Dogs Never Lie About Love by Jeffrey Masson

Author:Jeffrey Masson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Random House UK
Published: 2010-09-29T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

Cats and Dogs

IN 1845, Charles Darwin was miles from any human habitation, riding in the Argentine Pampas, when he noticed flocks of sheep guarded by a single dog. This special guard dog had been raised with sheep, sucking from a ewe and sleeping in the sheep pen on a bed of wool. The dog was castrated and became ‘senior ram’ in the flock, with, the sheep trailing after him. In the evening, he would return to the house to be fed, the sheep following. Other than the evening feeding, he had no contact whatever with humans. The other dogs of the house would turn on him and pursue him until he reached his flock of sheep, at which point he would turn and the dogs would flee. They would not attack the sheep while the dog was with them. Why? Darwin wrote:

The shepherd-dog ranks the sheep as its fellow-brethren, and thus gains confidence; and the wild dogs, though knowing that the individual sheep are not dogs, but are good to eat, yet partly consent to this view when seeing them in a flock with a shepherd-dog at their head.1

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