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Teaching Old Dogs – and Dog Owners - New Theories
by Bunny Stamler
Ah, the dog days of summer. What better time to learn something new about Man’s Best Friend? Exciting research from Italy discovered that dogs, like people, are left-brained and right-brained.
We all know that part of a dog’s body language is tail wagging. Now, more than ever, you can read a dog’s tail like a pointer between its positive and negative emotions. The new discovery, first reported in the March 2007 issue of Current Biology and then distributed by The New York Times, shows that when a dog feels positive about someone or something, it will wag its tail predominantly to the right side of its body.
Conversely, if a dog feels fearful or negative, its tail will wag predominantly to the left side. The puppy dog tail still wags back and forth, but there is a noticeable preference for one side or the other.
You can observe this phenomenon in your own pooch. Next time Fido comes running to you in wiggle and wag mode, look down and notice his tail is wagging mostly towards his right side. When he’s staring out the front window barking at an unknown menacing dog outside, his tail will be wagging mostly to the left. The preferential tail wagging is so obvious; you’ll wonder why it wasn’t noticed before.
The left-brain/right-brain concept generally states that the two halves of the brain control separate thought processes and are “wired” to the opposite sides of the body. In people, the right side of the brain has thoughts that are more random, intuitive, subjective, risk taking, about belief, and controls the left side of the body.
The left side of the brain is more logical, rational, analytical, objective, safe, factual, and controls the right side. Thus the left side of a dog’s brain, the knowing and safe side, would make a dog’s tail wag more to the right.
Most people are predominantly left-brained or right-brained while some are equal between the two. Teachers and employers sometimes test people to see if they are more creative or analytical in order to know better how to teach or motivate them.
If you want to know where you stand, take a left-brain/right-brain test on the Internet. As for dogs, all you have to do is watch their tails.
Other research has us questioning the very origins of the family dog. For years it has been generally accepted that dogs evolved from wolves thousands of years ago. The wolves’ pack instinct made it easy for ancient man to domesticate wild wolf cubs, which then evolved into the domestic dog.
Dr. Raymond Coppinger, professor of biology and animal behavior at Massachusetts’ Hampshire College, believes this is not what happened. His studies with wolves show that it isn’t easy to tame a wolf cub – the cub has to be removed from the litter very young, before its eyes are open, and tended to constantly before there is any amount of “tameness.”
He argues that people of ancient times, who were constantly busy with their own survival, did not have the time or wherewithal to go about raising wolf cubs. He adds that even if they did have the time to devote to taming wolves, the wolves didn’t turn out to be docile enough to be of useful service to humans.
Instead Dr. Coppinger proposes that wolves somewhat domesticated themselves by being attracted to the easy pickings of leftovers and trash around human’s campsites and early settlements. Since the flight response, or tameness factor, can vary among individual wolves, those wolves that were the least afraid of people (low flight response/high tameness factor) stayed around longer and kept closer to people.
These wolves were rewarded with more easy food from the nearby humans and a better chance of survival. They bred with other friendlier wolves, further strengthening the tameness trait. Dr. Coppinger believes that within generations, not thousands of years, the domestic dog species began to emerge.
It’s a fascinating new theory that deserves more study. For more information, see “Dogs That Changed the World” and “Dogs and More Dogs” at www.pbs.org.
Meanwhile, the next time you come home after a bad day, don’t kick the dog – he’s a remarkable animal whose species might have made themselves just for us humans. Pet his head instead and watch his tail wag to the right.
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