in a state that benefits upland birds and other wildlife.”(7)
A document published by the Welsh government revealed something I have never seen in the RSPB’s literature: that the society advises farmers “to cut down trees to discourage buzzards which kill other birds.”(8)
I checked with the RSPB in Wales and it confirmed that it does “at times provide advice to landowners on the management of trees to reduce available vantage points and nest sites for some avian predators.”(9)
Isn’t that more or less what the British government wanted to do to protect pheasant shoots? And didn’t the society contest those efforts?(10)
I wonder whether, in their arbitrary choice of target species and target habitats, British conservationists are influenced by the legacy of hunting. Many of the birds on behalf of which this extreme and brutal simplification of the ecosystem takes place are those which, in the 19th Century, were pursued by gentlemen with guns. Perhaps we should see conservation efforts in Britain as a form of gamekeeping, which regards some of our native species as good and worthy of preservation, and others (such as trees and buzzards) as bad and in need of control.
Sometimes I receive coherent answers from the conservation managers I speak to, which are debatable but at least consistent. Sometimes the only answer I receive is “that’s what the rules say.” But isn’t it time we began to challenge the rules? Isn’t it time we began to question the way sites are designated, and to challenge the ecological blitzkreig required to maintain them in what is laughably called “favourable condition”? Isn’t it time we began asking why we have decided to privilege certain species over others? Isn’t it time we started wondering whether the collateral damage required to support them is worth it?
After all, how did nature cope before we came along? To judge by the actions of British conservation groups, it must have been in a pretty dismal state for the three billion years before humans arrived to look after it.
2. National Trust and RSPB, 2012. The Eastern Moors Management Plan summary, page 15. Eastern Moors Partnership, Curbar.
3. This, of course, is speculative, as palaeontology gives us few indications of numbers. But the circumstantial evidence seems powerful: the habitat required for breeding populations of these birds, many of which need to nest several hundred metres from the nearest woodland edge to avoid predation, was in short supply. See for example:
NJ Whitehouse and D Smith, 2010. How fragmented was the British Holocene wildwood? Perspectives on the ‘‘Vera’’ grazing debate from the fossil beetle record. Quaternary Science Reviews Vol. 29, nos. 3-4, pp539–553. doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2009.10.010
FJG Mitchell, 2005. How open were European primeval forests? Hypothesis testing using palaeoecological data. Journal of Ecology Vol. 93, 168–177
JHB Birks, 2005. Mind the gap: how open were European primeval forests? Trends in Ecology & Evolution Vol. 20, pp154-156.
R Fyfe, 2007. The importance of local-scale openness within regions dominated by closed woodland. Journal of Quaternary Science, Vol.22, no. 6, pp571–578. doi: 10.1002/jqs.1078
JC Svenning, 2002. A review of natural vegetation openness in northwestern Europe. Biological Conservation Vol 104: 133-148.
RHW Bradshaw, GE Hannon, AM Lister, 2003. A long-term perspective on ungulate-vegetation interactions. Forest Ecology and Management, Vol. 181: 267–280.
8. Welsh Government, 2010. Glastir: frequently asked questions, Section 13. This document is no longer available on the government site, but you can read it here: http://www.fuw.org.uk/glastir-faq-miscellaneous.html
9. Emma Roberts, RSPB Wales, 10th August 2011. By email.
It is our routine at home here in Oregon to let the kitchen group of dogs out first (Lily, Ruby, Casey & Paloma, with Sweeny tagging along) while Jean puts together our small breakfast. The time is around 6am to 6:30am and both Jean and I are usually wearing dressing gowns. Once this first group has been outside, then I let the ‘bedroom’ group out (Pharaoh, Cleo, Hazel and Dhalia).
Such as I did this morning, unusually a day starting dull with overcast cloud.
Suddenly, I heard the most awful squealing of an animal in pain over in the dense wooded area to the South-West of the property.
The wooded area in question.
In plastic slippers and dressing-gown only, I dashed into the woods and to my horror saw that Cleo, Hazel and Dhalia had cornered a young deer, and at least Hazel was nipping at a rear leg.
A not uncommon sight at home.
I screamed at the dogs, to no avail. They took not the slightest notice of me.
Then the young deer wriggled free and fled into the trees. The dogs recornered it and plunged in again. The deer broke free again, and so it went on. Eventually, after some ten minutes of the most dreadful hollering and chasing by me, the young deer jumped a fence and ran off with its mother who had been shadowing the terrible event. I prayed that it wasn’t badly hurt.
Gracious, I was so angry with the dogs! What disgusting behaviour towards this young, beautiful creature.
When I was back in the house trying to regain my breath, still so angry at the dogs, a thought came to my mind. Tens of thousands of years ago, this behaviour of the dogs was held in great esteem.
Early man evolved from a tribal hunter-gatherer existence to the pastoral life of farming about 10,000 years ago. If the DNA evidence shows, as it does, that the dog evolved from the wolf as a separate species around 100,000 years ago, then dogs were part of the life of hunter-gatherer man for something of the order of 90,000 years, possibly a couple of decades longer!
In fairness, the present lineage of dogs was domesticated from grey wolves only about 15,000 years ago. Despite fossil remains of domesticated dogs having been found in Siberia and Belgium from about 33,000 years ago, none of those lineages survived the Last Glacial Maximum. No fossil specimens prior to 33,000 years ago have indicated that they are clearly from the morphologically domesticated dog.
Even if, and it’s a very big ‘if’, the relationship between man and dog is only about 15,000 years old, one can only speculate how each species came to know the other, in every imaginable way.
Actually, we can go beyond speculation because in a study published by the PLOS ONE scientific journal in March 2013, Dr. Robert Losey, Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta and the lead author, explained that:
Dog burials appear to be more common in areas where diets were rich in aquatic foods because these same areas also appear to have had the densest human populations and the most cemeteries,
If the practice of burying dogs was solely related to their importance in procuring terrestrial game, we would expect to see them in the Early Holocene (around 9,000 years ago), when human subsistence practices were focused on these animals. Further, we would expect to see them in later periods in areas where fish were never really major components of the diet and deer were the primary focus, but they are rare or absent in these regions.
The PLOS ONE paper went on to report that researchers found that most of the dog burials occurred during the Early Neolithic period, some 7,000-8,000 years ago, and that “dogs were only buried when human hunter-gatherers were also being buried.”
So back to the morning’s drama between the dogs and the young deer.
The efficiency of the way the dogs cornered the deer was breath-taking. Had I not been coming at them in such a state of anger and agitation, and especially if I was one of a group of say, 2 or 3 humans, the odds are that the deer could have been grabbed and dispatched. In other words, those three dogs had demonstrated that 20,000, 40,000, 80,000 or more years ago, they were critically useful at helping early hunter-gatherer man feed himself.
Back to Dr. Losey’s view, “I think the hunter-gatherers here saw some of their dogs as being nearly the same as themselves, even at a spiritual level. At this time, dogs were the only animals living closely with humans, and they were likely known at an individual level, far more so than any other animal people encountered. People came to know them as unique, special individuals.”
Does make sense, doesn’t it.
“Oh look! We could have turkey for dinner tonight!”
A reflection on the history of the German Shepherd dog.
Yesterday’s account of getting to know GSD Duke a little better caused me to find a post that had been sitting in my Drafts folder for a couple of years. It was about a piece published in The New York Times, Sunday Review, October 8th, 2011 under the heading of Why German Shepherds Have Had Their Day.
Why German Shepherds Have Had Their Day
By SUSAN ORLEAN
SUCCESS can be a drag. You yearn for it, strive for it, and then, when it finally arrives, it sets off repercussions you never anticipated that sometimes undo that success.
Take the German shepherd. Originally bred to the exacting standards of a German cavalry officer, it became one of the 20th century’s most popular working breeds. But in recent years that popularity, and the overbreeding that came with it, has driven the German shepherd into eclipse: even the police in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, who had relied on the dogs for years, recently announced they were replacing them with Belgian Malinois, because the less-popular Malinois were hardier and more reliable.
But there is good news about this bad news, if you are a lover of the breed, because less visibility, especially in inspiring roles as public servants, is likely to mean less demand for the dogs. That means less reason to produce too many puppies, which is the best thing that can happen to any purebred dogs.
The article continued with the history of the breed. But rather than stay with the NYT piece, for more about the breed history I’m going to cross over to the website of the British charity, German Shepherd Dog Rescue (GSDR). They have a comprehensive account of the History and Origins of the Breed.
History and Origins of the German Shepherd Dog
A brief insight into the development of the breed
The German Shepherd breed appeared late at the end of the 19th century in Germany and they were first exhibited at a show in Hanover in 1882. They were not like German Shepherds as we know them today though being rough coated, short tailed and rather resembling mongrels. The German Shepherd Dog as we now know it didn’t really appear until after the Second World War.
The breed was actually created by the cross breeding of working sheep dogs from rural Germany by an ex cavalry officer called Max von Stephanitz whose aim was to create a working dog for herding which could trot for long periods.
A breed standard was drawn up and the first breed show took place in 1899 following which the GSD became firmly established across Germany. In 1906 the first dogs were exported to the USA .
Since then, the breed has grown enormously in popularity and is now one of the most popular pedigree breeds in the UK as a pet as well as being the favourite working breed for many forces, especially the police. They are widely used for security purposes because of their strong protective instincts.
Many people in the UK still call these dogs Alsatians which may partly be due to the fact that when they were first bred, the Alsace region of France, where these dogs were very popular, was part of Germany . I still get people who think that Alsatians are the traditional short coat black and tan dogs and that German Shepherds are the long coated dogs that have become popular.
GSD’s make wonderful family pets and will protect family and home.
These dogs are highly intelligent and will show undying devotion to their master but they are dogs that need company and stimulation to be at their best. It is however, important to remember that this is a working breed and that they do have certain characteristics that some people might find difficult to live with. The German Shepherd should be steady, loyal, self assured, courageous and willing and should not be nervous over aggressive or shy. Nervous aggression is something that we are now seeing more often as a result of bad breeding. It is sad but there has always been indiscriminate breeding of German Shepherds right from the start, which has lead to problems with temperament and health.
Before leaving the GSDR website, please read more about this important charity, “We are one of the longest standing and largest German Shepherd rescues in the UK.” and if there is any way at all that you can help, please, please, please! (And fellow bloggers, consider a post spreading the word about this wonderful charity and these most magnificent of dogs.)
So a few memories of German Shepherds closer to home.
Young Pharaoh 12th August, 2003 when he was just 10 weeks old.
We are friends for life! Each for the other.
Pharaoh, ten-years-old, and King of his Castle! Taken on the 3rd June, 2013 at our home in Oregon.
The arrival of young Cleo!
I suspect Pharaoh is explaining to Cleo that there’s only rule of the house – his rule!
Picture taken April 7th, 2012
From puppy to Big Dog! Cleo resting where she shouldn’t be! February, 2013.
*** If you are not into introspection, then look away and come back tomorrow! 😉 ***
Regular readers will know that quite frequently I write under a topic heading that could be regarded as within the classification of key subjects of our time. You know, such subjects as big government, big money, big power, and even climate change! 😉
Why has this been the case?
Well, because, a) most of my life I’ve tried to stay abreast of ‘current affairs’ and, b) within the broad label of ‘integrity’ it’s relevant to this blog. The sub-heading of the blog is after all: “Dogs are integrous animals. We have much to learn from them.” (Yes, I do know ‘integrous’ isn’t grammatically accurate! – Any suggestions for an alternative word?)
Stay with that while I go elsewhere.
Yesterday (Tuesday) a number of events ended up having a profound effect on me. On the face of it, utterly disconnected events.
The first was a post from Alex Jones on his blog The Liberated Way. The only common ground between Alex and me is that we both know Colchester in Essex, England. Alex because he lives there today, me because I used to have a business in Colchester in previous times. Other than that just a couple of bloggers separated by thousands of miles.
Anyway, the post was this one: Cycle of Life. Alex wrote:
Life seems like a cycle of birth, living and death.
I have the honour of following awesome bloggers on WordPress. I learn inspirational teachings from their intimate life experiences that they share with their readers. The cycle, for in my belief everything moves in cycles, of birth, life and death is if we are attentive to living life something we will often be reminded of in our interactions with others and nature.
Then later, adding:
Lijiun is a Buddhist who shares daily experiences from their own life with a Buddhist theme running through their blog. Lijiun has a cat called Little White who often acts as a teacher to them about the meaning of life and a reminder of Buddhist teachings. Little White two weeks ago brought home a stray kitten, which it adopted as like a surrogate parent. Yesterday Adik the kitten died, and a beautiful blog post by Lijiun in memory of Adik reminds us life is impermanent.
Almost absent-mindedly, I clicked on the link about the death of Adik and …… was shaken to my core; shaken by the power of the truth. I want to give you more than a link to the post – want to share some of the beautiful words.
IN MEMORY OF “ADIK”…
In memory of our little Kitten, “adik”….
Every moment in life is full of changes, this is a law of nature.
However, sometimes we might assume that everything unchanged.
“Adik”- Our stray kitten, so far, she was not showing a sign of sickness. Yesterday, in the evening, I discovered she was laid down under my neighbor car, not moving at all and look severe sick. We checked through her little body, no physical injuries and we tried our best to feed her water and Cat food. She refuse to take.
We need to send her to Veterinarian immediately as her condition was critical, however during Sunday, especially evening time. Most of the Veterinarian clinic is closed. We did our best to check through internet, we were able to locate one of the Vet and we rushed over.
In the journey, we played Mantra Chanting to our little kitten, We reached to the vet clinic, “Adik” was alive but in agony…. she was struggling for life. The only thing we can help was to keep chanting mantra, our only aspiration are for her to relieve from suffering, not to reborn in 3 lower realm, able to follow spiritual practice and attain enlightenment in the coming life.
“Adik” passed away in peace even before the Veterinarian came to treat her.
Then Lijiun went on to write that “This incident gave me a very clear insight on “death” and offered more of that insight: (These are extracts: Please read the full post.)
1. Impermanence Of life
Nothing is permanence , we need to live at now, not past or future.
When Death approached, no bargain time at all whether you are rich or poor, you are ready or not, you are healthy or sick, …
Do all good deeds when you are still alive, Follow spiritual path whenever you can, don’t give excuses that “I’ve plenty of time, I’ll do it when I am “FREE”? When You are Free, you might not able to do it…
2. Young or old…
Some of us, might assume that people died in old age. As such, we’ve a long journey in life.
Is It true???
I learned from “Adik” Sudden death – that death will happen in any age.
“Coffin is not meant for elderly people….” This is so profound.
Spend time with your family members, be filial piety to your parent, Pursuit your dream, Don’t wait until later day…. We are unsure we can survive until later day!
3. Breathing in & Out
Treasure every breath in & breath out…
Life is just in between Breath in & out.
Be Mindfulness in life!
4. What Can you bring???
What can you bring after death, “NOTHING”.
No matter, how much wealth, how much money, how many cars, how many bungalow, how high is your position, how lovely is your family… you can’t bring anything..
Ask yourself, “What is the purpose of life?”, “What do you want?”
5. Alone..
You, yourself need to face the death moment…
Nobody can help you… Don’t avoid the topic and say, “It’ll not happen to me so soon”..
Just get ready.
6. Love
“Adik” passed away at 8:30 pm.. according to my mom, Little White, Our lovely cat was “Meowing” loudly at home. He can sense that “Adik” was not longer around. Animals are just like us, they are loving. Please treat all beings well, no differentiation on form.
We are so touched that “Adik” came home before her death and spend her last moment with us.
Before we sent “Adik” to Vet, She “Meow” loudly to my mom as a good-bye & gratitude to my mom for taking care of her. It’s so touching!
Thank you to “Adik” for celebrating 16 happy day with us and leave behind a great lesson to us.
May “Adik” be relieved from suffering, not reborn in 3 lower realm and find the lasting happiness!
May all beings be Well and Happy!
Then also yesterday, I was chatting to someone who lives close to us; he and his partner-lady have become good friends. He was bemoaning the corruption of so much of his fine country and went on to say that the only way that he could function was to turn away from the big stuff, have no TV, ignore the constant news of this and that, the endless trials and tribulations in this world of ours. I listened in silence, only to find later that the words must have left a mark on me.
My dear friend, Dan Gomez, has known me for over 40 years. He was my Best Man at my wedding to Jean in November, 2010. He and I have been exchanging emails about the truth of the role of man in the raising of the temperature of the planet. I sent Dan the link to the death of Adik, the kitten. It seemed so much more important than the emails we had been exchanging about the ‘big’ subjects in life.
Then something happened overnight (Tuesday/Wednesday) because not long after I got to my PC this morning, I sent this email to Dan.
Dear Dan,
Yesterday was one of those days, one of those rare days I should have said, where my view of life was radically changed.
Partly because I’m still adjusting to Corinne’s death [my sister], partly because of something I read elsewhere, and other stuff best left for a phone call.
In essence, despite my anger at what is going on around us (big government, big money, big power, even climate change!) I want to retreat from these areas and focus on what is most valuable to me.
Aspects of my life such as love, friendship with ‘old’ travelers, the natural world, being in the present, community, our animals (especially Pharaoh who is over 10), my writings, my book, our small world here at 4000 Hugo; you get my drift!
I’m 70 in November, 2014. Corinne died in her 80th year. Time goes so quickly. No, life goes so quickly. Jean and I met 6 years ago this next December. I must turn away from the things over which I have little or no control and embrace the present. Just what dogs do so well. Live in the present.
It’s all about endeavouring to come to the end of one’s life hearing those immortal words of Edith Piaf, “Je regret rien.”
So dear reader of Learning from Dogs, if you are still ‘on frequency’ – Well done! You have stuck with my very long ramble!
Back to what gets written about in this place. If integrity means anything, it means I’m going to drop all the ‘big’ topics and focus entirely on what man can learn, nay, has to learn from dogs. Indeed, will close by republishing the full ‘home’ page below.
Pharaoh – just being a dog!
Dogs live in the present – they just are! Dogs make the best of each moment uncluttered by the sorts of complex fears and feelings that we humans have. They don’t judge, they simply take the world around them at face value. Yet they have been part of man’s world for an unimaginable time, at least 30,000 years. That makes the domesticated dog the longest animal companion to man, by far!
As man’s companion, protector and helper, history suggests that dogs were critically important in man achieving success as a hunter-gatherer. Dogs ‘teaching’ man to be so successful a hunter enabled evolution, some 20,000 years later, to farming, thence the long journey to modern man. But in the last, say 100 years, that farming spirit has become corrupted to the point where we see the planet’s plant and mineral resources as infinite. Mankind is close to the edge of extinction, literally and spiritually.
Dogs know better, much better! Time again for man to learn from dogs!
New research shows the beauty of the bond between dog and man.
I was doing some research for another writing project and came across this on the NBC News website:
What prehistoric dog burials tell us about owners
By Jennifer Viegas
An analysis of ancient dog burials finds that the typical prehistoric dog owner ate a lot of seafood, had spiritual beliefs, and wore jewelry that sometimes wound up on the dog.
The study, published in PLoS ONE, is one of the first to directly test if there was a clear relationship between the practice of dog burial and human behaviors. The answer is yes.
Photo – Robert Losey. The ancient dog was buried in a resting position. It was part of a study to directly test if there was a clear relationship between the practice of dog burial and human behaviors. The answer is yes.
That PLOS ONE study, published March 2013, found that “dog domestication predates the beginning of agriculture about 10,000 years ago.”
Dr. Losey and his dog, Guiness
Dr. Robert Losey, Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta and the lead author, explained that,
Dog burials appear to be more common in areas where diets were rich in aquatic foods because these same areas also appear to have had the densest human populations and the most cemeteries,
If the practice of burying dogs was solely related to their importance in procuring terrestrial game, we would expect to see them in the Early Holocene (around 9,000 years ago), when human subsistence practices were focused on these animals.
Robert Losey continued.
Further, we would expect to see them in later periods in areas where fish were never really major components of the diet and deer were the primary focus, but they are rare or absent in these regions.
The PLOS ONE paper went on to report that researchers found that most of the dog burials occurred during the Early Neolithic period, some 7,000-8,000 years ago, and that “dogs were only buried when human hunter-gatherers were also being buried.” Dr. Losey went on to say,
I think the hunter-gatherers here saw some of their dogs as being nearly the same as themselves, even at a spiritual level. At this time, dogs were the only animals living closely with humans, and they were likely known at an individual level, far more so than any other animal people encountered. People came to know them as unique, special individuals.
Those interested in the research paper may find it here, and read the Abstract:
Ancient DNA Analysis Affirms the Canid from Altai as a Primitive Dog
Abstract
The origin of domestic dogs remains controversial, with genetic data indicating a separation between modern dogs and wolves in the Late Pleistocene. However, only a few dog-like fossils are found prior to the Last Glacial Maximum, and it is widely accepted that the dog domestication predates the beginning of agriculture about 10,000 years ago. In order to evaluate the genetic relationship of one of the oldest dogs, we have isolated ancient DNA from the recently described putative 33,000-year old Pleistocene dog from Altai and analysed 413 nucleotides of the mitochondrial control region. Our analyses reveal that the unique haplotype of the Altai dog is more closely related to modern dogs and prehistoric New World canids than it is to contemporary wolves. Further genetic analyses of ancient canids may reveal a more exact date and centre of domestication.
DNA testing indicates that the evolutionary split between dogs and wolves was around 100,000 years ago or more. The value of dogs to early human hunter-gatherers led to them quickly becoming ubiquitous across world cultures.
Thus it is in the order of 90,000 years, possibly a couple of decades longer, from the point where a bond was made between early man and the wolf to the era when man evolved from a tribal hunter-gatherer existence to farming the resources of the planet. Thousands and thousands of years of dogs being the greatest animal relationship we humans have ever experienced.
Back to that NBC news item:
Erik Axelsson, a researcher at Uppsala University’s Science for Life Laboratory, has also studied prehistoric dogs. He too found that human and dog diets, burial practices and more often paralleled each other, revealing how close the dog-human bond has been for thousands of years.
Axelsson said, “Dogs and humans share the same environment, we eat similar food and we get similar diseases.”
Based on the number of burials, we also often spend eternity together too.
Eons of time.
A hundred, thousand years of knowing man, and it shows in the eyes.
Last year, on this day, I published the transcript of the Declaration of Independence before Congress on July 4, 1776. Part of one of the comments, left by Patrice Ayme, was this:
That the trust is gone is actually a good thing. We cannot trust a system where a few lead hundreds of millions, if not billions. Even if they come from the People, and especially if they come from the People. Because the less power where they come from, the greedier they are, and thus, the more eager to be bought.
Two thousand years ago, any grouping of a few thousands Germans got enraged when someone would proclaim himself a king. Now people venerate those who think they can do all the thinking in place of billions.
Hence we are facing the reality of a vastly incomplete revolution: Athens, at her apex, had direct democracy (OK, no women, no slaves…). We don’t.
Perhaps, what has changed most in the last year is the realisation, the growing realisation, as to where real power lies.
This highly subjective conclusion comes to me as a result of reading, very recently, two essays.
In the wake of renewed interest in the Keystone Pipeline project and the likelihood that Obama will eagerly approve it unless we stop him, there’s a lot of interest in what actually flows through those pipes.
All of which produces a great bottom line. Click any of those links to jump to that section.
The primary source, though not the only source, of this information is a great article and slideshow at the Scientific American website. Feel free to click and read as we walk through this material.
It is a thorough and very disturbing explanation of what Keystone XL is truly about; please don’t hesitate to read it in full.
It includes this video:
However, I will republish the closing paragraphs:
SO WHAT FLOWS THROUGH THE PIPES?
If you thought that diluted bitumen, as produced by the upgrading plants, is now capable of flowing through a pipeline to the cash registers in Texas (or wherever), you’d be wrong. Even in diluted form, bitumen doesn’t flow. To make it flow, it has to be heated — often to 150°–160°F — and then forced through the pipelines under high pressure.
So what flows through the pipeline? Keeping those cash registers in mind, you now have all the pieces. Tar sand pipelines contain:
A carbon-rich colloidal suspension …
Made up of lighter-than-water, easily-evaporated toxic liquids (like diesel) …
And heavier-than-water solids (the tar or bitumen itself) that sink to the bottom of rivers and below the mud in fields …
Which has been heated hot enough to burn your hand — or accelerate the external corrosion of the pipeline itself, including pinhole breaks …
Which has been forced to move under high pressure …
And which contains poisons and toxins like sulphur, arsenic, nickel, lead and mercury …
That’s what flows through the pipelines. Or to put it more simply:
What flows through the pipes is the unmonetized assets of the try-and-stop-me CEO class, which if it spills, will poison everything it touches for decades or centuries, and if it gets into the air, will turn most of our grandchildren — the ones that survive — into hunter-gatherers.
Bill McKibben counts those unmonetized assets (proven reserves) at $27 trillion dollars. Add in reserves that are likely but not proven, plus the ones in the melting Arctic that are yet to be found, and you’re talking real money. The billionaire class won’t walk away from that in a hurry.
And that, kids, is Science Talk for today. We learned a little about a lot, didn’t we — everything from colloidal suspensions and bitumen “froth,” to billionaire psychopathology and cash registers in Texas. To those of you who got to this end of the post, my thanks!
So hold in mind the reference to the billionaire class as I cross the ‘pond’ to the old country for the second essay.
Recently, George Monbiot published an essay under the title of Robber Barons.
It opened, thus:
Why do we ignore the most blatant transfer of money from the poor to the rich?
It’s the silence that puzzles me. Last week, the Chancellor stood up in parliament to announce that benefits for the very poor would be cut yet again. On the same day, in Luxembourg, our government battled to maintain benefits for the very rich. It won. As a result, some of the richest people in Britain will each continue to receive millions of pounds in income support from taxpayers.
There has been not a whimper of protest. The Guardian hasn’t mentioned it. UK Uncut is silent. So – at the other end of the spectrum – is the UK Independence Party.
I’m talking about the most blatant transfer of money from the poor to the rich that has occurred in the era of universal suffrage. Farm subsidies. The main subsidy – the single farm payment – is doled out by the hectare. The more you own or rent, the more money you receive.
Later on mentioning:
The minister responsible for cutting income support for the poor, Iain Duncan Smith, lives on an estate owned by his wife’s family. Over the past ten years, it has received €1.5m in income support from taxpayers.
How much more obvious do these double standards have to be before we begin to notice?
Then Mr. Monbiot examines some of the cultural aspects such as how “A high proportion of the books aimed at very young children are about farm animals.” then closes with this thought.
Whatever the reason may be, it’s time we overcame these inhibitions and confronted this unembarrassed robbery of the poor by the rich. The current structure of farm subsidies epitomises the British government’s defining project: capitalism for the poor, socialism for the rich.
So examples from both sides of The Atlantic that reveal deeply disturbing issues. However …….
I celebrate America this day. I celebrate the power of the common man to achieve justice and fairness for the peoples of all nations. I celebrate the Constitution of the United States of America.
oooOOOooo
Preamble
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Without doubt, President Obama’s recent speech on climate change was very welcome. I fervently hope this is a genuine commitment to change the course of the biggest and most powerful nation on our planet. Abandoning the Keystone XL pipeline would be the proof to my mind. UPDATE: But read this!
But the runaway, exponential growth in CO2 has a brother; huge growth in the world’s population.
I’m going to ‘smack you in the face‘ with this population chart.
To put that into context from a personal perspective, when I was born in 1944 the global population was 2.5 billion persons. Some 4.7 billion fewer people than today!
But that prediction from the U.S Census Bureau in June, 2011 is already out of date!
13 June 2013 – The current world population of 7.2 billion is projected to increase by 1 billion over the next 12 years and reach 9.6 billion by 2050, according to a United Nations report launched today, which points out that growth will be mainly in developing countries, with more than half in Africa.
Now please humour me for a few moments. If the world population is presently 7.2 billion people and by 2050 the prediction is 9.2 billion people, that is an increase of 2,400,000,000 persons.
The end of 2050 is 438 months away. Now do the maths. That growth in population in that time period is the equivalent of an increase in population of 5,479,000 persons every single month!
Need to find a darkened room – I feel a headache coming on!
Learning from Dogs 