Recent reports say, "man's best friend might actually belong to a woman." In a cross-cultural study, researchers from the Washington State University found various factors may have played a vital role in building equally beneficial associations between humans and dogs, including hunting, temperature, and astonishingly, gender.
According to WSU anthropology student WSU Jaime Chambers, who's also the first author on this paper which Journal of Ethnobiology published, they found that relationships of dogs with women "might have had a greater impact on dog-human bond," compared to relationships with men.
The first author added, humans were more possible to consider "dogs as a type of person if the dogs" had a special bond with women. More so, they were more likely to be part of family life, "treated as subjects of affection," and in general, people had a higher regard for them.
As most people know, dogs are the oldest and most prevalent domesticated animals, and only a few anthropologic studies have concentrated directly on human association with canines.
Nonetheless, EurekAlert reported, when the researchers at WSU sought the extensive collection of "ethnographic documents in the 'Human Relations Area Files' database," they discovered thousands of mentions of these domesticated animals.
The 'Personhood' of Dogs
The study authors noted specific circumstances showing utility or usefulness of dogs to humans, as well as the utility of humans to dogs, and the "personhood of dogs" when they were treated like people like being given names, permitted to sleep in a similar bed, or mourned over their death.
A pattern occurred, showing when women were found to be more involved with dogs, the utility of humans to dog increased, as did dogs' personhood.
Another prevalent trend had something to do with the environment-the warmer the climate as a whole, the less functional "dogs tended to be to humans."
WSU anthropology professor and corresponding author on the paper, Robert Quinlan said, dogs are indeed not specifically energy efficient in relation to humans.
Their body temperature, he continued, is higher compared to humans, and "just a bit of exercise can make them overheat" during a hot day. He added, they saw the trend that dogs "had less utility to humans" when in warmer environments.
A Successful Association Between Dogs and Humans
Quinlan noted some exceptions to this with a few dog-loving cultures in the tropics, but it was a fairly consistent trend.
Additionally, hunting seemed to strengthen the dog-human association, as well. In cultures that hunted with dogs, they were more appreciated by their human partners, the higher in terms of measures of utility of dogs to humans, and in personhood.
Such appreciations dropped, though, when food production increased, whether it was growing crops or retaining livestock.
This result appeared to contrast to the usually-held perception of herding dogs functioning in concerts with humans. However, Quinlan emphasized that shepherding dogs frequently work alone in many cultures where us hunting necessitates stronger cooperation.
This research adds proof to the evolutionary concept that dogs and humans both chose each other, instead of the older philosophy that humans deliberately searched for wolf puppies to raise on their own.
Dogs, Quinland explained, "are everywhere humans are." If humans think that dogs are successful as a species, if there are many of them, then they "have been able to thrive." They have hitched themselves to humans and followed them anywhere in the world. This has been quite a successful association.
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