Dogs in culture
I have to say this is one of the most comprehensive articles I've ever seen (but it needs to have heaps broken into separate ones) but I think there's a glaringly obvious omission: most such articles talk about the topic in our culture, that is, what position does the dog have when seen in human culture? Say, how is it portrayed in art, what are its characteristics and what does it represent in mythology etc, right down to how it is seen in contemporary media like stereotypes in cartoons and how it appears in little language caveats (dog's breakfast and, as mentioned, doggy style!). --tilgrieog
Size cleanup
I'm goign to be going through and cleaning up and shortening certain areas. For example, Working Dogs has its own page, so it is redundant to include all of that information on this page. I am also going reorder some areas of the page just for better continuity. Information will only be omitted if it is redundant or if it is better summarized in another article and the link is directly established. I'll summarize major changes here when I'm finished. Thanks --Waterspyder 14:10, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
Classification
The article refers to dogs as omnivorous . It is true that they sometimes eat foods other than meat and that in some species those foods can form a substantial part of the diet. However, dogs are belong to the order Carnivora and are officially carnivorous . If dogs can cross-breed with wolves, they'd better be in the same order. Probably the canid with the least meat in its diet is the fox, if we're going to quibble. Bears are Carnivora although they eat quite a variety of foods. Remember that animals can secondarily develop different modes of life, but that doesn't change their evolutionary history: they have the teeth and inheritance of a carnivore. The cross-reference should go to Carnivore or, better yet, to Carnivora, both of which refer plainly to diet vs. taxonomy, unlike the entry for Omnivore.
- P.S. A series of fossil discoveries in the 1990s showed that whales developed from a meat-eating hoofed animal (artiodactyl, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Even-toed_ungulate).
Monado 10 April 2005The Carnivores are a grouping of animals unquestionably similar to each other. Most medium-to-large meat-eating mammals are easily categorized as the Carnivora (canids, ursids, mustelids, pinnipeds, felids, hyenids). Insectivores are flesh-eaters, too, as are some bats and most cetaceans
Giant pandas (more similar to bears than to dogs) have made the nearly-complete transition from predator to herbivore. They clearly fit in the same family Carnivora due to obvious similarities of build, paw structure, and dentition and far better than among any other family of mammals, and Man, although somewhat less carnivorous than dogs and more carnivorous than any bear but the polar bear, is still more an ape than anything else. We certainly don't classify the strictly-predatory Cetaceans as Carnivores even if they contain some of the most efficient predators in the sea (orcas and dolphins).
So:
Cat -- Carnivore and exclusively carnivorous Giant Panda -- Carnivore even if herbivorous Dog -- Carnivore even if omnivorous Human -- Primate even if omnivorous Rat -- Rodent even if omnivorous Pig -- Artiodactyl even if omnivorous Orca -- Cetacean even if strictly carnivorous Crocodile -- non-mammal and highly carnivorous Eagle -- non-mammal and highly carnivorous.It's the distinction between carnivorous creatures and the Carnivores. Humans can under some circumstances become pure carnivores, but they are still Primates. If some non-Carnivore evolved into a predatory terror as have humans and to a lesser extent chimpanzees and baboons (a pig might be the best candidate), then it would still not become a Carnivore.--66.231.41.57 06:06, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
Scientific name
Isn't the scientific name now refered to as just Canis familiaris , without the lupus? Canis lupus is the name for the gray wolf - so isn't "Canis lupus familiaris" saying that the domestic dog is a subspecie of the gray wolf? I have learned in school that the scientific name is indeed just Canis familiaris . Perhaps a note about the differing opinions on the scientific name should be included in the article? Shadowlink1014 19:03, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)
- It seems to have gone the other way--used to be canis familiaris, but now is more generally considered to be a subspecies. (They can interbreed and produce fertile offspring...) I don't know what the various current genetic studies will reveal. A couple of years ago they were saying that the DNA showed that there was virtually no difference between dogs & wolves let alone most breeds; most recent articles in the last month or so say that in fact they can even tell what breed the dog is in many cases. So you might be right that the jury is still out, but I'm not confident enough in what I've read and where to make intelligent-sounding statements about it. Elf | Talk 20:54, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Hasn't there been a change to calling the domestic dog canis lupis familiaris ?Daniel C. Boyer
External links
Consider: adding * "Did Animals Sense Tsunami Was Coming?" Ieopo 23:41, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
This is wikipedia, not yahoo. The "external links" should be used in rare cases when external sites contain useful, but copyrighted (and hence cannot be incorporated into Wikipedia) information; The "external links" should not become a huge list of every site that is about somehow relevant to dogs. The latest link added, supposedly to a very specific health problem (dry eyes) in dogs but actually on a cat site (!) - is a prime example of what should not be on the external links link. The link to the amstaf site is another good example - why link to this specific site and not to one of the other 100 breads? After all, there's a seperate dog breeds article, and perhaps even a separate amstaf page - so move that link there. I'm not bold enough to trim the link list myself because it appears that there are several frequent contributors to this article who are better knowledgable about the philosophy of this article. Nyh 14:18, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Expanding article
Added sentence expanding on jobs of dogs. --Daniel C. Boyer
Dogs vs wolves
The article implies that wolves are dogs. Isn't this false in any sense? They're both canines, but they aren't both dogs. (Is there an older or specialized sense of "dog"? If so, it shouldn't be the first one listed.)
In fact, it's the other way around: dogs are wolves. It's just that there are far more dogs than wolves. Dogs are unquestionably descended from wolves that adapted to the presence of early Man. However successful dogs are as a species, they are quite recent in origin. They are all a mere 10,000 years away from being wild wolves. Dogs and wolves interbreed easily so long as differences of size don't preclude mating.
Wasn't there a controversy a few decades ago about whether dogs were descended from wolves or from hyenas? Genetic evidence has settled it in favour of wolves, but it might be interesting to mention the hyena theory...? --JamieHall 23:55, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)"The phenotypic characteristic that define a wolf from a dog are tenuous. Wolves typically have a "brush tail" and erect ears. While some dog breeds possess one of these characteristics, they rarely possess both." Just for the purposes of my own curiosity, I can think of a few breeds which have both, for one the Australian Cattle Dog, which is descended from, along with other domestic breeds, Dingos. Is there a known explanation?
Photos
I have a picture of a dog that can be used, but what is the size of the picture have to be? - fonzy
There is still a request for a dog pix on the main page. Would this one work?
(Copy "Image" designation and remove "_Thumb" to get a larger image.Patrick0Moran 04:12, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Are you sure about the breed/mix? Looks an awful lot like a pure-bred Anatolian puppy to me!--Waterspyder 21:55, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm the owner. I bought the puppy for about $30. I saw the sire, who was supposed to be a German Shepard but looked pretty scruffy for a purebred. I didn't see the dam, but was told that she was a yellow Labrador retriever. The owner of the dam blamed the owner of the sire for letting him get loose, so the former took over the task of selling the puppies to good homes. The now-adult dog has a band of darker color right down his spine, as though somebody had dipped a wide paint brush in a color darker than his side and traced it from head to tail. He has a blue-black spot or two in his tongue, which would argue for some Chow in his family history somewhere. He's a very nice dog, not inclined to attack before anybody has done anything to him, and in some ways timid, but very protective if he suspects that I am coming under danger of attack. My horse stepped on his right rear foot by accident one time, which he interpreted as an attack and he lept up to bite the horse at the lower end of her mane. Fortunately he didn't actually succeed in biting her, but I was surprised that he could jump to the height of my own throat with an injured paw. He's not large, less than 50 lbs. In all he's a pretty good argument for h
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