<---still baffled, you say you have scientific research on dogs treating humans as dogs?
is that what you said?
I readily admit, i do not completely follow your thoughts well.
BUT STOKED that you are working towards being able to get the dogs walked! THAT WARMS MY HEART to think that dog will get walked! YESssssssss!! Especially since you are going to be a dog trainer, is great place to start, is with the family dogs!!!!!!!
Lolz, the comic was lame,
no scientist would be impressed with that. someone who either does not even remotely understand the scientific method, or just hates science, (there are a lot of ppl who do)
or has a world view that could be threatened by science, is the type that made that cartoon. "The Scientific Method" is an actual research method, and worth a google, to anyone who is not familiar with the concept of science and reliable assessing data and doing research testing, not a joke at all.
Nah, birds who border on extinction, are even hand raised and released, and have been saved from extinction by human interventions, and still hunt, mate, nest, etc. but whatever. If you still want to believe that humans raising birds and releasing them fails, go for it. In my country, i think it is even illegal to permanently possess a native wild bird.
Many species are very successfully released by humans, and their numbers were raised. Even the condor, one of the birds most difficult to raise, did better if kept longer by humans, than the condors which were given puppets as parents(to prevent imprinting) and released when the parents would have released them.
http://www.jstor.org/pss/3801266 Most of the bird rescue sites i looked at claim about a 70% success rate at releasing wild birds when raised by humans, but, it varies by species. Some species are very easy to raise up, and others, not so much. who knew?
Birds, like dogs, can recognize prey when they see it, and know how to mate without being shown how, and build a nest and raise their young, even if no bird showed them how "to parent", etc. When birds build their first nest, they've never seen it done before, yet, their brains are wired with this innate knowledge.
but whatever. You have a right to believe whatever you
want to believe!!
The idea that much of a creature's behavior IS neurobiologically driven, and innate, and on the DNA is
not necessarily "an old idea."
but, if you swap out the words a bit, it IS an old idea----even 100s of years ago, farmers knew, that mating up 2 dogs great at herding, did produce better herders than 2 dogs who were terrible at herding...although the farmers had never heard of dna.
they knew it was an inherited (and complex) behavior, on the dna, even though they didn't know what dna was. So it is both an old idea,
and a new idea, once we knew about dna.
There are plenty of dalmation owners, or many breeds of dogs, whose dogs much LOVE a good lively squirrel or bunny chase, who'd disagree that a dalmation has no prey drive.
but, back to the main point, that i disagree with,
Dogs do not see us humans as some type of dogs. Species of animals can tell other species apart,and make distinctions. I'm happy to see this research you have on
that! that dogs think humans are other dogs.
no wait, you do agree: (sort of)
//"Yeah, I guess it's true that the tendency is that dogs do NOT treat humans like dogs"//
the rest of your remarks after that remark, seem to indicate a willingness on your part to suspend knowledge of innate neurobiologically driven behaviors. Dogs who have never seen a human,(no "associations") and were never raised by humans, would still know, upon seeing their first human, that it was not a dog.
maybe i just think dogs ARE more smart than you do?? lolz!! But, like i said, you can put a baby dog into a goose's nest, and he'd still be a full-fledged dog because of his innate knowledge of how to be a dog.. but, he'd be a dog who tolerates geese very well.