Most free-ranging dogs need to be eliminated because the dog menace is our creation
In the cold mountains of Ladakh, this free-ranging dog was doing more than stealing meat from a snow leopard kill — it was ‘hunting’ with me. Photo: Narendra Patil. A snow leopard (Panthera uncia) had made a kill in the snow-covered mountains not far from Leh town. The saddle in the ridge behind which was the kill, could be seen from a tea shop in Leh market.
A three-kilometre walk and a 250-metre climb — passing through central Leh and a checkered layout of a housing colony on the outskirts, would lead to the kill location.
That snowy morning of a winter day, trudging through knee-deep snow, it had taken an hour to arrive at the carcass of Ladakh Urial (Ovis vignei vignei).
There were no fresh tracks of the predator or scavenger in the snow around the kill. However, when I walked back to the saddle overlooking the snow-draped Leh town, a domestic dog (Canis familiaris) had emerged from the snowy slopes not far from the trail.
This free-ranging dog had followed me to the kill from the housing colony below, despite my attempts to shake him off my tail. He ran alongside me with a piece of meat in his mouth.
From the fringes of human habitation, free-ranging domestic dogs can venture into harsh landscapes, but then they return to human habitation for food subsidies — from the waste dumps. [Outskirts of Leh. Photo: Narendra Patil].
Stopping to look at me and using the dog’s ability to follow the human gaze honed over thousands of years of interspecies collaboration — this free-ranging domestic dog seemed to be asking, “what next?”
The human-dog relationship is at least 15,000 years old, formed some 3,000 years before the arrival of agriculture and the domestication of other animals by humans.
The most tenable dog domestication hypothesis is that wolf ancestors of dogs (now extinct) that were least fearful of humans thrived better than others by exploiting food waste around hunter-gatherer camps.
Thereby selecting for ‘tameness’ in themselves, they are ‘self-domesticated’ — unlike other domesticates where direct human selection is involved. Then, opportunistically, humans seem to have discovered the benefits of partnering with dogs in hunting.
Also read: International Snow Leopard Day: Of snow leopards and domestic dogs
Thus was born a commensal bond — a companionship formed through ‘eating together’. There is archaeological evidence from a 14,200-year-old dog burial to hypothesise that some humans had gone beyond the utilitarian relation and developed caring bonds for their dogs. And, through the millennia of companionship, the dogs have shape-shifted themselves between being hunters, herders and guard dogs.
With more than half of humankind living in urban areas, the functional forms historically taken on by dogs have become largely irrelevant.
From being a harmless commensal and a useful partner that aided early humans to flourish, now they are largely abandoned. Their ownerless state in the urban socio-economic context makes them a nuisance for humans.
Aided in part by domesticated dogs, the population of humans grew rapidly about 40,000 years ago. It was the Homo sapiens’ numerical supremacy alone that allowed them a competitive advantage over their Neanderthal cousins, who faded away in waves of replacement and eventually became extinct.
In the ensuing millennia, the human population saw explosive growth — with the dog population in tandem. This flourishing led to the rapid shrinking of wilderness and humans have imperilled their existence on the planet.
Now, in a bid to correct their untenable relationship with the natural world, humans are attempting to protect the wilderness on earth from their unsustainable exploitation of natural resources and from dogs that have become a threat to wildlife.
The dogs that roam free are spreading disease and even fatally attacking people. Most developed countries have brutally eradicated large populations and now manage the wieldy smaller populations with methods that are much more humane.
However, many developing countries are completely clueless about effective methods for curbing their numbers — India being a prominent example.
A 2018 documentary film Khee (meaning ‘dog’ in Ladakhi), profiles the menace of free-ranging domestic dogs in Ladakh. It makes a sombre opening through interviews with two men whose wives were killed by dogs in separate cases.
Human eyes developed the white sclera and became more readable for communication using gaze signals, and in the dance of evolution, the dogs tangoed along to develop an ability to follow the human gaze — making them a formidable hunting duo. Photo: Narendra Patil.
Notwithstanding the invoking of these tragic events, the worrying statistics of predation on wildlife and cattle and the frequent discordant dog-barking sounds as voice-over-audio, the documentary does not succeed in portraying dogs as menacing and dangerous.
It is probably the strong human-dog bond forged through millennia that could prevent us from recognising the danger that dogs have become.
However, the documentary captures the perplexity that human society may experience when attempting to wrap their minds around the problem and in arriving at solutions.
The achievement of the film is in presenting the platitudes pedalled by conservation activists and documenting administrators waxing eloquent on the problem.
The effete position of the government is provided by the Inspector General of Wildlife — clearly, even the people at the helm who are custodians of wildlife do not understand dog ecology and are only playing by the book whose rules do not make any ecological sense.
The human-dog bond has been forged through millennia of mutual shaping. For instance, the dogs’ ability to digest starch was an adaptation to human starch-rich food that ancient hominids had first harnessed en route to encephalisation.
And, dogs developed the ability to follow the human gaze, aided by the prominent white sclera of the humans’ ‘cooperative eyes’ that had evolved to facilitate communication among humans.
Also read: India’s wildlife is under threat from free roaming dogs
So, the human-dog bond that is made of intricate weaving together makes it difficult for humans to ‘think straight’ on matters of curbing the dog population and euthanasia is anathema, even when dogs have become a menace to people themselves.
While we do not bat an eyelid killing many other domesticated animals, the recommendation for the elimination of dogs brings to the fore all those value systems that are designed to deal with various moral conundrums in the ‘exclusive human domain’ — and dogs cohabit that domain.
Therein lies our predicament and is an important pointer to understanding our perplexity in dealing with the dog menace.
Dogs are not feral and need to be food-subsidised; they only participate in the escapades into the wilderness accompanied by humans or display vestigial hunting behaviour on the fringes of human habitation, only to return to the hearth as any domestic generally does.
They hang around human habitation for an easy meal and venture into the mountains for a free feed.
This is a winning strategy of a species in the no-holds-barred game for survival. They are part of nature that cares two hoots for what we humans think about the place of “other” life forms on earth.
They are the very ‘life-force’ that makes new connections in the food web. While humans are busy debating morality, it is anyone’s guess what this dog that I encountered on a snowy morning is up to on the cold mountain.
This dog and its ilk are eking out a niche for themselves in the landscape. They are part of a “society, where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and music in its roar.”
The only way for humans to deal with domestic dogs is to engage with the species as either a friend or a foe — to sit them by the hearth or to banish them.
Most free-ranging dogs need to be eliminated because the dog menace is our creation. Dogs are meant to live around humans, and they do.
Their numbers and their ownerless free-roaming state are wrought by us. When humans colonised and overwhelmed the planet earth, it led to the runaway population growth of two species — Homo sapiens and Canis familiaris.
The debate on controlling the population of dogs (variously through sterilisation and euthanasia) is analogous to the debate on abortion. Dogs are dependent on human habitation — like a fetus is in the mother’s body.
It is the choice of the ‘human settlement’, as it were, to decide how many dogs can it hold and in what form — definitely not as freely roaming scavengers and not in such high numbers anymore.
Evolution is a continuous game. In the ever-changing relationship between the companion species dog and us, a novel avatar for dogs is as pets — to essentially provide emotional support to their owners.
Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth
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