Look into my eyes
“The one absolutely unselfish friend that humans can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts them, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous is their dog.”
~George Graham Vest, Senator of Missouri, 1855
Why Mans BestFriend?
MAC, a Bichon Frise, at play. © 2003 Alex McDougall
Domesticated animals abound. Over the millennia humans have, for a variety of reasons, domesticated everything from cats and dogs to snakes and skunks. But none of them receive the attention, care, and love that dogs do. Why is this? What makes dogs man’s best friend? Is it their ease of training, the attachment they make to their human companions, or do they just really like free food?
The answer seems to lie in the long relationship between the two species. Researchers estimate the history of humans and dogs coexisting as far back as 15000 years. In this time, dogs and humans have had a long time to get to know one another. Studies in which researchers looked at the abilities of wolves, chimpanzees, and domesticated dogs to recognize human communication skills found that domesticated dogs, even those as young as nine weeks old, were better able than were wolves or chimpanzees to understand cues from human subjects. The subjects, all raised by humans, each were given instructions by humans on the location of hidden food and, despite the fact that chimps are more closely related genetically to humans and wolves have bigger brains, dogs still came out on top. The study revealed that the co-evolution of dogs with humans must have selected for a set of cognitive abilities between the two that makes the bond between humans and dogs unique (Walton, 2002). This unique ability to communicate eases the relationship between dogs and humans and lends insight into why both dogs and humans feel a special connection to one another.
Throughout the process of domestication, dogs have been of utmost use to humans, as workers and companions. In the Stone Age, dogs helped in hunting, labour, providing warmth, and protecting from predation. Often, the remains of dogs are found with the remains of Stone Age humans, in and around caves and in burial grounds (Vergano, 2006). Aside from pets, dogs the world over still work in a symbiotic relationship with humans.
True stories of Man’s Best Friend
Countless news stories chronicling the bond between dogs and humans have been published. In 2005, a baby in Kenya was abandoned by her mother in a forest and left to die. A stray dog, a new mother of her own litter of puppies, heard the cries from the human baby that no one else heard and took the dying human infant back to her own litter of puppies and cared for her as best she could, treating her like one of her own pups. When a local man heard a baby crying, he was led to find a human baby snuggling with puppies, watched over by their faithful mother. The baby was taken to a hospital and is now growing up a healthy baby girl, thanks to a stray mother dog (Reagan, 2005). This begs the question, ‘How deep is the tie between humans, and their best friends?’ Did the dog know instinctively to take care of a human baby, despite the fact that she was a stray who may have had little human contact? These are the types of questions that researchers are trying to answer.
One study found that having a dog as a companion lowered blood pressure in patients in high stress jobs. Other studies showed that having a dog as a pet was a great substitute for human companionship for those who lived alone (Biology.About.Com, 1999).
Dogs have been shown to reduce stress and anxiety in hospitalized patients. Researchers showed that just a 12 minute visit with humans’ best friend reduced stress-inducing hormone emissions and lowered blood pressure and pulse rate in hospital patients (AHASS, 2005).
