Dog / domestic dog, כלב, Canis lupus familiaris

Canis aureus

Class – Mammalia

Order – Carnivora

Family – Canidae

Genus – Canis

Species – Canis familiaris

The dog is the world’s most common carnivore, domesticated by humans across the globe. The dog has accompanied man the longest of all animals, and played an important role in human society (Wandeler et al. 1993).

Wild dogs demonstrate just one breeding cycle a year, with a clear seasonality (in spring), while domesticated dogs have 1–3 cycles annually with no seasonal preference (Wynne 2010) [Sometimes dogs may have parallel cycles, for example, if the cabs are taken away.] The female comes into heat every 6 months, (twice a year) which usually lasts about 9–14 days. Following mating, gestation lasts 72 days on average, (Lind-Forsberg et. al 2000). Litter size is between 3–7 puppies. Newborns open their eyes at 7–14 days old, and reach sexual maturity at 7–10 months. Longevity is 8–15 years depending on breed, conditions / health etc. (Geiger et al. 2016).

Dog behaviors: Domesticated. Scholars have noted five personality traits in domestic dogs: “playfulness,”  “curiosity/fearlessness,” “chase-proneness,”  “sociability,” and  “aggressiveness and  a broad range of personalities within these traits (Svartberga & Forkman 2002).

Feral and Stray Dogs. Feral dogs, born and raised in the wild, do not depend on humans for feeding and breeding. They may gather in packs in some cases and can be dangerous to humans and other animals (Warembourg et  al. 2021). Among the factors that have led to the possibility of a reverse “feralization” in dogs is that of a decrease in the number of wild predators, in particular— wolves. Stray dogs, in contrast, have experienced previous human interactions and thus are more receptive to human contact and assistance. The aggregated spatial patterns and density of stray dog subpopulations contribute to the spread of infectious and invasive diseases both  in the subpopulation itself and in populations of wild animals, as well as among humans. Without scientifically-grounded and effective solutions to the problem of stray animals, feral dogs can become a threat to the natural populations of prey species and, consequently, to the stability of natural and anthropogenic ecosystems (Rakhimov et al. 2021).

Activity hours. In Western-modern societies, domestic dogs are mostly kept as pets and their activity is almost fully controlled by humans. Thus, they are much less able to shape their activity patterns according to their own needs (Fradd ?).

Dogs can make many daily survival decisions on their own, irrespective of human influence. One of the first documentations of the daily behavior pattern of urban free-roaming/stray domesticated dogs in the USA, found a trend of two main activity peaks during the day: one in the morning around 5:00-8:00AM, and another in the evening between 19:00-22:00PM. These two periods were especially notable during the summer months. Beck (1975) noted that the observed absence of activity at midday during summer could be interpreted as heat avoidance. A study in India revealed that dogs concentrated their activity at times of higher human activity in the streets (Majumder et al. 2014). Thus, the dogs were active primarily between 6:30-10:30AM and again between 16:30-19:30PM, and spent the middle of the day mostly resting (Majumder et al. 2014).

From my own observations on stray dogs (neglected by humans, individuals, and in packs) in the Judean Plain, I found them to be active during the late night hours and early morning, probably from fear of being discovered by humans, their potential enemy (Moyal, unpublished) 

Diet. Dogs were originally primarily scavengers of human food waste, as is still the case for most free-ranging or feral dog populations. This characteristic is well exemplified in studies from Italy (Macdonald & Carr 1995), North America (Daniels & Bekoff 1989), Bengal (Oppenheimer & Oppenheimer 1975), Southeast Asia (Corbett 1995), and Alaska (Lantis 1980). In the past, when wars and epidemics killed many human beings, corpses accumulated in vast numbers were scavenged by feral dogs among other predators (Moyal, pers. comm.).

According to Butler et al. (2018), 88% of the feral dogs observed at Zimbabwe in 1995-6            diet was human-derived food largely due to the forms of waste disposal employed by local people. Leftover food was thrown into mostly open pits on the household perimeter. Furthermore, in 59% of domestic animal deaths, the carcasses were left in situ by their owners, providing an easily accessible food source. As a consequence, scavenged mammalian carrion formed the most important component of the stray dog’s diet.

An experiment with carcasses revealed that feral/stray dogs were the most successful species in the vertebrate scavenger guild, consuming 60% of carrion and finding and feeding on 66.7% of carcasses. This efficiency was primarily due to their large numbers relative to other wild scavengers, and to their ability to forage by day and night ( Butler and du Toit 2002).

Vocalization. The dog displays a variety of vocal expressions. Their calls can be divided into subtypes based on a combination of acoustic parameters, with different functions and “signatures” for each kind of call and for each dog (Mech 1970; Scott & Fuller 1965). The primary basis for such typing lies in the divergence in bark behavior between dogs and wolves (Canis lupus). Whereas wolves rarely bark (Mech 1970; Scott & Fuller 1965), with barks comprising only 2.3% of all their vocalizations (Schassburger 1987), dogs bark relatively frequently, some of them for hours on end. Additionally, although wolves bark primarily in two contexts—to alert and to declare territoriality (Joslin, cited in Mech 1970), dogs bark in “virtually every behavioral context” (Coppinger & Feinstein 1991). On average, in disturbance situations, barks are lower in pitch and longer in duration situation than in isolation and play situations (Yin & McCowan 2002).

The dog’s bark, seems hypertrophied, excessive, and occurs in a much wider variety of contexts than it did in for the dog’s wolf-like ancestor (Fox 1971; Cohen & Fox 1976; Coppinger & Feinstein 1991). Barking is a major source of noise pollution in dog kennels (Sales et al. 1997), and inappropriate barking is one of the most common behavioral problems reported by dog owners (Beaver 1994, 1999), with up to 35% of surveyed owners listing this as a complaint.

Distribution and Habitats. The dog is widespread throughout the world,  partly due to the increase in athropogenic food resources (Udell & Wynne 2010).  Both evolutionary (phylogenetic) and lifetime individual development (ontogenetic) explanations have been offered to explain the success of dogs in human societies (Udell & Wynne 2010).

Today, the domestic dog global population numbers an estimated 900 million, and represents the most abundant species of carnivores (Gompper 2013). Only 15-25% of these dogs are pets (Gompper  2013; Hughes and Macdonald  2013).

Feral, stray, and domestic dogs are now found in almost every region and habitat (including snowy and desert areas) wherever humans exist (Wynne 2010).

Domestication, Human­-Dog Interrelations. The dog became domesticated from the grey wolf (Canis lupus). The two species share differences of only 0.2% in the genotype (Wayne 1993). It remains uncertain as to when the domestication process began and whether it occurred just once or multiple times across the Northern Hemisphere (Larson et al. 2012). According to DNA analysis and archaeological findings, however, some scholars are now convinced that the cradle of the dog was not Asia, as had been previously suggested, but Europe (and see Thalmann et al. 2013). According to one theory, individual wolves that showed less fear and little aggression towards people followed by them for access of food and bred in their proximity, and slowly increasing their populations in human-dominated environments. They gradually became more and more dependent on human settlements for food and security (Crockford 2000). Domesticated  dogs developed certain traits and skills that enabled humans to communicate with them (Wynne 2008).

A Number of skulls found at different archaeological sites, such as in the Goyet Cave in Belgium and the Altai Mountains in Russia, show clear signs of differentiation from wolf to dog through domestication (Ovodov et al. 2011). A recent detailed analysis of these skulls dates them to 30,000 BCE, the oldest remains currently known (Germonpré et al. 2009; Druzhkova et al. 2013). Among the best-known skeletal material of the domestic dog are the Danish finds from the Mesolithic period (9,000–6,000 BCE) at settlements located near Halleby River, Denmark (Degerbøl 2014).

In the Levant and the Land of Israel, a Natufian woman buried with a puppy dog was found in Einan (Mallaha), Israel, dating to 12,000 years ago (Valla 2017). A study of Iron age assemblages in the Southern Levant show a wide spread of dog bones within human settlements (Sapir-Hen and Fulton 2023).

Dogs display a considerable variation in morphology, genetics, and behavior, as manifested in the more than 400 breeds existing today (Stafford 2006; Svartberg 2006). Artificial selection in dogs was performed by humans, focusing on the desired cognitive and behavioral skills relative to the function intended for the dogs, such as sheep herding, hunting, search and rescue, etc. These different functions produced the variety of different breeds we recognize today (Coppinger and Coppinger 2001; Hare and Tomasello 2005).

The human-animal interaction had a significant impact on the dog’s domestication process. Due to domestication, dogs have developed high interspecific communicative skills compared to other canids (Hare et al. 2002; Miklo´si et al. 2003). Domestic dogs’ high sensitivity to social cues is an evolutionary legacy considered to have been inherited from wolves (Hare et al. 2005). It is the differences in the behavior of dogs and wolves however, that are the most striking result of domestication, as also the differences in their physical appearance and behaviors (Rigternik & Houpt 2014). Domestic dogs remain dependent on humans as their primary sources of food, water, access to mates, and even touch, throughout their lifetime (Udell & Wynne 2008). Such dependence and sensitivity to human requirements are quickly shaped in domestic dogs dwelling in human households.

In the process of dog domestication, traits that were often selected for by humans, such as lack of aggression or fear of people, may have carried with them other genetic traits that led to a heightened responsiveness to human social stimuli (Hare et al. 2002; Hare & Tomasello 2005). Dogs also show a variety of paedomorphic features in their morphology, e.g., large eyes, short nose (Wayne 1986).

Evidence of the special nature of the bond between dogs and humans comes from research showing that dogs develop levels of attachment to humans that can be compared to the attachment of children to their parents, and which have not been found in wolves raised in a similar way to dogs (Topál et al. 2005).

One of the most interesting behavioral characteristics of the modern domestic dog is its predisposition to attend and respond to human social gestures and cues, which then becomes established (Pavlov 1966; Skinner 1953). Dogs have shown sensitivity to specific phonemes within tape-recorded human commands (Fukuzawa et al. 2005). Dogs also appear sensitive to the context of human cues, at least when the contextual information is visual. Recently, studies have shown that some pet dogs, after many years of dedicated training, can learn to respond accurately to as many as 1,000 human words or labels (Kaminski et al. 2004; Pilley & Reid 2011).

Dogs’ Roles in Human Society.  For thousands of years dogs have been functioning as herding dogs, hunting dogs, sled dogs, and in various other specializations that are crucial to the livelihoods of many human individuals (Udell & Wynne 2008). In  some ancient societies, such as Egypt and the Hellenistic-Roman cultures (Sapir-Hen & Fulton 2023), dogs were kept as pets, companion animals. In modern cultures, many individuals put their faith in rescue dogs when stranded in the wilderness or capsized in deep water. Others rely on guide dogs to steer them safely to their destinations on a daily basis. Drug-detection, and explosives-detection dogs, police dogs, termite-detection and even cancer detection dogs are trained to detect and signal various substances, competing well or even better than the latest technology (such as e-noses).

Dogs can cause harm to humans and wildlife. Domestic dogs are by far the most important reservoir species of rabies, causing more than 99% of human rabies cases worldwide (WHO 2013). In Asia, over 35,000 people are estimated to die annually from dog-mediated rabies and the disease causes the continent an economic burden of over 6 billion US$ a year, substantially more than on any other continent (Hampson et al. 2015).

Dogs can harm wildlife through spreading disease, interbreeding with other canids, competing for resources such as food and shelter, and chasing or harassing (Doherty et al.  2017). The ecological ‘pawprint’ of the domestic dog is much greater than previously realized. Dogs walking in woodlands have led to a 35% reduction in bird diversity (mainly ground-nesting birds) and 41% reduction in abundance, both in areas where  walking dogs is common and where dogs are prohibited but enter nevertheless (Banks and Bryant, 2007).

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