经济学人下载:狗-人们最好的朋友

The first proto-dogs probably remained fairly isolated from each other for several thousand years. As they became progressively more domesticated they moved with people on large-scale migrations, mixing their genes with other similarly domesticated creatures and becoming increasingly dog-like (and less wolf-like) in the process. For John Bradshaw, a biologist who founded the anthrozoology department at the University of Bristol, having some idea about how dogs got to be dogs is the first stage towards gaining a better understanding of what dogs and people mean to each other. Part of his agenda is to explode the many myths about the closeness of dogs to wolves and the mistakes that this has led to, especially in the training of dogs over the past century or so.

原始狗的种群最初是独来独往的，这持续了几千年。随着他们被人们驯服后，便大规模地迁移至人类居住地，与其他类似的驯养动物杂交，基因的融合使之渐渐形成了现代狗的模样（而非狼的模样）。本书作者，生物学家John Bradshaw，就职于布里斯托尔大学，人类与动物关系学学科的建立者，他认为要了解狗和人之间如何相互理解，就必须知道狗是如何进化而来的。他的研究之一就是探寻狼和狗的亲缘关系，以及因此带来的错误观念，尤其是在过去一百年内在驯狗方面的误导。

One idea has governed dog training for far too long, Mr Bradshaw says. Wolf packs are supposedly despotic hierarchies dominated by alpha wolves. Dogs are believed to behave in the same way in their dealings with humans. Thus training a dog effectively becomes a contest for dominance in which there can be only one winner. To achieve this the trainer must use a variety of punishment techniques to gain the dog’s submission to his mastery. Just letting a dog pass through a door before you or stand on the stairs above you is to risk encouraging it to believe that it is getting the upper hand over you and the rest of the household. Mr Bradshaw argues that the theory behind this approach is based on bad and outdated science.

Bradshaw说，有种观念长期主导了人们对狗的驯养。一般认为狼的种群是受阿尔法狼的专制。于是们认为人与狗的相处也有类似之处。因此驯狗的方式变成一种竞争，赢家只有一个。为了达到这个目的，驯狗者用尽各种惩罚使狗驯服。比如在你面前让狗穿过一扇门，或者站在比你位置高的楼梯上，其实是在鼓励使它知道自己的地位已在你和家人之上。Bradshaw批判说，这种方法所基于的理论本身就是错误和过时的。

Dogs share 99.6% of the same DNA as wolves. That makes dogs closer to wolves than we are to chimps (with which we have about 96% of our DNA in common), but it does not mean that their brains work like those of wolves. Indeed, the outgoing affability of most dogs towards humans and other dogs is in sharp contrast to the mix of fear and aggression with which wolves react to animals from other packs. “Domestication has been a long and complex process,” Mr Bradshaw writes.“Every dog alive today is a product of this transition. What was once another one of the wild social canids, the grey wolf, has been altered radically, to the point that it has become its own unique animal.”  If anything, dogs resemble juvenile rather than fully adult canids, a sort of arrested development which accounts for the way they remain dependent on their human owners throughout their lives.

狗和狼有着99.6%相同的基因。这使得狗和狼之间的关系就像人和黑猩猩一样（两者的基因有96%的相同），但这却不意味着狗和狼的思维方式相似。实际上，大多数狗对人们很开朗而亲切，而恰恰相反的是，狼对其他动物的态度却既恨又怕。“驯化是一个漫长而复杂的过程”，Bradshaw写到，“现存的每一只狗都是驯化的产物。曾经有一种群居野生犬类动物灰狼，现在已经彻底转变成为一个独特物种。”总之，狗相比成年的犬科动物而言，更像是幼年的犬类，这种停滞的发展解释了为什么它们的一生都离不开主人。