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Oh hey, it's that festival bracelet you're still wearing on Monday. Ali Ward, let's talk dogs. So in the past we've done episodes on dogs and wolves, but this one explains why a wolf is your dog. It's anthropology, it's sinology, it's loopnology, it's ethnosinology, which is a term coined in two thousand and two by an anthropologist named Brian Cummings. In this book he wrote titled First Nations, First Dogs, Canadian Aboriginal Ethnosinology and ethos Sinology is the study of
dogs within their cultural context. I love it. So for years y'all have asked me to interview this particular guests. I have been tagged in so many things and also recommended by our experimental archaeology guest, Angelo Robletto. So this guest handles everywhere are ethnosinology. I was game. So they did their undergrad in anthropology at University of Tennessee at Knoxville and got a master's inn anthropology at the University
of Wyoming. They are an educator with huge, huge platforms on TikTok and YouTube, and they are also a professional archaeologist. And we talk about how wolves went from the woods to your bed, and we'll get to that, but first, thank you to Patreon folks at patreon dot com slash ologies for supporting the show for as little as a dollar a month and submitting your questions for the ologists before we record. We also, by the way, have a
show called Somologies. Those are kids safe and classroom friendly episodes. You can find Smologies wherever you get podcasts, just search for it Smologies. Also thanks to everyone leaving reviews, which helped the show so much. I read them all and then I read you one each week, such as this one from momsterus one who wrote, thank you for illuminating so many fascinating topics, even those that seem mundane at first are revealed to be deeply connected to the web
of life. Monstrous one the name. I love it, And thanks to everyone who left reviews. Let's talk dogs and have about me. Okay, let's curl up and be cute as we listen about breeds of dog. What anthropological evidence we have for doggies being our friends? How wolves domesticated themselves, Why our relationships with canines make us what we are, and if it's fair to ask your dog to love you back? We talk corn pause and why your dog
is trying to make fetch happen? With archaeologist, anthropologist, and ethno scinologist David Ian How.
My name is David Ian How he him.
And ethno sinology. We have both been tagged in so many, so many posts to.
Talk to each other. Yeah, yeah, it's exciting. It's definitely an ology. I guess technically ethnosciinology falls under umbrella of anthropology to me, but I was just so into dogs and I did a whole bunch of research and all my term papers around dogs, and I was looking to see, like, is there a specific study of dogs in human contexts? So it's not like something you could major in, but it technically is the Greek word for what I'm talking about.
When it came to finding mentors or professors, did you have to seek out ones that were like not cat people or particularly an interest in ushering you through this? Uh?
Yeah, Like I went to school for hunter gatherer archaeology and I studied stone tools mainly. It was my thesis and I wanted to go get my PhD for this specifically, but there's no school that has a specific we studied dog archaeology program, you know, and that's difficult.
And now that you have done this, are there other people who message and write you all the time asking how they can also get.
Involved in the field constantly?
Yeah, that's what I figured.
Yeah, or like where do you teach? How do I be a student? And I was like, I don't, but I will say. Doctor Angela Perry is an archaeologist and she does a lot of this dog archaeology and she's like a wizard with that and can do all the genetic aspects and a lot of stuff that she publishes is like kind of what people would want to read.
So Doctor Angela Perry is a zoo archaeologist and his authored papers such as Dietary Variation among Indigenous Nicaraguan Horticulturists and their Dogs, an ethno archaeological application of the canine sergacy approach. Just in case you're up for some light reading, doctor Perry is kind of the goat of canine studies now.
David has also authored papers such as Dogs in Native American Culture and ecological and ontological approach, and on the origin of our favorite subspecies, the biological implications of dog domestication on modern humans. And he told me that his grad school courses involved biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology, cultural anthropology, and archaeology. But despite those variations.
All of my term papers in those classes were focused on dogs. But doing that looking for dogs that live around humans, you can also study all of those subjects equally with dogs. And just I found so much information it was overwhelming. So really, yeah, where.
Was that information? Was it notes from people's digs? Was it like oral traditions passed down? Where did you find that?
Uh? Yeah, a lot of digs. You can find specific sites that have dogs at it. But what really intrigued me was like reading old ethnographies from you know, either the French or the Spanish or the English when they got here, or just the Bureau of Ethnology went out in the early nineteen hundreds just documenting whatever was left of indigenous cultures, and there's a wealth of information in there because without the horse or cows or you know, any other animals, the dog was crucial to life for
genous Americans here And just so much, and every culture kind of has dogs or something that they do or at least they live there.
When did they go from a wolf to a dog?
Debated topic? Uh, very debated. Let's break it down, but I would say, like humans leave Africa, we get to Eurasia, specifically Siberia, and you're interacting with wolves who are like an equally social and intelligent predator, So you're going to be running into each other, especially they both hunt caribou a lot, especially in that area.
So humans and wolves are like, hey, man, what's up? Like if you saw the same dude at the gym all the time, but if the leg press at Planet Fitness was a bloody reindeer in Siberia.
And I would say that whole time, like the domestication process is happening. But we can see, like the dog as we genetically know it today appears twenty thousand years ago in East Asia Siberia.
When was it a dog world? Like when did pretty much every continent have dogs and humans working together?
I guess two answers to that in that East Asia Siberia area, where people are you know, domesticating dogs or you could say wolves are self domesticating around hominid camps. People then go to the Americas, either across the land bridge or down the coast, whatever theory subscribe to. And that's how dogs ended up in the Americas and the only like domestic animal there until turkeys and lamas later.
But the rest of the world you can see dogs are traded kind of like a commodity, and you can see dog genetic lines being traded across Eurasia into Africa. And to answer the question fully, I al would say, like the Neolithic, when we go from hunting and gathering to that more sedentary lifestyle with a bigger population, dogs just kind of boom around.
Then what niche did dogs fill for humans that made them such successful companions and tools for people?
And there's so much I could answer there.
That's like the I essentially just asked him about his entire field of study, because I'm the worst. It's his fall. He has a cool job.
Dogs eating or like I'd say, early dogs wolves eating scraps around human cants would help deter predators in itself. Wolves don't necessarily bark. Non domestic wolves don't bark, but once dogs started barking, we were breeding for that. Oh, they would alert for different predators.
Every time my daughter Grammy does woof, poof, woof when we get a delivery, she's fulfilling the pact of her ancestors.
But certainly hunting, that's probably the first thing, because we were probably finding wolves hunting and then just stealing their kill or vice versa the wolves. We try to steal a human kill, but that interaction was happening. But yeah, hunting sentinels, like garden camps, and then especially in the Americas, we know like dogs were being used to help pull
loads before the horse. They would wear little backpacks to help you know, collect fish and berries and all that, and in some areas they were used for their wool. They're there for, I should say. And then this one's always kind of dicey, but just until like you know, nineteen eighty, dogs are kind of just eaten all over the world as a food source, usually out of like a ceremonial purpose.
Yeah, what types of ceremonies. I know, the line between food and friend is so it's so cultural, it's so regional, it's also temporal. It's odd that we eat pigs but we can think of eating dogs, right. It's confusing to me how confusing it is. And I'm not a vegan or a vegetarian, but it is still super confusing to be So what types of ceremonies were they revered enough to be like a sacrifice or how did that work?
Yeah, there's cultures where like there's endo cannibalism, where like you eat people within your group, or exo cannibalism is eating people outside of your group. But when you're eating within your group, it's kind of you can imagine like you want that person to be part of you kind of thing, and like that's something that happens in different
tribal cultures. And I imagine that's probably what happened with dogs, because a lot of dogs are archaeologically when you find they were kind of in their prime, maybe a little older, so maybe they were a good hunting dog and they were eaten in that sense, can't tell exactly if all of them are eaten. It's like only if the cut
marks show up on the bones. But I know, and definitely indigenous cultures, like some puppies are eaten, or I think in Mexica culture, for sure, dogs were eaten out of like respect for their sacrifice for people and things like that.
Just trust me, you will not enjoy this aside, but for quick factual context, A University of Minnesota article titled Cultural Awareness for Veterinary Clinicians notes that the practice of eating dogs is found in many Asian countries, including the Philippines, China, Korea, Vietnam, and Thailand, and while the practice is not nearly as prevalent as it once was, the paper says it does continue and in general this consumption is seasonal, with most
meat being consumed in the winter. Now you might say, why does that it came out so much so. In a twenty ten book Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows, author Melanie Joy notes that meat eating typically involves one or more of the three ends of carnism.
It's normal, it's natural, or it's necessary. And researchers have found that meat eating is trending upwards in India, which is typically more vegetarian, and a twenty twenty two paper out of the University of Technology in Sydney titled exploring meat eating practices in Mumbai and Sydney with a view towards encouraging a reduced meat diet notes that although meat
consumption in India is relatively low. It's rising in response to growing levels of urbanization and increasing disposable incomes and exposure to new global norms. So when the norms change, obviously cultural practice is due to and vice versa. Now on the topic of Australia, that country has one of the highest levels of meat consumption across the board, which was news to me. I didn't know that. I just hear that y'all have great coffee there.
Now.
A twenty twenty one paper title The Evolution of Urban Australian Meat Eating Practices reports that despite these really carnivorous leanings of Australia, twenty percent of folks identify as aspiring meat reducers. So what's going on there? It explains that changing discourses of masculinity and the move toward embracing more fluid representations of gender have in turn changed meanings of
the meat eating man and a meat heavy diet. So it's important to remember that our relationships to certain animals are highly cultural and they change over time. They're changing all the time. What you eat is weird and gross to someone else, I guarantee every single one of us. And when you're going through the research and looking at remains of dogs and burials of dogs. Perhaps, like, when did they start to really branch off with different breeds?
Because a shitsoo so different from a malamute. Obviously they're all the same species, which is boggling to me. Yeah, you know, they're kind of I've said before that they were kind of like apps for people. It's like, you need a weasel sniffer, you get this kind you need. Yeah, some could pull your stuff, you get this kind. But when did they start branching off into such specialized breeds.
I like that you said app because something that is in the literature a lot, and this is something doctor Perry talks about, is dogs are a biotechnology yep.
As we have mentioned in a previous episode, stubby legged Doxies used to charge into badger holes and they were so good at that. Yorkys were bred to be tiny and to accompany miners in small places so they could eat the rats. Poodles were bog dogs. They were good at navigating the water to pick up hunter's dead ducks, and even the Queen's Corgies once had the job of herding geese. Hence they are very short. So today we rely on apps and robots to do things for us.
But back then it was like, I need an animal with a gangly face and no tail and bowed arms for the purpose of finding and biting the village witches. And they were like, cool, here you go, we bred a new dog for that. Dogs are the world's most lovable tools.
Like I would study stone tools or things like that, or projectile weapons and stuff, but dogs are such a versatile tool you can literally code by breeding them to do different tasks. Wow. Yeah, I find that so cool. But like the early tasks of hunting and guarding and stuff like that. But then if you think about like salukis or greyhounds are like meant for speed and racing, and then docs AND's like burrow into stuff. Huskies are a lot bigger to pull sleds and have that load bearing.
And then there's like livestock guardian dogs, which are bigger than wolves because they have to fight wolves. That would appear, to my knowledge like after the Neolithic, like there's a lot of that. After ten thousand years of them being around, you'll start seeing like more diverse breeds. Though the standard dog probably would have looked like a dingo like thing with that standard yellow coat. Not a wolf, but not
a dog. I have you think of ancient Mexico, they had the chihuahua, the shill at quint Lay, like all sorts of different dogs. But the modern breeds we have is definitely like a Victorian era thing, where it's like they became a status symbol. You know, the wealthy could have very specific dogs. And even in Rome, if you are a wealthy Roman citizen, you could import a fancy Egyptian greyhound and show it off. Even back then, it's.
Like the French bulldogs of the ancient.
Yeah, like specific niche breeds. Yeah.
What's something that when you were studying you were really baffled or boggled by. Was there any moment that really shocked and surprised you?
Two things? From the anthropological like zoological perspective. Are dogs more beneficial to humans than not? Do you need to waste extra calories feeding the dogs or do they help you get more calories like in a hunter gathered setting than you would without them. That kind of varies depending on where you're at in the world, and that's debated, but that was interesting to me to see how different that can be.
Your dog eats a sock and you're looking at like two grand Gremy needed two teeth bolt and it cost more than replacing a crown on my own human molar. But there's no price tag on the soul of a precious angel. Also, if you have working dogs like service dogs or sheep hurting ones or witch nibblers, they don't even get a real paycheck, And a lot of experts agree that this is because they can't unionize because the majority of dogs are bad at computers.
But mainly through the anthropology like cultural aspect, just seeing the sheer amount of creation stories and mythologies and oral of different cultures in which dogs play a role in creation or are there present in creation or have to do with the afterlife. Oh yeah, like Anubis an Egyptian mythology, when you die, like he's the first one that meets you,
and he kind of a greets you before. He's like your chaperone to get to the rest of the gods in the underworld, and he holds that scale like a dog is judging your soul, like where you're a good person or a bad person, which I find great. And then of course the three headed dog in Greek mythology, he keeps people in and out of the underworld reguards it.
And in Mexica mythology, like a dog waits for you across a river in the first land of the dead, and then it will help you, like navigate you through the lands of the dead, so you don't.
Have to do it alone, like the way they watch from a window for you to come home from work, except in a river of hell, being like you made it.
And that's very common, like different versions of that myth, especially in the Americas.
Do you think that that's anthropological evidence that all dogs do go to have?
Yeah, I would think so. I just it was so fascinating to me that like dogs are just so intrinsic to human life and so symbiotic that it's not even a question. They're just part of those stories. In the Egyptian sense, I read a paper trying to figure this out, and like jackals like to scavenge tombs and graves and things like that, and in the Bible it always says like they were fed to the dogs or like left them for the dogs or left them for the wolves.
They always scavenged death, and like dogs came to be because they were scavenging bones around our camp, So it makes sense that we would associate them with some kind of like it's called a psychopomp, like something that guides you to the afterlife. Dogs are so crucial to human nature and culture now that it would make sense that if there was some kind of afterlife, dogs are there.
What about flim flam that we feel like we hear a lot. I don't know if it needs debunking, but like true or false, the whites of the eye of a dog help us communicate with them their eyebrown muscles. Did we breed them or did they get selected to have more facial expressions that we could understand?
Yeah, obviously chimpanzees and bonobo's are our closest relatives in terms of genetics. But wolves are so socially intelligent with their you know, they show their teeth, they roll over, they wag their tail, they have different barks, and they're monogamous to an extent. So early humans would have noticed that and probably spelt some kind of kinship with the
wolf in that sense. But over time, the reason we could interact with each other so well was because we're so social, and dogs would have picked up on our social cues with their eyes and stuff as well. If we think of a pug, it's basically bred to look like a human face. It's flat, and they had the big eyes. So over time it became advantageous for dogs to understand our eye movements, and like it was bred for on it its own as a side effect of being heavily bred to be around people, but for.
Dogs who are working and going back to their wolfy roots helping humans hunt, David says, and a.
Common theme I've noticed is that like while a human is hunting, you and I could see a deer if it's like, you know, against the wind, and we'll see it before your dog sees it. But if we don't see the deer and it's on the wind, a dog will either hear it or smell it first. So you can like notice your dog perk up before you see something. And it's we both compliment each other's senses, Like our site is obviously much better as primates, but their scent
and hearing is just but exponentially better than ours. So with that in mind and just how social we are, I would imagine if they don't already understand pointing, now it's something that you know is it's on the way there.
What about bonding with a dog, when did it become not just like a work relate should ship, but an emotional bond like that? Or how are dogs different from other animals where it might be that really close emotional bond in.
The chemical sense dogs can share They release oxytocin, and we do as well when we pet them or like when we interact, because I mean, I can look at my dog right now and like make that stupid sound and like that's just your brain doing that because you look at it like a baby or an infant, and that's that you know, primate desire to care for that thing.
But in terms of like in history, the first dog burial that is like known is one in Germany at a place called Bonover Castle, and it's two humans and a dog buried together. And that would be not to say that's the first one, is the first one we know of, but to me, it's like humans for a long time aren't burying each other until like roughly tens
of thousand years ago, hundred thouand years ago. So when you start burying people, it's that I do of like we're human, there's probably something after or whatever and like, let's bury this person with culture and reverence, and like that's a huge milestone in human history. When you're taking that idea and then passing it on to a non human animal, that's like another step in human history like it and the dog is the first one we do that with.
How did you get your dog?
Uh? From a trailer park? Oh?
Really?
I just yeah, I wanted a German shepherd. I wanted just like I've always wanted a German shepherd like that. I mean, I'd rather give it a good life and I can, so I did. He is definitely I've had a beagle and I've had a lab. He is like a domestic wolf more so than my other animals were. I used to think it was elitist when German shepherd people were like, you just don't understand the shepherd bond. And now I fully get it. It's a different creature.
Yeah, well how is it different? How is it more like a domestic wolf.
He's so intelligent and smart and I can see him thinking and he'll like trick me sometimes intil Like I don't want him to get his bone or bring it outside because he'll bury it and come back in full of dirt, but like he'll hide it in his mouth a specific way or run back in the door to get it before I can let him out. But mainly my other animals, like dogs always wanted to be pet. They like loved it and like constantly on you. He's very autonomous and he only wants to be pet when
he wants to be pet. But another thing too is that when I'm hiking or skiing, he like will run to the front of the group and then run to the back of the group and just patrol and kind of search. And at night, I really want to map this out and like do some data on it because it's so fascinating. But he'll find different spots in the house to sleep at night, to get different views of each exit. But also I'm still in view, and like my beagle didn't do that. She just left in bed
and snored. But he's just working. It's just so different.
Yeah, are there any soapboxes that You're work makes you want to get on In terms of how we think of dogs or how we interact with them.
No one's ever asked me that. It's a good question.
So dogs are.
Like a remnant artifact of the ice age to me like we still have from that time. We don't use stone tools so much anymore. We don't have to sell
our hides and you know, live in caves. But whether you grew up in Hong Kong in a high rise and have never gone, you know, to the forest New York City Central Park's all you got things like that, Or if you're like me here in Wyoming and I'm out in the woods with my dog and like I can see if he like hears something or he alerts me, you know, we all share that peace of nature and dogs are it is an artifact of our past that
we still keep with us every day. That hasn't changed well, I mean it's changed very much in terms of like Chihahwa's and wolves, but there's still like a living breathing predator that like hangs out or in our house with us and one other caveat with that too. Is like if an alien came to the planet and just saw Coco the gorilla speak to a fox and then the fox took out like Osama bin Laden, Like it's like such an absurd thing to think about, but that's dogs.
We actually did an episode with speech pathologist and the founder of the dogs talking through buttons movement Christina Hunger. Her social media account is Hunger for Words. I'm sure you've seen her dog Stella press and buttons, and people tend to be divided on this. They're either like, oh, sweet Lord, baby Jesus, my dog can talk. This is the best or they're like, this is garbage. I hate
what the world is doing. New research came out a few months ago from a UC San Diego paper titled how do soundboard trained dogs respond to human button presses? An investigation into word comprehension which gives us an answer you ready. It found that yes, dogs produced contextually appropriate behaviors for both play related and outside related words, and that pet dogs can be successfully taught by their owners to associate words recorded onto soundboard buttons to the outcomes
in the real world. So yeah, they're really talking through those in a sense. Now, can a doodle have an existential crisis while staring into a mirror? Did you just say who this?
And then look in the mirror?
We don't fully know that, but in the future we might be reeling that we ever questioned their ability to be dismayed at the state of the world like we are sometimes, so be nice to dogs, be nice to animals. They have feelings and maybe one day, you know, via like a gentle brain implant, your dog will be able to cuss you out like a teenager.
But yeah, it's fascinating. And I know my dog thinks, and I know he like they can understand syntax in a sense and like want to go peep is It's like, yeah, he gets that. It's like several words, but he probably just hears pp.
We have really great questions from listeners, and I wanted to barrage you with them. Is that cool?
Yeah, by the way, this is fun.
I'm so glady here. We honestly have had you on the list forever. So happy to have him. Also happy to donate of a cause of his selection. And David shows the wonderful Native American Humane dot Org, which is led by and with Native Americans, and the org explains, as Native Americans, we have shared special relationships with dogs for millennia, celebrating them in our stories, songs, and traditions,
and by helping tribal families access veterinary services. Native American Humane dot Org helps people and animals live together in health and safety and a donation was made to them in honor of David and thanks to funding from sponsors of the show.
Do you know what real power is? It's knowing you're on the same rate for energy all day, every day. With a smart all day plan from Board Gosh Energy, save up to eight hundred and eighty euro on dual fuel plus get a two hundred and thirty five. You're a welcome bonus switch today at Boardgosh Energy dot I E Board Gosh Energy. Know your Power Estimate.
Annual Ability two thousand, six hundred twenty nine. Your new customers only thirsha percentI is kin of smart all Day Electricity unit rates in twenty nine percent of gas you know as seaport Cash Energy dott E for fulties and cs.
Do you know what real power is? It's knowing you're on the same rate for energy all day, every day. With a smart all Day plan from Board Gosh Energy, save up to eight hundred and eighty euro on dual fuel plus get a two hundred and thirty five. You're a welcome bonus switch today at Board Goosh Energy, dot I E Board Gosh Energy. Know your Power.
Estimated Annual Ability two thousand six hundred and twenty nine your new customers only thirsh percentI is kent of smart all day electricity unit rates in twenty nine percent of gas. You know, eights Seaportcush Energy, dott E for full ties and ces.
All right, patrons, let's ask your questions. You can submit yours before we record via patreon dot com sash ologies across a buck a month to join bar Big Love. All right, So, okay, I'm just going to dive in here.
Valerie asked, I wonder if there is evidence for human dog interaction in all habitable regions. My name's Valerie Vanderlip and I'm in Louisville, Kentucky.
Is there evidence for dog human interaction or there are some places where they didn't really do dogs?
Yeah, higher latitudes, obviously there's a lot more dog and human interaction because of wolves being there, especially like in Northern Asia, East Asia, Europe and then the Basenji in Africa and all that.
Okay, so where wolves live, dogs are going to evolve first, or they become domesticated and bred first.
But one thing I did learn that kind of interested me was dogs don't do well in the tropics, at least back in the day. So when the Americas are being peopled by their earliest Americans going down through like the topics of Mexico and Nicaragua and all that, the dog population kind of just stops for a while, and the Inca at some point eventually have dogs in Southeast Asia and in Central America, like it is a bottleneck of like less dogs because they just don't do well
in the tropics back then. Oh it is too hot, too hot, and I think diseases like drinking out of ponds and stuff might have too many bacteria or like parasites and things, because like humans can boil the water, but dogs can sneak off and still drink it, and that might be the case.
Wormies just graphical worms.
No bum me out.
Yeah. What about coevolution?
JP wants to know whether there is science to support the idea of co evolution between humans and dogs, Thanks so much, bye.
Have humans evolved alongside dogs or is the timeline like we were humans and then dogs evolved after us.
We are very much human in the sense that we are now. Like fifty thousand years ago, you could take somebody and put them through school and they could do the sat just fine, they could read Shakespeare like the people that were painting all the caves in France and stuff. So we were human by then and when we were interacting with dogs. I don't think there's been enough time
to fully co evolve. But there are some like biological adaptations that like dogs have picked up or we've bread into them, that they have definitely co evolved with humans to say the least. And there are certain things like dogs sleeping near you, does calm you down, helps you sleep better, just petting a dog and lower your heart rate kind of stuff, so that counts.
Do we know if dogs enjoy petting? Two they do, right? Do you think they always have?
Some people will comment, like when I post a video of me petting my dog that like he's uncomfortable, you should stop, or like read X, Y and Z sign. But that's just my dog. But other times he'll like paw at me to keep doing it, So I guess that's the case. And then my beagle and my lab, especially my lab just like if you weren't pet here was like distraught.
So yeah, typing out an angry email more fat can I interest you? In the professional science paper titled shut Up and Pet me, Domestic dogs prefer petting to vocal praise in concurrent and single alternative choice procedures. So it found that given eight three minute sessions of petting, both shelter and housed dogs preferred petting to vocal praise, and that dogs showed no evidence of satiation for petting.
Please continue.
The researchers postulate that petting is likely this unconditioned stimulus, and it promotes social behavior in dogs, but vocal praise likely has to be specifically conditioned. But petting is just like I love this, Now, what about me? You're asking me? Well?
A twenty twenty two paper, Effects of contact with a dog on prefrontal brain activity, a controlled trial found that prefrontal brain activation in healthy subjects increased with closeness to a dog, and that hanging out with a dog stimulated more brain activity than interacting with a non living stimulus like a stuffed animal. So yes, listener, Ann, Marie everheart. Dogs tend to like being petted, and it's somewhat symbiotic.
Brain feel good near dog? So did dogs evolve or were they selected to make us feel gooder and gooder over time?
Now?
The twenty twenty one study current advances. An assessment of dog's emotions, facial expressions and their use for clinical recognition of pain notes that yes, domestic dogs can make facial expressions to convey their experience to us, and they can also read our face. And whale eye refers to when you can see some white of a dog's eye as it turns its head away from you, and this can express anxiety or fear or discomfort. In humans. This is
called side eye. It stinky ear, it's called shade. Now, how else do dogs let us know what's on their minds? Asked Katie Oldham, Jackline Church, Lisa Gorman, Ryan Ketchem Caforia's Classroom TTL One of One, and Boys and Cheerios. First time question asker what behaviors did dogs develop because of human domestication.
I've never seen too many wolves up close or wolves two twenty thousand years ago. But apparently wolves don't bark like they will when they're playing and stuff like that. But they don't bark in the sense that dogs do. Is their form of communication, and that was certainly bred in dogs as a warning bark probably first, or to indicate as an animal when you're hunting, but also just as a communicate, because I know cats meow more around humans,
so it's probably the same thing. If they don't meow so much in the wild, they just do it to get our attention.
That's nuts, isn't it just to think that they know that that works? Of course it does.
Yeah, And it's also cool because cats are the same thing. They're in the order Carnivora. They're a social predator the same way, and they just like we all interact so like similarly in that sense.
Mm hmm. Lee Wang wanted to know. Someone once told me that dogs have a much more muted pain response because when they were in the process of getting domesticated, humans didn't want to take care of sick or injured dogs, and that's why we have to be really proactive about monitoring their health. Is there any way to know that about their pain response being muted?
I can say, like anecdotally, with my dog, he won't let me know what he's in pain, and shepherds are notorious for being whiny m And then I know for a fact dogs in the past have like skeletal trauma, either from being kicked or you know, kicked out of camp or it's hard to tell if it was a fight with another dog or they got goreed by a bore or something. Hard to tell, but yeah, dogs had a hard life for a long time. Which yeah, significant bummer.
Yeah, it's yeah, significant bummer. That's a big as be right there. A bunch of people wanted to know about the Americas, and we did talk about that a bit bit. Adam Foot the bloated toad chown verbiage, and Grace Robischow wanted to know the blow of toad ass. What about native American dog breeds? I remember hearing somewhere that Chihuahuas
are originally from the Americas. Is that true. I've also heard that there are some breeds of dog that are now essentially extinct, the line is extinct that were domesticated by Indigenous Americans or indigenous North Americans. Now any evidence on that.
Yeah. Dogs. So when the you know, the Europeans got here to the Americas, they brought dogs with them as well. But the indigenous had dogs. But with the overwhelming amount of population of the Europeans that came here when the colonial era started, those dogs interbred with Indigenous American dogs all up and down South and North America. To the point where like the genetic lines of pre contact dogs
are gone. But to my best understanding, I Chiuala is a Meso American breed, but it's been bred so many times with the European dogs, and then back to like a chiuala kind of thing that it has European DNA more than indigenous DNA, just looks like a chiuala. The sho though to the same the hairless dog in Mexico,
same kind of thing. And then there's the American dingo, which is the Carolina swamp dog has some DNA still, and then the Greenland dog is like the one of the only remaining like indigenous American breeds that's left.
Now, what about behaviors that have been passed down through the ages or have remained from natural wolfy instincts. Let's talk fetch, so Lori Pemberton listener notes that dogs seem to instinctively know that's a ball and is for me, And Olivia Ellison asked, is it true that it was dogs that taught us fetch? They were not alone salmon like the fish wants to know if dogs used to help gather and carry firewood, is this why they still love fetching?
Sticks so much.
They say that their old lab would pick up as many sticks as physically possible, sometimes around ten at a time, carry them all the way home, and then drop them on the front doorstep without fail. And they never knew if this was an instinct or just a quirk. Fetching sticks.
Yeah, fetch to me is a social bonding mechanism between humans and dogs. Like it bonds you. It's like dogs love play that strengthens the bond. But fetching, I believe it was a direct quirk that comes from hunting. Whereas like a dog, like if you treat an animal like you tree your raccoon, or you treat something, dogs run up to the tree and bark and like scare it until it's stuck in that spot and then the hunter
can get it. Or if humans shot a bird with a shotgun or a bow back in the day and it fell, like, dogs love to go get that and bring it back. And I think that's all fetches and it's just a redirection of that because dogs are essentially around to hunt and fetch is like a good outlet for that and they just love it. Yeah, social bonding mechanism.
My dog does not care about fetch at all, she refuses.
Yeah, my lab wouldn't either, really, Yeah, is that odd for a lab?
Or like it?
I have no joke. I would throw the ball and it would just like bounce off her head and to just sit there staring at me.
Yeah.
But my shepherd he loves fetch, like to the point where it's annoying. So I found that interesting.
Well, Rens wanted to know. They say people talk about inherited traits like prey drive and obedience and aggression activity level that seem to follow breeds. Is this a real phenomenon or just a correlation or false attribution because of how we socialize dogs that look a certain way, or do they really do have those traits hardwired?
I would say that's definitely hardwired, because dogs are bred specifically to do certain things. Like a greyhound or a whippet wants to run, like really bad and it has to run or it's going to go mentally kind of crazy in the house. Terry are bred for ratting, like they want to find little things in rat and labs are bread to swim if I remember correctly, or retrieve and then yeah, dogs just want to do that stuff. And like my shepherd too, like he can't turn it off.
I went to a lake house with my friends for a bachelor party, and the first thing he did was just go sniff every enche of the perimeter and constantly patrol like he was like having a blast. And I didn't tell him to do that, he just does it. Yeah.
Now, what if a dog's idiosyncrasies are screaming at strangers or trying to eat cats? Megan Peeler, first time question asker, asked why do people tend to be much more anxious of large dog breeds than small ones when in my experience, Meghan writes, small dogs seem much more likely to be aggressive and large dogs are often pretty chill and laid back, which was echoed by Sarah Philo and Meghan Ratcliffe. Now Janetosaur asked why all the bully breeds are basically marshmallows
in a brick body. A few people asked about aggression like when it comes to dog breeds that are considered dangerous. Gayel Lane asked, i e. Pitbulls. Is this more due to how they're treated or are there truly inherent dangerous traits? Averan Keating wanted to know can you discuss pitbull origins and flimplam I see arguments all the time online where some people say pitbulls are kind nanny dogs and others who say they were bred for bull baiting and inherently violent.
When it comes to stigmas of pet dogs, what's the anthropology behind that? And like, let's say, choosing a dog that would be good for your family or for your lifestyle.
Yeah, and this one's always a sticky answer, but I'll just be honest. I think I love pipples, like They've always been sweet with me and stuff. The only dogs I've been bit by have been pipples, but that just happens to be because I sample size of two that have bit me. But I can't say as an anthropologist, like breeding dogs for specific tag like ratting or racing or things like that, that they are bred for these things, but socializing them to not do that is going to
pull that out of them. From that last question, so like, I can try to socialize my dog as best I cannot to patrol the house, but he's still going to do it. So one thing I always heard was it's not the breed, it's the breeder. Pipples are sweet to me. Like, I've had so many sweet pipples in my life that I've met, and like, they're fun to play with, and so the huge head in their big mouth is so
cute to me. But if the breeder is breeding them for those specific nefarious reasons or whatever their you know, origins used to be, that line of dogs might just tend to be more inherently aggressive because they're bred for But other pipples can be bred to be completely sweet. So yeah, it's very sticky, I'll say that. But again, just how intrinsic dogs are in our culture in terms of like even with like a culture war, like different ethnic identities and stuff dogs are associated with.
And it's it's interesting too to think if we're all well humans, but your uncle might be a dick or their uncle might be super sweet, you know what I mean.
Yeah, exactly, It's.
Like these little family not lines come down and who knows what comes up with temperament. I live in LA where pit bulls are. There's plenty of them, and they don't get adopted very often, and I know a lot of people who have them as family dogs and absolutely no problems. I know others who, you know, I have a friend who had to put down a pit bull because of an attack. So you know, it's like kind of all over the map.
But shepherds can also have like behavioral issues just like that. There's a lot of shepherd rescues. Malan Wa was for sure because they're not you know, melan Wat to me is a supercomputer, Like it's just a flesh robot. Yeah, yeah, like in terms of a biotechnology. But you know, if they're not properly exercised and like use their brains the way they're supposed to do, like, they can be aggressive.
And it's not just pit bulls, but make sure that they're getting a lot of exercise and doing what they want to be doing and getting their energy out right.
Yeah, especially in mental simulation, that could even help more than exercise. Sometimes.
I have a husband like that who if he doesn't go run around, he gets not bity, but he definitely gets grumpier. It's like ADHD and not running around.
I have add as well, So it's like I remember hearing that and as yeah, your husband is me.
Yeah exactly. If he doesn't have something that it's exciting for him, he gets really grumpy. So yeah, it's like, yeah, that's all of us, you know, and if you need a wealth of free information on ADHD and My beloved husband Chaired Sleeper, you can see the three part ADHD episode, And yes we will link in the show notes. But you know, some people asked about health issues with certain breeds.
Don Smallcheck wanted to know how far back in time do breed related health problems go, Like, is there any historic evidence you know, for things like hip displacia or respiratory problems with pugs and frenchchies and stuff like that.
I can answer that specifically for the Americas, a lot of dogs skeletons that are found their spinal column like the oh man, my anthropology friends are gonna kill me. But I can't remember the word. But the part of the spine that sticks straight up and a dog that sticks straight up in our back, the thin part of the vertebrae spin is process. There's a lot of times
it's like curved pretty badly. And I would have thought that was from wearing packs or like pulling things that causes that, you know, pathology, But another study was saying that just seems kind of natural, like over time, dogs, it'll happen to them. I will say, like the saluki is bred a long time ago, or the greyhound, and they have that giant thoracic cavity for that pulmonary system to pump the blood through its body to run fast.
So if you're breeding a dog to have this giant chest to be like a race car, like if you have something so positive, there's probably also negatives back then too.
Some, however, are just adorable. And Colby Evans and first time question asker Lindsay Wallace asked, is it true that beagles have white on their tails to assist humans in seeing them through the grass when they're following a scent?
And thank you? Colby and Lindsay both asked that because you made me go down a metaphorical badger hole about this, And according to the twenty nineteen study true colors, commercially acquired morphological genotypes reveal hidden allele variation among dog breeds, informing both trait ancestry and breed potential. Explained, if dogs inherit one copy of a specific white spotting gene variant, they typically have some white on their feet, chest, face,
and tip of the tail. But if dogs inherit two copies of this particular variant, However, then they're often mostly white with just some patches of color. So one copy they have a tuxedo shirt and socks. Two copies you
name them spot now. This paper went on to explain that people historically chose dogs with white in their coats when they needed to be able to see the dogs better, and people who use dogs to hunt or retrieve game, for example, need to keep track of the dogs in heavy brush or vegetation, and white coloring makes dogs much more visible. Now, the white tail tip seen in hunting and hurting breeds, those have been given a devastatingly cute name.
It's called the shepherd's lantern. A little white glow waggon around in the grass where your doggie is. It makes me physically nauseated with affection.
Mine.
I wanted to know when and why did humans start breeding tiny dogs that suffer their whole lives. Some people are asking about smush noses and whether or not you think that in the future humans will start breeding dogs to have longer muzzles and things like that, just to avoid health issues and vet bills.
Yeah, I would say it's one of those like we were too worried if we could we didn't stop to think if we should kind of situations. Mm hmm, yeah, I think of which of the line. But yeah, that Victorian era, like there's just dogs of all shapes and sizes and pugs and like mastifs, like a bloodhound. And in that sense too, we just get a little over zealous with breeding to be so different that it can probably cause issues. And I know doxins too, being so
long have that spine issue. I've seen a German shepherd mix with the Corgi on the internet. It's adorable, but that poor thing's hips and spine must just constantly be in pain. So I would say like the Victorian era for sure, and maybe even in Roman times.
And for more on this, Kaylawhite, Aaron White, Sonia bird Man of Storm, Don Smallcheck, and Nikki g. You can see the twenty twenty three article in the Journal of Canine Medicine and Genetics bearing the ominous title brachy CEPHALICX. Once a problem is seen, it cannot be unseen, which cites this French Veterinary Association's guidance that only functionally and clinically healthy dogs with breed typical traits should be used for breeding.
I e.
Only breed dogs that do not suffer from any serious disease or functional disabilities, and the article also states that vets don't want to judge their clients love for certain breeds, but it predicts it in time, breeding practices will start
to trend toward healthier variations on dog breeds. And even by the height of the Roman Empire, they had influencer caliber dogs like little lapdogs, greyhoundy ones obtained from the British Isles, and one absolute beast that appears to be the size of a junior varsity football player, but with a huge melon and a face that looks like a melted tire. This behemoth war dog was known as a molossus. And if you're like I want a monster to cuddle and follow around with a heavy bag of its poops,
good news. Some readers are trying to resurrect it by backtracking through lines of mastiffs. I mean, is that good news? I mean, I say no, when you have so many lovable, hairy babies waiting for you in shelters, we can, versus we should. It's very on point, which is just the kind of the story of the entire human species. But Dana Owens and Aaron White wanted to know about smelling fear or smelling pregnancy. Dana Owen says, there's that saying that dogs can smell fear. Is it body language or
actual chemical response? And Aaron White wanners know. If dogs can tell when you're pregnant, apparently wolves and sanctuaries can. How much can they glean about us just from scent?
I saw a doc where they had people watch a horror film and then people watch like a just regular happy film and collect their sweat and then they like put that test tube up to a dog's nose, and if it was like a fear response from the horror movie, the dog kind of like freaked out and cowered a bit. And then in the other one like their tails would wag and stuff like that. So there's that. I know.
Dogs can like tell one I'm anxious, like my dog does for sure, and telling you're crying and stuff like that.
Get yourself in front of the twenty twenty two paper. Dogs can discriminate between human baseline and psychological stress condition odors, which found that acute psychological stress response in humans changes the volatile organic compounds emanating from our breath and or sweat,
and it's detectable to dogs. Dogs can smell your stress and fear on your mouth and in your sweat, And in an early twenty eighteen paper, Inner Species Transmission of Emotional information via chemo signals from humans to dogs explained that in smelling odors associated with fear, dogs display more stressful behaviors themselves, and they have higher heart rates. So can dogs figure out what's going on with you before you know or before your Instagram followers know? Probably even
your pregnancy announcements? You betcha and they deserve a small, tiny piece of cheese for that, they told me.
I did just see a neuroscientist say that there's a machine they've built, like an AI thing that can tell if you're pregnant and can also tell who the father is, which is wild to me, but I imagine since dogs scent receptors are so much like by the thousands, stronger than ours, that could be possible.
Yeah, cheaper pregnancy test probably if you could literally. Chandler Wutherington said, I've heard this theory that any dogs left on their own for long enough, after a certain number of generations will revert to default dog form with pointy ears, sandy brown, short hair, something that looks like a Carolina dog. A jaunt down a wiki hole told me any truth to that?
Oh, that's what the dingo is as a domestic dog. If not a domestic dog, it was a dog that followed humans around after domestication to Australia and then once they got to Australia, realized there's a whole continent full of kangaroos without a dog like thing. The thylacine was there.
That's the now extinct Tasmanian tiger. So rip we have a whole episode on Tasmanian double so if you need it, we'll put in the show notes.
But Dingo's kind of pushed out the thilacine in the sense too, because they is so effective at hunting. Even introduced a dog to Australia that then became a wolf because it was just had such abundance to hunt and do all those things. And that's a standard yellow pointier duck.
Are they considered native now or invasive? How is that classified?
That would be a whole episode, But it's a very political and then indigenous versus you know, colonists debate and there's a lot of stigma against dingos kind of like the stigma against wolves here. But the science to me kind of says that like they've been in Australia for upwards in ten thousand years, the environment has had enough time to adjust to them, so they are kind of natural in that sense, and the same thing that indigenous Australians are natural to the area in that sense too.
So I don't know, it's a very politically charged debate.
Now.
Many of you, such as Evan Seluki have her for Ron she Boot, you new parent Karina Bruce and Jenny Rounds as well as Caforia's classroom asked about the most ancient dog breed, the most unchanged from wolves and for years, if you asked the Gettis Book of World Records, it would have pointed to the long snouted and the pony
tail eared Sluki. But via this groundbreaking study in twenty twenty two titled Arctic Adapted Dogs Emerged at the Pleistocene Holocene Transition, researchers found that there was a noteworthy genetic similarity between the ancient ancient dog and modern Greenland sled dogs, and it indicated that the major ancestry of modern sled dogs traces back to Siberia some ninety five hundred years
ago and now. While the Victorian era produced a lot of different breeds of dogs, the throwback breeds include the Senjis, who have been depicted in African artwork going back forty five hundred years, and also the so called New World pre Columbian North American pups like the Hairless Treasures, the Zolos. But like, you probably don't know the names of all eight of your great grandparents. I mean, I dare you to try, Like, do you know the names of your
great grandparents? I know three? So I'm sorry ancestors, But just like that, it's not easy for dogs to know their heritage. But people like David are looking desperately for dog remains in your research. Do you ever come across what you think are dog bones? But they're coyote bones all the time? Yeah, how did you figure that out?
I get sent like is this a dog bone? And it's like probably just like a chicken wing, but they'll send it to me. But yeah, so this is a soapbox of mine? Is that species is a spectrum? It's not a cut and dry evolutions, not pokemon? Right, you don't just like evolve into the next thing ten seconds later.
It takes thousands of years. So coyotes, dogs, dingoes, wolves, and some jackals are all in the genus Canus, which means they can all inner breed, and there can be dogs that are mixed with coyotes, coyotes that are mixed with wolves. All of it is just they're all like a dog is a subspecies of the wolf to me, as is the dingo. They're all wolves that can interbreed.
So when you're looking at coyotes and stuff, it could be very similar to a small dog or a large dog, depending on So the answer would be you just have to have enough of a comparative collection of dogs and coyotes to kind of match it up. But there are certain markers that you can tell, Okay, this is a coyote. It's more slender than say a lab, and then wolves are going to be way more robust, especially in the Americas,
so it's hard to tell. And now you can do it with chemical tests and things like that too.
So several people and this may or may not fall under your research perview, but Ruben Plasmo, Minty McGhee, Sacy Pinkowitz, Harper Atlas and Jaden Gildenstern want to know what is the deal with the smell of dog pause It brings me instant joy and calm. Why do they smell like corn chips? Why do they smell like freedo's?
Why?
Why?
Why?
Everyone wants to know.
An X of mine called it puppy crack because like, it's just such an addicting smell. Apparently it's like a fungus or like something that like some kind of chemical that's emitted. But yeah, the corn, like the freedo feet, it just I love that smell. And then the inside of their ears too, is like a very distinct smell.
It's like a yeasty smell that you're like, that's n.
Naggi, yeah exactly, And then everyone loves their own dogs like smell. But then other people be like you dog extinct, dude, and like, no.
That's not.
Amazing, And yes, listener Rehnes whose special interest is dogs. They say that corn chip foot flavor is due to a combination of bacteria Pseudomonis and proteus, which combine with spit and sweat to produce a yeasty smell and a
red up on it. Tends to be harmless, although those bacteria can sometimes be present in uties and dogs, and you can wipe down your pup's feet and trim the hair on the popads to keep them fresh, but in general, huffing their all myths while you spoon them should be harmless. That does make me wonder when dogs are digging around in their blankets or digging around on a flat surface
that absolutely cannot be fluffed or modified at all. Our dog does that on the couch where it's like there's nothing to fluff, there's nothing to change, it's just the couch. What are they Is that an instinct from digging a bed in grass? What is that from?
Uh?
Yeah, wolves make a den, coyotes make dens as well. I think that's where it comes from. I did see a study that like dogs always tear in a specific way because they want to face a certain direction, like cardinal direction, like a pigeon. I guess like they can home in a certain sense.
Let's look at the twenty thirteen Frontiers in zoology. Paper dogs are sensitive to small variations of the Earth's magnetic field, which gather data on several thousand poops and piece of unleashed dogs in an open environment, and they discovered via data on these thousands of poops and peace that dogs opted to excrete with the body being aligned along the north south axis, and they avoided the east west axis of the compass for their pooping and peeing. So now
you know that now. As for sleeping, some researchers note that sleeping like a sphinx with the head resting on the front paws could signal a dog wanting to nap, but still ready to jump into action if need be. Now. Sleeping on the back in dogs is associated with comfort and trust, but also with cooling off by exposing their belly, and the doughnut position can of course trap body heat.
If your pope is chili and personally, when our dog rests her chin on any part of us, we freak out silently and I feel like I've been kissed by the pope, but in a good way.
But I mean, my dog will spend three to six times on the bed and then decide he doesn't want to sleep on the bed and leaves it like it's just so odd.
Last listener question. This is very specific, but Alib says, I taught my dog Riyah to play a toy piano for treats adorable. Sometimes it seems like she's enjoying her little tinkling little notes. Do dogs enjoy music? Do we think?
I have heard that that is correct? Yeah. I can't think if it was a scientific study or like a Snapple cap fact, but I've heard that before that they do enjoy music, and like they can tell when I leave NPR on for my dog when I'm gone. So there's something going on which has music and talking calm down.
And if you want studies to back this up, you can see the twenty twenty paper in the Journal Animals, and it's titled Musical Dogs, A Review of the Influences of Auditory Enrichment on Canine Health and Behavior, which mentions that in the presence of classical music, dairy cows are more chill and they produce more milk, but listening to rock music stunts the growth of hogs. Slow string music resulted in more time spent lying down for pigs, what
about dogs though we're here for dogs now. The paper notes that the soundtrack of rock and heavy metal music induced undesirable behavior and physiological changes in dogs, such as increased barking, and standing up, although researchers don't know. Maybe that was just the dogs trying to thrash to some death core. Maybe they loved it now. Other studies the paper notes reported that classical music had a calming effect compared to controls, but the sound of praising words and
intonation activated reward regions and dog brains. Also, playing an audiobook induced calmer behavior than classical music. So just leave this episode on repeat for them when you leave the house, because they are good boys and girls, perfect sweeties. Or let them thrash. You know your dog best.
But yeah, like when I'm jamming out, he's always stoked, and sometimes dogs will howl with it and stuff.
The idea of a toy piano too, was like, that's really good, that's cute. Speaking of loving it, I guess. One other question from listeners, Kristen wants to know I love my dog. Is he capable of loving me back? How would I know if he loves me? Is that quantifiable? Do you think that dogs love the indoor life and food and pets and cuddles and fresh water, or do you think that they love us?
Dogs to me are like a wolf adapted to life among Homo sapiens, So like that would be how I define a dog, and in that sense, whatever life they have with a Homo sapien, like their sole existence is to interact and be close and social with humans. So yeah, I would think. So, I don't know how to quantify it, but yeah, like my dog loves me eighty six point seventy two percent repeating, So like, I don't know, but I would imagine.
So, yeah, you can always believe that they love you.
Yes, that's free and easy.
You can always set up a button for them to press or just not worry about it. Because they're not humans. We can't expect them to heal all of our wounds as much as we would like that last questions, I always ask everyone what sucks the most about your job? Like, what's the shittiest part of being an ethnocinologist. There's got to be something in.
The same sense, the suckiest thing about archaeology is I will never know exactly what happened or like how dogs came to be without a time machine. And another thing too, is like we worked on a mammoth site last year where a mammoth got killed and there was a camp built around it where they were butchering it and tanning
all the hides and stuff. This was in Wyoming, and if there's a big carcass of a mammoth right there, they probably either kick the dogs, get out a camp, or chain them up somewhere maybe, but you're never gonna see evidence of dogs in the middle of the activity area. So I would have to just dig shovel tests all the way around the site just hoping I found the dog bone, because they usually hang out on the outskirts
of site. So the thing that sucks the most is like dogs are very hard to find archaeologically unless you just stumble upon like a burial, or you see their bones and like a trash heap from being eaten. Like the later you go into history, the more dogs you're gonna see. But way back in time, not sure, and that does I guess suck. I guess To answer the question, do.
You ever have dreams that you find dog remains on a dig?
My absolute pipe dream of a site would be like a human gored on a mammoth tusk, so knowing they were going at it, and then like his dog also near it, so just to confirm that all of that was going on, at the same time or her dog, you know, But yes, I do, Like everyone has their dream find like just to find a really even if it wasn't like groundbreaking, just a very nice, ornately buried dog.
And you can get that connection with those people from like fourteen thousand years ago, like how much they clearly cared for this animal as well. It's just kind of humbling to me.
Do you ever wake up in a cold sweat from a nightmare about being on a dig or having forgotten your tools or anything like that? Do you have stress dreams? Being an ethnosynalogy, Yeah, I think we all do.
Accidentally broke a mammoth bone an accident on a dig because I was trying to like get the sand out from under it before we put the cast over it, and like for whatever reason, I just like yanked and I just split it in half. And I was like, which is fine, because you glue it and bring it
back to the lab anyway. But yeah, just dreams like that where I broke something and I can't bring my dog to sight anymore because he's just so special where he like will run into the big pit of bones and like take one or lay in it, like he just doesn't get it, will the other dogs leave it alone? Yeah, in terms of nightmares, I would say that. And I also have nightmares of like giving a conference presentation. Everyone's like you're wrong.
Oh no, yeah, what about the best thing about what you do?
It's just so wrapped into archaeology for me. But I guess I can answer it this way. Like I studied stone tools in grad school as well for my master's, and like making stone tools and the process of that is called flint napping, and there's so much science and physics that goes into it and skill and it's kind of works the same area of your brain as chess. So like Neanderthal's made very complex stone tools Homarectus did.
So to sit down and flint nap you really do get into the mind of ancient people and how intelligent they were, because like, if you've never made a stone tool, like if I handed you on right now, you wouldn't know what to do. Yeah, And like I've done it for five years now and I'm nowhere near like an expert at it, But just to sit there and be
like wow. And then like if you imagine sitting around a campfire making stone tools and stuff, and then just you know, the dog's running around and things like that, like telling stories around the fire. I love anthropolo because it can get an archaeology, like I can get into the mind of somebody who lived that long ago just by like understanding their tools and dogs as an extent of that as well.
Well, when's your next expedition that you're.
Off on, oh Man, next summer. I think we're doing some more testing out here in Wyoming to look for more sites. Again, it's hard to just pull up a dog. You can only hope, but that would be the next big one. And then if Russia ever opens back up, I'd love to go to Siberia and just like hunt in caves for different dogs that are there dead dogs like old ancient ones. Yeah, I have a question for you if you don't mean yeah, yeah, I was asked this at the end of my podcast, but like, what
do dogs mean to you? Oh? I had an answer to that.
Oh. I think that's a great question for me personally. It's almost a proxy for a continuation of family. And I found out I couldn't have kids in my thirties and so I and I didn't know if I wanted kids anyway. I wasn't sure if I would be good at that. But for me, when my husband and I decided to become like life partners and get a dog like that meant a family to me in a way
that I think I otherwise wouldn't experience. And you know, I think it seems silly to both of our moms that we baby our dog so much, but this is our family, like she is our child in a way, because I know I won't have one, And so as soon as I was able to get a house like that was the first thing I did. So me adopting a dog was one of my first financial goals on Patreon, and so I took a poll on Patreon of your
aunt's names and a top name was Lynn. So my dog is named Gremlin or Grammy, and she bears the burden of my full obsession. I love her more than she would ever want me to. I think it's brought out a part of me that's also made me more loving to myself because I would never treat my dog the way that sometimes I would treat myself. So then it's like, okay, well, remember you're a living thing too
that needs like rest and fun and play. So it's almost a mirror of the love we should show each other that we show for our dogs, you know what I mean.
I love that. That's a great answer.
That's a long answer. But I never really thought about it until right now.
Cool. Usually people are thrown off and have to think. But yeah, no, I like that a lot. I haven't really thought about it from the surrogate child angle, you know, because my dog's kind of my son in a sense. Yeah.
I mean it's funny too that It's like some dogs can be like a coworker and a family member and a guard A therapist, yeah, a therapist. And you know, I know this person that works in grief who says that when an animal dies, it can be more impactful to us than even a friend or family member because that animal saw every aspect of your life every day like they were there. You were there with them twenty four to seven. But it's not always understood how big
of a loss that is. For more on that griefologist, you can see the anatology episode.
I agree for sure. Like I remember we had to put our beagle down when I was in high school, Like my dad and I just sobbed, like at the vet place. And then three hundred came out that day, so we were like, let's just go watch through the very opposite of crying with your father. Yeah, I won't forget that because it was such like a juxtaposition day.
But yeah, it's brutal. Like my cat too. When I lost him, I just like wept for like three days and then I was like, okay, but I've never lost a human that close to me before yet knock on wood. So it's just like, yeah, it's tough, and that's just Ethnosynology to me too, Like they're so I keep saying intrinsic, but just part of human life that it's like inseparable in that sense.
Mm hmm. They really do teach you how to love on a different level without guards, you know, yeah, unconditionally, yeah, which I think a lot of people aren't able to feel that in other ways, and they teach you that that's okay, which is amazing.
Yeah.
I mean keep looking for dog Bones because I want to know more of their backstory.
Yeah, so if I know more, I'll post it.
And you can follow his work on his website, which will link. You can also follow Ethnosinology on Instagram or David and how on TikTok. He has two podcasts, Ethnosynology with David ian How and The David ian Howe Show. So now you know how to find him. What about a book? Do you think you're going to do a book?
I get asked all the time, Oh, you should.
Do a book. Book agents get at him before someone else does. I know you're out there, I know you're listening.
I appreciate you having me. Oh my god, of course, it's really fun.
Yeah, So ask wolfy people what you're wondering, because dog on it. The world is weird and it's great, and let's focus on what's good here and there, shall we. So the charity was Native American Humane dot org. And David has also started the Strider Memorial Project and charity for his late beloved compan and that's at GoFundMe dot
com slash Ethnosignology. You can find out more about Ethnosignology and David Ianhowe at Instagram dot com, slash Ethnosignology on YouTube and TikTok at davidan how And his podcast is Ethnosignology with davidan How And we'll put more links to his stuff as well as studies that we talked about on our website at aliboard dot com slash Ologies slash Ethnosignology. I'm laughing a little bit because Grammy is shaking her collar in the studio and making some noise. Normally I
would just retake that, but here we are. She's an additional contributor to this episode. Also heads up, we do have classroom friendly and kids save episodes on our spinoff podcast called Smologies, which you can find wherever you get podcasts. It's also linked in the show notes. Look for the new green artwork. You can also join our Patreon and submit questions before we record at patreon dot com slash Ologies for as little as a dollar a month. Ologies
merch is available at ologiesmarch dot com. We have totes and shirts and sweatshirts and hats and stickers. Thank you Aaron Talbert for adminting Theologies podcast Facebook group. Thank you Evelyne Malick for making our professional transcripts. Kelly R. Dwyered is the website. The Lovely Noel Dilworth is our scheduling producer. Susan Hale top Dog is our managing director. Jake Chafey is our well tempered assistant editor. And Apex editor is
Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn howled out our theme music, and if you stick around until the end of the episode, I tell you a secret, and this week it's that I was in Las Vegas for Cees to speak at a panel about the podcasting industry, and I got some yogurt and some water for my room. I was trying to fit it in the mini bar fridge, which was kind of cramped, so I took out some White Claws and Tall Boy beers and whatever was in
there to jam in my Greek yogurt. And after a few minutes I saw a tiny note on the side of the fridge that everything in there was on a sensor system and you would straight up be charged for anything you lifted up. So I called the front desk to be like, hey, loel, I was just trying to refrigerate a yogurt, and they told me that if I put anything of my own in the mini fridge it
would cost fifty dollars a day. And also I had racked up ninety three dollars in mini bar charges because I lifted up some cans even though I didn't drink them. So I took my yogurt out, I put the cans back, and I begged for forgiveness. Sin City, baby, where you can do anything you want except refrigerate yogurt for free, so I have learned. So make sure to hydrate regardless, take care of yourselves, and kiss your dog on the
forehead for me. Okay, bybye, pacadermatology, hommeiology, ryto zoology, lithology, zechnology, meteorology, paratology, tethnology, zeriology, selinology.
You're my best friend.
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