Not totally related but I feel this is the right place to share this small event.
I was driving in a relaxed small town, saw a dog in the sidewalk. He turned to the crosswalk to cross the road and stopped there waiting.
I thought, why not? And stopped my car.
On the opposite side of the road, a trucker thought the same and also stopped.
As we both stood there, the dog crossed the road.
Me and the trucker looked into each other and smiled
Makes me wonder whether this is knowledge the dog picked up on its own through observation, or knowledge passed on through dog communication. Both being incredible.
This is a very strange piece of research because they admit they only observed the dogs during daytime, but they've still made broad statements claiming the dogs exhibit friendly and docile behavior at all times - despite a reputation for aggression that the researchers casually dismiss.
The reality is that street dogs in India are often more active, and sometimes far more aggressive, at nighttime. They often rest quietly during the day to avoid suffering from the extreme heat
Street dogs run around in PACKS in so many Indian cities and even the beaches in Goa. They will absolutely attack a vulnerable target as well - which for example is you going for your morning walk at dawn, with few / no other people around. Terrifying stuff. I’ve also read news stories of a pack of feral urban pigs running down and murdering an old lady in India.
It's funny you assume research is out to prove something. Usually basic research is either observational. i.e. observe a phenomenon without priors as to gather knowledge, or oriented towards hypothesis testing which is testing your models fit to explain reality.
The type of research you assume should be called Adverserial research, fit the research methodology to the desired conclusion. This is not research, it is demagoguery.
It's sad, this may be the most common sort of research...
Why would it try to "prove" something, in the sense of trying to argue for a particular policy or opinion? Most research doesn't and shouldn't.
No comment on dog behaviour or policy in a country I don't know, but basic research (and, I'd argue, most good academic research) is descriptive, not prescriptive.
The problem with rabies is lack of political will.
Vaccinate the feral dogs. They will make a queue waging the tail, come to you and eat the vaccine from your own hands in 5 seconds if you show half a sausage. Save lottamoney in healthcare later and human lives. End of the problem. Vote me.
Or if you are more ambitious, caught them, mark the vaccinated dogs with a tatto or a ear tag, and give the poochie the whole sausage before releasing it again at their home, so people can know what dog interactions are safer and what need more care. Thus you avoid losing money vaccinating two times the same dog.
"should kill all the dogs because rabies" is stupid. Ecology models predict that that would spread faster the rabies and would made people less safe in that sense. You want territorial animals remaining in their territory.
Where I stay, the strays are not only vaccinated but also neutered regularly. All this is not done by the municipal corporation but by kindhearted locals. Unfortunately breeders dump unwanted puppies and unproductive adults on the street. I see a lot of abandoned (by humans) pups too.
I don't understand how neutering an animal is considered "kindhearted".
The fact that this is such a common idea suggests to me that even people who believe they care about animals in truth treat animals as objects, without any rights or personal interests other than what the person thinks are the animal's interests.
We don't do that kind of thing to humans anymore, neuter them for their own good and the good of their descenants. Why do we do it to animals?
> I don't understand how neutering an animal is considered "kindhearted".
You have a good point.
That's what I get when I edit to add a word in later. 'Kindhearted' was intended to qualify 'immunization'.
On the other hand we do neuter ourselves (some forms of birth control can be considered neutering with different levels of reversibility), but the difference is that it happens with consent and is voluntary.
For the 'social problem' of strays neutering is an acceptable compromise struck between the dog lover and dog hater groups.
I would rather have a stray neutered rather than killed in a kill shelter or worse, stoned on the streets to death. The latter is not uncommon in a few states in my country.
You might be interested in the fact that in India dolphins have some of the human like legal rights. Definitely some progress. Not sure if Orcas would come under the folds of the same law. I dont think Orcas are to be found in Indian territorial waters.
> I would rather have a stray neutered rather than killed in a kill shelter or worse, stoned on the streets to death
This is a false dichotomy. The kind of people that stone a dog to death, will do gladly the same with a neutered dog. Is just a releasing frustration mechanism. Finding somebody lower in the social scale to pick on him/her, is psychologically comforting in a twisted sense. The ugly truth is that it makes us feel better. The concepts of "good" and "bad people" play a main role and are deeply engraved in human cultures. We do horrible things to "bad people", "nazis" etc, all the time.
But I digress. Is really useful to neuter stray dogs?.
Most probably not. Would be the same as proposing to neuter coyotes. Top predators self regulate its numbers being strongly territorial. Only the alpha pair in a pack is allowed to reproduce, and the space is filled to its capacity, so neutering the rest would not made any difference (just make vets richer). Is just animal cruelty by part of a pool of people unable to deal with basic concepts of being alive, as pain and death, and that secretly yearn for control over other's lives to hide the lack of control over their own lives.
> This is a false dichotomy. The kind of people that stone a dog to death, will do gladly the same with a neutered dog. Is just a releasing frustration mechanism.
Hard disagree at least in my local context. You seem to harbor quite a strong conviction but uninformed of the situation here. That doesn't help much other than, as you said, 'it makes us feel better'.
Its through adopting these population control measures have locals been able to strike a compromise between, for lack of a better terminology, anti-stray and pro-stray folks. That the strays are neutered and would not by themselves lead to an increase in their numbers have helped persuade residents to be kinder, though somewhat reluctantly.
The number of dead puppies per year have gone down, so have calls to the municipal corporation to exterminate the strays. It may sound harsh, but I will readily take that concrete benefit rather than judgements and opinions from the internet.
> Finding somebody lower in the social scale to pick on him/her, is psychologically comforting in a twisted sense.
This is spot on. I am just thankful that these has gone down some. Funnily enough its not just dog lovers vs those who do not like dogs. There have been instances of setting pet dogs against the strays. So yeah we as people do gratuitously horrible things.
The stray population here has a very different dynamics and replacement sources from Coyote population, so I dont think that example generalizes.
> That's what I get when I edit to add a word in later. 'Kindhearted' was intended to qualify 'immunization'.
Fair enough. Sorry for reacting reflexively to your wording.
> I would rather have a stray neutered rather than killed in a kill shelter or worse, stoned on the streets to death.
Ideally, we should teach people that it's wrong to kill animals just because they're bothersome. Legislation, social pressure and changing mores can get that message across loud and clear and then we won't have to either neuter or kill strays.
Where I live btw, dogs -strays and not, alike- tend to die not stoned but poisoned. Whether that's on purpose, or the dogs eat something they shouldn't (like rat poison) I have no idea. The word on the street is that people leave poisoned food out on purpose to kill an animal that's causing them trouble (like killing their chickens) and then inevitably kill a couple more that they didn't intend to. I don't know how true that is.
That is of course extremely illegal, but nobody ever gets caught for it.
No apologies needed, it was indeed poorly worded and I noticed it myself before you had commented. By then it was past the edit window.
> Ideally, we should teach people that it's wrong to kill animals just because they're bothersome.
Amen.
> Where I live btw, dogs -strays and not, alike- tend to die not stoned but poisoned.
We had one such case and I have no idea whether that was intentional. I would like to believe that it was not. It was my first experience of seeing one dog grieve another for weeks and then die months after because it had stopped eating.
Something I learned from our local shelter: rescued street dogs in urban environments tend to be pretty friendly. Non-aggressive dogs get regularly fed by kind hearted people, aggressive dogs don't and have to compete for scraps with other animals.
Yeah the observation period is very limited for the claims being made. It seems that adding a tracking device and/or camera could lead to significantly stronger conclusions, which surely has been accomplished by other researchers.
From what I have seen the dogs are aggressive when (a) they are protecting their litter and/or (b) bikers regularly spook them by zipping past them very close at high speed and hitting them. A-priori they cant gauge if anyone is a threat to them or not. However, a clear demonstration that you are not a threat to them and that you are relaxed enough to hold your own ground diffuses the tension.
They are more prone to territorial barking at night, but that's them being good watch-dogs.
I have a rescue from the streets. He is paranoid about bikes and cars coming close.
> They often rest quietly during the day to avoid suffering from the extreme heat
As most predators do in hot climate. Its a pretty complex topic and its good that some research is done.
Wolfs hunt mostly during night time too, but dogs are not wolfs and despite research from like the 80s where dog behaviour was derived from wolf studies (that actually were mostly done with wolfs in zoos and national parks (Yellowstone was pretty big I think) we know now that these studies fail to explain real wolf behaviour). We just began to understand how wolfs interact with each other in packs in free nature and its fairly complex.
The entire 90s dog trainer used studies about wolfs to explain behaviour and train dogs, often the word dominance is used and that you have to be the "pack leader" for your dog to make him follow your "orders". Which is plain wrong on many levels but would go to far now.
Why do I talk about wolfs? Well, dogs that grew up with humans and get lost (in nature) are known to change behaviour very fast. (It mainly depends on the breed and ofc. character).
They begin to act more like wolves again to the point where they develop shyness in front of people and it has happened that they no longer let themselves be called by their original owner and also have not accepted food from them. It can be very difficult to get them used to humans again.
Obviously, this must be different for dogs that live in urban environments without their/a owner. What is probably not different is that pack structures develop but quite rarely in intra-species "serious" conflicts because they don't need to fight over resources. Most animals fight only if really necessary because even a won fight can lead to death because of injuries.
> dogs that grew up with humans and get lost (in nature) are known to change behaviour very fast
This is especially true in Northern Canada, where abandoned and neglected pets have (for decades) formed roaming packs that, on average, kill one person per year - usually a child - and leave many others with disfiguring injuries. [0] (An old reference since media has generally pulled way back on these stories, but recent firsthand accounts indicate that there's still an issue.)
Many communities have an annual cull to keep the stray/pack population at bay, but residents from 'southern' cities travel north to adopt and rehabilitate the animals - usually with limited success.
The remoteness and unpopularity of the subject unfortunately hasn't brought about many solutions for the affected communities, and fear even more people abandoning their pets as they return to work may exacerbate the issue.
In Cuzco Peru (very touristy) a few years ago I noticed that a lot of the feral dogs were outfitted with football (soccer) jerseys, often famous international teams. So, I think they would get a food donation advantage from fans of that team (e.g. Barcelona). I also saw dogs carefully waiting at stoplights to cross a street. It occurred to me that the angry/agressive dogs probably don't make it because its not an effective survival strategy. Probably an outlier situation from an international perspective, but interesting. A pack of dogs ran up to me at one point and I was pretty scared, but they just went past and kept going. They seemed to have a lot of agency, meaning that they survived without any "owner" as we think of it in the USA.
It's actually common in Peru to let your dog out during the day, and then they generally come home at night. So, those shirted dogs may be actually owned and cared for by someone who puts the shirt on every morning.
If feral dogs are obtaining and donning football jerseys of famous international teams to solicit food donations from loyal tourists, then I have severely underestimated canine intelligence.
I had an encounter with a street dog in Sofia/Bulgaria that I will never forget.
We were at the outskirts of the city and decided to take a walk to the center along one of the main roads. After a while we noticed that a street dog was following us at a constant distance of maybe 15 meters. It looked quite friendly and we thought it may be hoping to get food from us, but we did not have any. We talked to it, also waved good bye several times, but it kept following us. Then, suddenly it came closer, maybe to 5 meter distance, and just after that a pack of other street dogs came from a side street, angrily barking and obviously having a problem with out dog being in their hood. But they were afraid of us humans and our dog suddenly acted as if it was our pet dog, walking really close to us. We continued walking and the pack of street dogs eventually gave up. Suddenly after that, our dog was gone. Obviously it had a plan right from the beginning: Using us as protection to get past that pack of dogs into the city center. And it perfectly executed the plan.
I once got cornered by a pack of dogs in Hyderabad in an early morning attempted walk to a coffee shop (what can I say, first time in Hyderabad, I didn't really grok that walking any significant distance is an adventure). Not sure if they'd have actually attacked, but they were making all the right sounds. Luckily there was a fence I could scale that they were unwilling or unable to go over.
But during the heat of the day? They did seem relaxed. Though I never tried to pet one or anything like that. Dogs getting agitated around humans in Hyderabad would probably be pretty exhausting.
Walking around the buildings in our business park in Hitec City isn't bad, there are sidewalks. But even going a half mile up the road is hard if you're not comfortable with how Indian drivers and pedestrians interact.
I personally feel okay with the smaller intersections near our office there, because walking steadily and making no sudden moves seems to do the trick. But any bigger road is essentially blocked for me if I don't have a native from the area to lead me across. Even so, it's quite a thrill getting across a halfway busy road on foot, no matter how skilled you are. Nobody is actually trying to kill you, and in fact is certainly avoiding you, but they aren't giving you more than a few inches of clearance.
Kinda related, it's still on my bucket list to drive from Hitec City over to Charminar and back. But since the pandemic hit, my twice-a-year trips to Hyderabad have stopped and I think it's entirely plausible they will never restart. It may be that if I'm ever to enjoy Absolute BBQ again it'll be in Illinois :(
Some dogs in Moscow have learned to use the metro system to navigate the city, hanging out with other dogs or a friendly person who they know will feed them at certain times of the day [0].
I’ve developed a phobia from street dogs. Especially with the bad experiences i had with them when i was kid.
But what i have noticed. When the street is busy. They’re peaceful otherwise they will try to intimidate you as a group either you’re walking,cycling, biking, driving.
When i am in the car and i am safe. I play games with them. I stop the car. They stop and they wait for me to drive. So they can run and bark outloud. Seems like they’re just playing. I wish i had the same courage when i am walking/running
Isn't that the same for humans?
You'd perceive little danger if you saw someone walking in your general direction in a crowded park, but remove all others and make it night time and the perception of that person changes entirely.
It’s way more complex than that. Your brain is running pattern recognition on the persons height, gender, age, race, clothing, gait, where they are looking, etc to work out the risk level.
If you saw an old lady carrying shopping bags you’d feel no risk of danger vs a large male in a hoodie walking in a weird way and looking at you.
There's an effort by activist to shame the use of male and female when discussing humans because it is an alternative to gender terms, which are ambiguous by design.
> I don't think it's ever been normal to use 'male' and 'female' instead of 'men' and 'women' in normal conversations
It's common in deliberately dehumanizing contexts; you’ll see it a lot historically (in writing, we don't have audio recordings) in the context of the slave trade, it's used as distancing language by law enforcement, and “female” became somewhat common among people who talk about women-as-possessions from about the late 20th century.
This reminds me of a documentary, "A Cow a Day", aired by BBC Radio Three a couple of years ago. The documentary was by the poet and radio producer Pejk Malinovski. Pejk follows a random street cow on the streets of Varanasi in India.
When I first heard about this documentary, I thought, what a ridiculous idea of following a stray cow for a day and making a documentary out of it! But when I listened to the audio documentary, it was one of the most engaging documentary I had listened to!
I just listened to it, and it's... yeah, I get what you mean when you wrote "it was one of the most engaging documentary I had listened to!". It truely is.
a number of years ago I was nearly attacked by a pack of feral dogs in the outskirts of rawalpindi, pakistan.
it was about 5:30 am before most of the city was awake and I was taking myself and luggage out to the nearest main road to get a taxi to catch an early flight.
it turns out that the tactic for scaring off a mountain lion also works with them, if you raise your arms over your head as high as you can reach while simultaneously screaming "YARRRGGGH!!!!!!" as loud as humanly possible, you can chase away a whole pack.
I was confronted by a pack of dogs on the outskirts of Varna, Bulgaria. It was just me, no one else around. The dogs certainly were aware of it.
Remembering that opening an umbrella tends to severely freak out dogs, I walked past them, then turned around and took off my jacket with a big flourish.
They panicked and ran away, then just barked at me from a distance. Haha
a group of about eight to ten of the typical small to medium size south asian feral dogs came out of the grass and bushes by the side of the road, and began approaching me all together at a medium pace, in a group with what I interpreted as aggressive body language (having owned a number of different breeds of domestic north american dogs for many years since childhood).
I had been pulling a wheeled piece of luggage which possibly set them off because its noise was quite unusual at that time and place.
I'll be honest, there doesn't seem to be much scientific reasoning here behind things.
Things like tracking distance the dogs travelled in a day would be pretty easy to do for a random sample. Or the breakdown of sex / estimated age / etc.
Maybe it's just a starting point but it doesn't give much info IMHO.
I adopted a pariah dog from Punjab 3 years ago. Described here: https://sevastray.com/blogs/news/rani. She definitely snoozes midday in the hot Georgia summer and is super friendly.
The street dogs of India seem especially lethargic compared to ones I’ve seen elsewhere. I wonder if it’s the hot climate, the ease of finding food in an ultra-dense urban environment, or perhaps more exposure to parasites. It would be great do to some follow up studies to compare other countries.
my experience with street dogs in India was positive, they were never* agressive towards me, quite the opposite, in Goa beach they were protecting white (!) people on beach from locals, in morning when I sat on empty beach they even made circle around me and lay around me, but when (clearly) local came to beach they started bark at him immediately, I wonder if tourists treat them better than locals, so they behave accordingly at least in Goa
*only place in India where I was attacked by dogs was right at the southern gate of Taj Mahal, dog snapped after my leg but it seems he didnt bite, even guard checked my leg and mind saying when I travelled around Agra I saw in other location again younger boys attacked by street dogs, so seems Agra is really bad place with dogs, everywhere else in India was my experience with street dogs uneventful
Is this not how lions spend their days? Or jackals. Or wolves, or foxes: pack predators have good fight/flight/feed balance and just hang around, minimising energy cost. Dogs just do it more.. urbanely.
Wolves are substantially bigger than dogs. As I understand it, wolves require a lot more calories to live, maybe twice as much. That causes major differences in time budget. Lions fornicate quite often, and it's important enough socially that wild animal rescue places don't neuter male lions, while they do neuter male tigers.
This is interesting enough. Dogs have a special relationship with humans, and this is dogs, in the wild, in human environments but while not being a pet.
The cats in Rome (and Athens) are pretty relaxed, spend all day in the sun on the ancient monuments, hassling tourists for a lick of ice-cream and stealing food, but also fed by the local nonnas.
There's a reddit video of a (?slum?) location celebrating when their local "adopted" street dog is found again after going missing for some time. People become attached to these dogs.
So there's a high degree of socialisation going on in some cases.
