The humane action would be to own and rehome dogs or euthanise them, as suggested by Gandhi in 1926, in kindness and responsibility more consistent with socio-economic and ethical reality
The abandoned state of dogs shouldn't be justified by citing the early stages of the ‘origin story’ when wolf ancestors of modern dogs were scavenging on waste from hunter-gatherer settlements. Photo: Narendra Patil News of a series of fatal dog attacks on children in the past few months shocked Indians. These gruesome events illustrate the existential horror that is not visible in the statistics of dog bites and rabies deaths.
Millennia of shaping means dogs have become biologically endowed to form a deep personal bond with humans. To a great extent, the human-dog bond formed over the evolutionary timescale prevents recognition of the threat that dogs have become.
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The policymakers and the administration have effectively ignored the growing dog menace over the last two decades. The Government of India persists with ineffective action, despite unambiguous evidence for the failure of the official approach.
Freely roaming dogs are abandoned domesticates — and this is a recognition that strangely eludes common perceptions and even experts researching stray dogs.
There were 59 million free-ranging dogs (Canis familiaris) in India abandoned to live as ‘strays’, as per a 2014 estimate mentioned in Free-Ranging Dogs and Wildlife Conservation by Matthew E Gompper (ed). Experts say the number could be more than 70 million now.
‘Strays’ are not only a health hazard to people and a threat to biodiversity but their ‘abandonment’ is also a moral challenge. Commonly known as ‘street dogs’, the name itself implies how they are already forsaken.
The focus here is on the larger phenomenon of humankind forsaking their best friend — the dogs. The discarding of pets by their owners is but one aspect of it and stems from the same moral bankruptcy and irresponsibility.
Socio-economic changes in human societies have rendered the historical roles of dogs as hunters and herders largely obsolete.
Thereby, the utilitarian component has weakened significantly in the human-dog bond that has evolved over thousands of years. And now, this novel situation tests the limits and the strength of the caring component in this fascinating interspecies bond.
As the situation stands, humans have no control over the reproduction of ‘strays’, which completely depend on human settlements for survival. Thereby, they seem to have become a synanthropic species — like cockroaches or rats.
However, the dog is a domestic animal in a neglected state. One eco-ethology study from India found that stray dogs prefer giving birth close to humans. This behaviour in dogs evidences their domestication history.
January is cold in Leh with day’s maximum temperatures around -3 degrees Celsius and nighttime temperatures dipping to around -15°C. In this lean-touristy season, food waste is scarce for dogs to scavenge on. Photo: Narendra Patil
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This finding must not be surprising, given that the biology of Canis familiaris has been subjected to millennia of natural selection pressures to adapt to live as man’s best friend.
The uniqueness of the human-dog bond is pretty much recognised. But, the discovery of the underlying biological mechanism — where two mammals from different orders can form an affinity through the flooding of the ‘love hormone’ oxytocin in their blood — is fascinating.
It has been found that gazing behaviour from dogs (but not wolves) increased oxytocin levels in owners and then a filial response by the owner, in turn, increased oxytocin concentration in dogs.
Oxytocin is a chemical messenger that regulates various bodily functions, such as labour contractions, breast milk letdown and sexual response. It also promotes positive emotions like trust and happiness. Hence, this hormone facilitates the formation of close relationships between individuals, including humans and dogs.
These discoveries — of the oxytocin-mediated loop in forming intersubjective bonds — emphatically demonstrate that dogs are not ‘our best friends’ merely in a manner of speaking. They are our ‘companion species’.
These insights should guide dog management policy meant to further the welfare of both dogs and people — not the pop notions of evolution.
Food waste abounds on urban streets, but such garbage is not meant to be found there. Scavenging dogs are a present-day urban reality, but that does not make them natural scavengers.
The condition of scavenging has been brought upon street dog populations due to the failure of civic administrations to remove waste and the abject lack of responsibility for their welfare.
Those who are in favour of keeping dogs on the street in India can be roughly grouped under three perspectives.
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Firstly, most of the general population in India holds an unqualified belief in the value of all living beings. These people may feed dogs to seek personal salvation or for psychological self-gratification.
However, these random acts of kindness, which ignore the broader responsibility toward dogs’ well-being, are not true charity. Gandhiji advocated the removal of dogs from the streets as an expression of kindness and responsibility: “It is the indiscriminate and thoughtless charity that has to be resisted,” he had said.
The second perspective comes from Dog Lab in Kolkata that is researching evolutionary history of dogs. It advocates leaving street dogs alone — without vaccination, culling or sterilisation — for their numbers to stabilise naturally. The assumption is that street dogs have adapted to living on the street.
However, this justification from a scientific research organisation fails to distinguish between healthy evolutionary adaptations and learning to live in unhealthy environments. It is insensitive to the miserable conditions under which the abandoned domesticates live.
Thirdly, even the Indian government’s Animal Birth Control programme believes dogs belong on the streets. It aims to control the dog population through sterilisation and contain rabies through vaccination, but unscientific approaches and intractable practical challenges have prevented its success.
All these perspectives assume that dogs naturally belong on the streets but fail to recognise that dogs have adapted both behaviorally and biologically to changing humans’ socio-economic and cultural contexts over time.
Dogs on the streets is a failure of responsibility, but to justify this condition for them is nothing short of human perfidy towards them.
In addition to the need for dog welfare, there is civic responsibility toward peoples’ welfare and the need to create a healthy living environment for people that requires the removal of dogs from the streets.
Urbanised human habitats must prioritise the well-being of humans and retain or incorporate only those elements in the urban ecosystem that enhances its services. Free-roaming dogs without owners serve no ecological purpose and should be regarded as a nuisance in modern urban ecosystems.
Hence, instead of prescribing a peaceful co-existence of ownerless dogs in modern human societies, emphasising the need for responsible pet ownership and effective population management practices to remove dogs from the streets is required.
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The issue of stray dogs is complex — involving legal, ethical, and practical challenges and a dramatic change in perspective is necessary. A critical mass of scientific knowledge is available to make this paradigm shift and a novel ethical perspective was given by Mahatma Gandhi 100 years ago.
In 1926, the patron saint of non-violence advocated for a municipal by-law that would enable authorities to “destroy unowned dogs.” This perspective, presented nearly a hundred years ago, not only continues to be relevant today but has gained a greater sense of urgency.
It is more consistent with modern socio-economic and ethical realities than ideas coming from maudlin emotions and unscientific thinking on the issue.
Teary-eyed? That is what the look of abandoned domestic animals is like. Dogs are not wild, not feral, or synanthropic but domestic animals. Photo: Narendra Patil
Dogs have highly developed cognitive and social communication abilities, which enable them to perform various functions in the roles of service dogs, drug-detecting and bomb-sniffing dogs and so on.
And, because of their ability to form deep emotional bonds with humans, the role of dogs as pets becomes important. Many studies demonstrate that the company of dogs can lead to reduced stress, anxiety and symptoms of depression and lead to improved mood and increased social relationships among people.
Perspectives that view keeping pets as solely “for our pleasure” trivialise the evolutionary achievement of dogs and the very possibility of intersubjective bonds between pets and their owners.
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However, gainfully deploying dogs into any of these roles has to be seen programmatically — requiring new pet ownership policies and aligning social norms to bring responsibility towards every dog. Yet, the welfare of the ‘street dogs’ population is an immediate requirement.
They need to be removed from the streets in large numbers. Either keeping them in shelters or euthanising them is society’s choice, but there is no justification — hence no option — for abandoning them to the streets.
Narendra Patil is a freelance writer. He writes on ecology, wildlife and nature conservation. He has worked for snow leopard conservation in Ladakh and on tiger population monitoring in central and south India
Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth
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