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Myth #4 - Dogs Are as Much Like Wolves as Humans Are Like Chimps
Positive training guru Ian Dunbar says that since humans
share roughly the same amount of DNA (98.6%) with chimps as dogs do
with wolves, then, logically speaking, trying to train dogs by studying
wolf behavior is like learning how to raise a child by watching chimps,
to “see how they do it.”
Let's look at some facts. Only 12 to 120 thousand years of evolution separates dogs and wolves, while roughly 6 million
years separates us from chimps. Look at the zeroes: 12,000 vs. 6,000,000 years. And even when you parse that comparison
down by the numbers of generations,
there’s still a significant difference. Plus we don’t, in fact share
98.6% of our DNA with chimps; we share 98.6% of our nucleotide
sequence. And as cognitive scientist Daniel Povinelli, of the
University of Louisiana, puts it: “That rough similarity in our nucleotide sequences obscures the fact
that the same genes may have dramatically different activity levels in
the two species.” In other words chimps and humans aren’t anywhere near as alike as Dunbar would have us believe, nor even remotely as alike as dogs and wolves actually are.
Meanwhile
Dunbar’s analogy also crumbles when we
consider that by some scientific forms of reckoning dogs are actually two members of the same species (canis lupus, canis lupus famliaris), while chimps and humans (pan troglodytes, homo sapiens) aren’t even in the same biological family.
For instance, I watched a wildlife segment on Jay Leno a few years back, just to see an adult gray wolf appear on The Tonight Show stage. It
was shocking and kind of magnetic to behold this gorgeous, majestic
animal. We’ve all seen cheetahs and alligators and grizzlies on talk
shows before. And they look dangerous and exotic and scary. But what
was so magnetic about seeing a wolf climbing into the chair next to
Jay’s (technically Johnny’s) desk was that he looked very wild and yet
very much like a cross between a big sweet German shepherd and a goofy
giant malamute. Leno’s wildlife expert even warned people about not
making the same mistake and cautioned them not to try petting a wolf,
if they should ever see one up close (presumably in a sanctuary; it’s
doubtful you’d get a chance in the wild).
The point is, we
feel awed by something so wild and dangerous as a grizzly bear. The
hairs on the back of our neck stand up when we see one in such close
proximity to a human being. But while that same wild, dangerous energy
is present in a wolf’s appearance and bodily movements, on a certain level he also looks kind of
familiar and comfortable, like you actually could go up and pet him or
kiss him on the nose. I think that’s what was so shocking about the one
I saw on Leno.
Granted, you’d never mistake a pug or a dachshund
for a wolf. But as Letterman likes to say, “They don't give these shows
to chimps!” And no matter how much closer Jay Leno, for example, is to
a chimp in both appearance and intelligence, there’s still no danger of mistaking him, or
any other talk show host, for a chimpanzee the way there is of mistaking a
wolf for a dog. (Can you tell with 100% accuracy if the animal in the
photo on this page is a wolf or a dog puppy?)
The Wrong Model
Personally,
despite what I perceive as Dunbar’s intellectual dishonesty, I
agree, at least partially, with his point: that it’s perhaps unwise to
try to copy wolf behavior when training our dogs, particularly when
most of the behaviors we’re told to copy -- the alpha roll, being the pack
leader -- don’t actually exist in nature.
Yes, some traditional
trainers (like Cesar Millan and the Monks of New Skete) are still
locked into the mistaken idea that dogs “think” they’re part of a
hierarchy, and need an alpha wolf to control them. But that’s just the
wrong wolf model. Hierarchical behaviors, such as dominance and
submission are only seen in captive wolves and village dogs, etc.,
animals living under stress. Wild wolves don’t have pack leaders, per
se, or form hierarchies; they’re more harmonious, less at each other’s
throats, which is almost entirely due to the way they hunt
together—something captive wolves are unable to do. This is true even
at Wolf Park, where although the wolves are given an opportunity to
“humanely hunt” buffalo (they’re allowed to chase them around), they
never get a chance to bite and kill them. As a result, even those
wolves are often antagonistic to one another (i.e., they form
stress-related hierarchies), because they never get that final payoff
through their teeth and jaws.
But still and all, there is a long
shared evolutionary history between the dog and the wolf, going back at
least a million years, maybe more. And much of what we do in dog
training, whether we realize it, is based on imitating the predatory
motor patterns found in wild wolves. That's how obedience training got
its start.
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