
“The Domestic Dog”, featuring two decades of new evidence - sohkamyung
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/dog-spies/the-domestic-dog-is-the-book-weve-been-waiting-for-since-1995/
======
mc32
""More people may know more about dogs than ever before, but it is often a
shallow sort of knowledge that is easily exploited by self-styled dog experts
for personal gain,""

Whenever you start seeing somewhat obscure or at least not quite mainstream
knowledge take flight in infomercials or get celeb endorsement you know there
is snake oil selling going on.

But I'm intrigued. Sounds like a solid book.

~~~
DiabloD3
I see this trainwreck going on in food, too.

Like, Paleo and Keto are good things, they really are, I agree with what their
tenants are. Together, it is simply don't eat grains, don't eat refined
sugars, don't eat legumes, don't eat shitty oils; eat meat, real vegs, some
fruit, use coconut oil and olive oil and lard... but with 30g of carbs a day
and a slant towards high fat.

Where it goes wrong? The words Keto and Paleo on the product packaging (beyond
the fact that "product packaging" usually means it isn't Paleo to begin with),
and merely slapping the words on products skyrockets the price.

The diets themselves aren't snake oil, but the bullshit peddlers showed up to
derail Keto and Paleo for their own profit.

~~~
Angostura
> The diets themselves aren't snake oil

Except that there's no proper nutritional evidence that there is any problem
at all with eating grains or legumes if you are a normal healthy person. I'm
not sure there's any evidence that there's a problem with vegetable oils
either. Bullshit is pervasive.

~~~
DiabloD3
Except you're going about it the wrong way. We've eaten simple unrefined foods
for as long as society has existed. For example, what only existed recently
has been highly refined seed oils like corn, rapeseed, and canola.

It is up to them to prove that they are safe for human consumption, something
that they have been unable to do. However, to continue the example, those
types of oils are high in PUFAs (and specifically, high in Omega 6), and this
has been linked to basically every modern first world disease, including
diabetes and cancer.

The same applies to grains: cereals such as wheat hybridize in ways that are
unusual. There is probably a level of certain chemicals (such as, but not
limited to, prolamins, agglutinin, and amylase trypsin inhibitors) that are
safe for human consumption, but the hybridization of these grasses for modern
commercial production have greatly increased the amount of these chemicals in
a given food product.

Just like the oils, these hybrids are a recent invention and no science was
done before they were pushed into commercial production to prove if they are
safe. Unfortunately, more and more scientific papers are coming out that they
are not safe and cannot be made safe.

I've taken the logical and scientific choice to stop consuming these foods.
During this time, although my caloric intake has not varied enough to explain
the results, I lost around 130 pounds in a year: the only change I made was
removing foods that are on the list.

~~~
dagss
Look: Feeding the world on Paleo diet is impossible (right now ... with
increased use of insects and sustainable ocean farming not based on rainforest
soy that may change).

When one choice is to recommend a diet that will significantly increase green
house gas emissions and yet still be totally unavailable to poor people; and
another diet which might be marginally worse, then yes the burden of proof
should be on the former.

Everyone switching to Paleo diet would be disastrous; and people HAVE attained
100+ years on grain diets, i.e. it is a matter of microoptimization not
outright toxicity.

(Also you say "only change you made", but did you really measure calorie
intake exactly before the change of diet? A lot of diets lead to weight
reduction simply due to people starting to think about what they eat and
calculate calories...the act of thinking about what you eat and counting
calories itself will reduce calorie intake and increase healthiness of food
consumed, leaving most people with no comparison point, hence a lot of hyped
diets. Did you try using as much mental energy on a healthy diet containing
grains as a comparisonr point? Otherwise you do not even have an anecdote).

~~~
DiabloD3
Except none of that's true.

We already grow sufficient amounts of common vegetables like carrots, and the
members of the cabbage family, and potatoes, and onions, and garlic, and
whatever else.

Corn and rice and cereal grains are _extremely poor_ uses of the farm land we
have. They are nutrient poor, and the last thing we need to be feeding to
poor/starving people is nutrient poor foods.

Most of the reason we have starving people in the world is mismanagement of
what we already grow, not that we don't grow enough.

I also don't care what the statistical outliers do. The average American lives
far shorter lives than our medical and technological prowess would otherwise
indicate.

~~~
hycaria
There are way too many things that changed recently to have conclusions on
diets. Environment and chemical residues, sedentary lifestyles, lack of
exercise, use of drugs (antibiotics and guts flora are now suspected to have
interactions) and even more insidious stuff like our social structure changes.

And yet many people still manage to live a pretty long and healthy life
nowadays with "regular" diets (ie with cereal, yet home prepared and with the
right quantity), but not so much while being morbidly obese, drinking water
full of lead or smoking...

I mean I'm not all against special diets, and to each his own, but this focus
on diet as some kind of miracle remedy that let us live better without having
to put other efforts into it makes no sense to me.

------
Animats
"The Koehler Method of Dog Training" is considered the classic.

Training dogs isn't very hard. Most dog problems reflect the owner's problems.

~~~
sohkamyung
The book isn't a book about training dogs. It's more a book about how dogs
came to be the way there are. Quoted from the article: _" The Domestic Dog"
walks readers through the many questions they might have about dogs. What is
up with the wacky genetics underpinning some dogs having itty bitty short legs
and others immensely long ones? How can a Chihuahua and Great Dane be members
of the same species? How (and how much) do genetics contribute to different
behavioral traits, and how is this even calculated or assessed? Is there a
relationship between early life experiences and later behaviors? What does it
mean when a dog barks incessantly or tears up the house in your absence? What
is life like for feral or free roaming dogs living on the outskirts of human
societies? How do they get food, and what are their relationships like with
other dogs? Those questions represent just a tiny fraction of the issues
investigated in this 416-page volume._

~~~
nradov
Some of the wide variation between dog breeds is made possible because they
have 39 chromosomes, rather more than many other species. Thus its somewhat
easier for breeders to select for the characteristics they want without
getting too many unwanted genes.

------
chrisper
I have a dog and I'm amazed every day how well we can communicate with a
different species. My dog doesn't understand my words like we do, but he
understands my intentions very well most of the time.

Obviously this only works very well if you have a deep connection to the dog.
Doubt you can communicate with a random dog on the same level.

~~~
cgrand-net
According to
[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2016/08/26/scien...](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2016/08/26/science.aaf3777)

Dogs understand voice and intonation.

------
dymk
Fantastic, I love reading about canine learning. Seeing Patricia McConnell's
(of "The Other End of the Leash" fame) adornment of it is a huge reason for me
to buy this book. Training my dog with that book (and Don't Shoot the Dog, by
Pryor) framing how I interpret what my dog tells me has been hugely beneficial
for both my sanity, and I'm sure my dog's as well.

~~~
clumsysmurf
You make like the reading list for dog owners from the Association of Pet Dog
Trainers (APDT). There is a separate list for trainers:

[https://apdt.com/resource-center/recommended-books-dvds-
pet-...](https://apdt.com/resource-center/recommended-books-dvds-pet-dog-
owners/)

------
softgrow
Any equivalent book for cats? :)

Looking on Amazon, a book, "The Domestic Cat: The Biology of its Behaviour"
looks to be it, anyone read both books?

Incidentally, the pricing for the dog book is a bit odd, with the Kindle
edition costing about 2% more than the paperback (also sold and supplied by
Amazon). Not what I would have expected, given the lower distribution costs.

~~~
sohkamyung
The bottom of the article has a link to books for cat lovers [1] from 2015.

[1] "The Best Books for Cat Lovers" [
[https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/dog-spies/the-best-
book...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/dog-spies/the-best-books-for-
cat-lovers/) ]

------
peteretep
I'm not really a non-fiction reader, but I bought this, and started reading
it, and so far it's excellent.

------
gm-conspiracy
Relevant?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_dogs_in_Moscow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_dogs_in_Moscow)

