I guess so, as far as I know merle is only created by the SILV gene.

Regarding the information quoted, it all sounds quite feasable, merle is often referred to as an incomplete dominant gene which hints at hit and miss to me. The added difficulty is that a dog may only carry a few merle hairs but is genetically able to pass it on to offspring in the most unpleasant way. Which makes the availability of the DNA test even more important...

KoolieMum
Look what I found http://archaeology.about.com/od/dterms/a/domestication.htm
It would seem that dogs were domesticated before cattle were, at a time when we had started growing grain, were settled in one spot, and had stopped the hunter gatherer thing.That was about 90,000 years after dogs had split as a species from wolves. So Dogs were our friends even before we got them busy moving the goats and cows around. It must be that we taught them how to do it ourselves.I think this is my strongest argument against the herding/prey theory. I'm not sure what we domesticated dogs for,if anything prior to using them to herd, but clearly we liked each other.

Don't have time now (have to run off to training but a bit OCD about checking the forum before I go ;-) but will look up the link, thanks.

The newer theories imply that they domesticated themselves, so I think the reason they became domesticated was just because it allowed more of them to survive.

Back to the theory of camp cleaners perhaps. Also bed warmers, hence the saying "two dog night" and the evolving of the lap dogs.

Two dog night. That is a real American Indian expression, meaning a very cold night, needing two dogs to keep you warm. I don't think American Indians were herders, but it implies they had dogs for comfort.

Some dogs still show remnants of this early behavior which appears to be innate and very hard to break. I call it the primitive couching sequence, as opposed to the famous herding sequence. Some dogs have even evolved a further step in the sequence to drive humans from the couch by their constant stinky presence, thus compelling humans to abandon said PERFECTLY GOOD COUCH for dog use only. Could it be that dogs are evolving a concept of private property as well?


Seriously, I think that the newer theory that dogs domesticated themselves is about right, in so many ways, and that herding is just one example of the things they have learned to do to be able to hang around. I think that a talent for herding is not instinctual, but has been selectively bred into dogs in only the last few thousand years, and refined in the last few hundred.

That they were not domesticated specifically in order to allow humans to use their predatory behaviour does not imply that it does not still exist in them and come to be used later.

Domestication would would take the pressure off so that individuals without the full *normal* (for a wolf) sequence would have a chance of surviving, and so greater variability in the population would likely result, which could then be taken advantage of in developing a range of dogs with different patterns of behaviour. IMO.

I've heard that at least some groups of Native Americans used dogs for guarding livestock, but don't know about herding. There is a breed (type?) called the Native American Indian Dog that is claimed to be a hunting dog (which figures) and also used for food and for ceremonies.

I think the *use* of dogs for warmth was pretty widespread - Samoyeds had this job apparently. Seems the perfect job for a dog. <g>

One thing IMO that dogs have definately evolved is the ability to get ppl to give them what they want/need, much as babies and small children have.

Yes we are a very easy manipulated species us humans. Look at the feline, we are in total servitude to the creatures. lol.

Native American Indians did grow maize and corn in areas, but not sure whether they stayed just for the harvest and then moved on. Hunting dogs does make sense, and I can imagine both the dog and human working together as a team. Maybe with hand signals and the like, which in turn maybe evolved with keeping stock permanently. Just a theory there.

With the Dingo here they originally I believe came from Asia, from a wild dog species over there. It is amazing how diverse the origins of the domesticated dog is. Wolf, Asian wild dog, hounds from egypt etc. Will be exciting when the whole DNA process comes together with the domesticated dog to see where the origins come from.

The Navaho Indian speak of a dog in their culture, they describe it as the camp cleaner, but it also guarded the horses and kept vermin from the crop.
I believe this was after they settled, leaving their nomadic lives behind them, though there was mention of using their dogs to drag sleds in winter.
So an all round versatile breed.
Is was once thought that they may have ancestral ties to the Aussi and so to the Koolie, but I believe it was because they referred to the breeds blue eyes, possibly Husky or Sibe, never followed up that line of inquiry, lots interest when the Koolie was no longer in the picture.

OK. This article has made my mind up. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2498669.stm
It seems dogs are even better than primates at interpreting social clues from humans! I now do not believe herding has anything to do with the prey instinct at all, lol. In combination with the fact that the herding sequence must ALWAYS leave out the good bit of the prey sequence (the killing and eating bit, so is not well reinforced), and that for 100,000 years dogs have scavenged (in proximity to humans) and not hunted anyway, and because dogs (even untrained pups so it is innate) are even better than chimps at working out the signals of what we want them to do, I believe that herding behavior is learned not innate, and is just an example of dogs being good at working out what we want them to do.

Think about it. There are probably a couple of billion dogs on the planet (most still scavenging in the 3rd world). When do you ever hear examples of packs of dogs running down and killing anything for food? It is extremly rare.

But how do you separate herding behaviour from hunting prey behaviour? If you watch a dog herding they will use similar patterns of behaviour as to hunting: crouching, waiting, chasing, using the eye, even working in as a team. Dogs that herd probably get just as much as a thrill from that work as a dog that is hunting its prey.

Perhaps with selective breeding humans have been able to breed dogs where the thrill of the "chase" so to speak equals the thrill of the kill. However there are still those dogs that occasionally go overboard from herding to killing. IMHO I think herding is a much refined use of the prey instinct, developed over hundreds of years through human intervention and breeding.

As for dogs killing what about the dingo killing the child at Fraser Is a couple of years ago? Thought to be caused by familiarity of feeding by humans at camp sites and the child seen as relatively easy prey.

Not every dog will want to herd - I don't think pugs would want to do it but they would possibly chase a running animal!!! Don't forget if there was no food available for our dogs from scavenging or fed from us they would find some sort of prey from lizards to herd animals.

It is always interesting and fun to speculate on these things and discover all those theories out there!!

Perhaps it's pretty rare for Koolies to hunt and kill things, although Wal was very interested recently when a blue-tongue moved into our front yard (think the neighours cat got him, hasn't been around for a while) but I can say from experience that it's not rare in other breeds (having owned a Fox Terrier). She loved hunting more than almost anything except food, but I didn't see her eat anything she'd caught - she'd carry a mouse or lizard around in her mouth for ages, and put them down and pick them up again and again, but I don't think she ever ate them. Nowadays whenever one of our animals getting really interested in chasing something we say 'she's morphing into Dinky'. My sister laughingly says my brother's new kitten is Dinky re-incarnated (I wish, although the kitten is precious).

The hunt is a pleasure in itself, it does not need to be reinforced by eating. That would be a very inefficient, counter-productive feature to evolve in a species, that they needed to eat at the end of hunt to think it was worthwhile doing it next time, IMO. Hard-wired behaviour will often still occur, even in the absense of external reinforcement. It is often reinforced internally.

And there are plenty of things apart from eating that dogs find reinforcing, such as being in the group, sniffing, tracking, running, chasing, tugging (ie, pulling down and dismembering prey etc).

This wonderful article (which I've referred to before) investigated the comparison of wolf and dog on lots of social tasks, and considered how the differences might have developed.

http://psyc.queensu.ca/ccbr/Vol2/Kubinyi.pdf

Actually, there are a lot of good articles from this publication here (in Vol 2, in the R menu):

http://www.pigeon.psy.tufts.edu/ccs/default.htm

Dogs picking up on our body language is equilivant to a five year old child apparantly. Mind you I think some dogs are on par with some males of our species. My dogs were better picking up my body language than the ex. lol. They do take their cues from what our body tells them. The only other species that takes it further is the dolphin who actually mimics.

The similarity between hunting and herding signals are very close. Maybe the killing instinct has been dampened down with the herding breeds through the ages. But dogs do pick up our body language and moods quite easily. When I am upset my dogs comfort me, when I am unsure of a situation they usually position close to me. And when I am angry....well you can't see the beggars.

Dogs are also apt at finding solutions themselves to problems, like a treat under a bucket etc. If they cannot get in one way they will try another, but the more determined dogs tend to be the smarter ones.

I think a lot of the time when we say 'he's so smart' we're actually just noticing that the dog is interested in what we want it to do (either cos it's a sociable dog, or just by lucky chance).

But there are lots of dogs who respond to owners emotions in ways that suggest they understand them in terms of reinforcement (that they are conditioned to expect things associated with them, rather than understanding the emotions).

About mimicing, I tried something with Wal the other day. I wanted to teach him to put things in a bucket, so I got him to come over and I let things drop in the bucket and when they landed *rewarded* him - soon he was looking at them in the bottom of the bucket with interest. I wanted to see whether he would learn to put things in himself more quickly as a result (either through watchihg me do it, or because he learned that *things in the bucket are a good thing*. He did learn it really quickly (pretty much in one session, after 2 it's pretty strong, although with no distance, that's next, and then yesterday in one session I could get him putting pegs in a hat - no reason for that, just for fun), but obviously I can't say whether he would have learned it at a different rate if I'd not done that 1st. Because if I ask him to put something in that doesn't fit easily he just lets it sit on top, I suspect the behaviour as he understands it is the action, not achieving the goal.

I'm going to keep trying things like that and see what happens. I wonder whether it is possible that a dog could *learn* to watch what you do and replicate it through that being rewarded.

sorry a bit late getting back into this but here go's

As for dogs killing what about the dingo killing the child at Fraser Is a couple of years ago? Thought to be caused by familiarity of feeding by humans at camp sites and the child seen as relatively easy prey.
the dingos only started biting kids and killed that child because the idiots removed the brummbys and most of the roos from the island that left very little for the dogs to hunt and eat these dogs are now staving. the dingos were able to pull down young foals and sick brummbys no old brummbys on that island as it is a sand island and most of the horse died of sand colic by the age of 8 the roos and the odd dead fish made up the rest of their diet plus what the people are throwing them to eat now the brummbys and roos are gone people are not allowed to feed them that leaves the odd dead fish a bird if they are that lucky and i have heard that they have started killing and eating pups when they can get to them, i can see these dogs coming to an end very soon and yes the idiots did catch a heap of dingos and let them go near tin can bay but these have been baited and shot since as they were going into house yards and killing pet dogs and cats plus anything else that they could eat

I see dingos pulling down sick animals as scavenging. There is not much of the prey sequence involved at all because it's so easy. Same with kids and dare I say it....babies.

The aboriginals had dingoes around, but not to hunt, to scavenge, and for company and warmth too I'm guessing.They still have wild feral dogs around camps today, as do many third world peoples still, and it's not about hunting.

My Aunt who breeds ACD's has had dingos for years. She currently has four semi domesticated on her property (in and out of enclosures), and one wild one who comes in and out from the bush. She says the genetic marker for dingo is very clear, and quite distict from domestic dogs, or wolves or whatever. Guess what the wild one comes in for...yep, food scraps and girl dingoes.

Some people claim that Kelpies have some Dingo blood, one possible reason for this belief is that as it was illegal to keep dingoes as pets, some dingo owners registered their animals as Kelpies or Kelpie crosses. It should be noted that Kelpies and Dingoes are very similar in conformation and colouring: Dingoes are not restricted to tan and cream. There is no doubt that some have deliberately mated Dingoes to their Kelpies, and some opinion holds that the best dilution is 1/16-1/32.

I have actually read somewhere recently that the early Kelpie breeders found that the dog bred with a dingo was hardy and good for the terrain but were unbiddable and WOULD NOT WORK until the crossing was diluted way down to almost no dingo. Also the early crosses would kill sheep as easy pickings. Again, that is not hunting.

That just shows me that the domestic dog is better at the "prey sequence" that a wild one, which doesn't support herding as modified prey sequence theory.

Lets say for arguments sake though, that Dingos were hunters not scavengers. The experience with early Kelpies shows that they were lousy herders regardless.

[quote name='KoolieMum' date='Mar 9 2008, 06:45 PM' post='8049']

but I can say from experience that it's not rare in other breeds (having owned a Fox Terrier). She loved hunting more than almost anything except food, but I didn't see her eat anything she'd caught - she'd carry a mouse or lizard around in her mouth for ages, and put them down and pick them up again and again, but I don't think she ever ate them. [/quote]

But Foxys were bred originally to make contact with the fox in its hole, but not to kill it, it was the hounds that actually ran along with the riders to chase it down (and you have the addition there of humans, horses and dogs in cooperation in a fairly novel and modern task, and then throw the foxys in at the end to go down the hole and ferret out the fox). I'm not suprised your foxy was interested in playing around with stuff for ages. That would have been her job in the old days, but it isn't really part of a classic prey instinct, more a retrieving task. IMO, lol


[/quote] The hunt is a pleasure in itself, it does not need to be reinforced by eating. That would be a very inefficient, counter-productive feature to evolve in a species, that they needed to eat at the end of hunt to think it was worthwhile doing it next time, IMO. [/quote]

In the wild, hunting is very energy consuming, and they don't always succeed. Running after game for fun is not a very efficient way of survival, and the reality is, bringing down and eating the game is the name of the game. Wild animals play sure, with each other, mostly when young, but prey they are dead serious about. It's the difference between surviving or starving. As with all us mammals, eating is THE big reinforcement (damn, I've got to go to work tommorrow, speaking of which).

[/quote] Hard-wired behaviour will often still occur, even in the absense of external reinforcement. It is often reinforced internally. [/quote]

After 100,000 years of evolution, I would say that is true only of labradors, dreadful scavengers that they still are Seriously, 100,000 years is a long time to maintain an old behaviour on which survival has not depended, particularly in a species which has had so many different evolved functions since affecting their chances of survival, and so much artificial interference in breeding.

I reckon it's simple, we had 'em round for 80 or 90 thousand years eating the garbage, then we domesticated them about 13 thousand years ago to guard us and keep us warm and amuse us when we settled in one place growing grain, then we domesticated cattle about 8 thousand years ago and showed the dogs how to herd the cows around. We worked out the dogs were particularly useful for this because they could be relied on not to kill the cows, because they were getting all the leftovers from us anyway, just like always.

[/quote] And there are plenty of things apart from eating that dogs find reinforcing, such as being in the group, sniffing, tracking, running, chasing, tugging (ie, pulling down and dismembering prey etc).
[/quote]

and lots of that is equally useful in scavenging, catching carrion, and hanging out and amusing people.

As you can see, I don't know how to do quote mode with multiple quotes. Sorry if it's messy.

Wolves too usually move a group of animals around until they can identify who's weakest and then go for them - if we're going to define hunting as such only when it's a 'fair fight' then I don't think there would be many animals in the world that could meet that criterion. The trend would always be towards taking a weaker individual if you could.

I don't think there's a clear line between hunting and scavenging - the behaviours are closely related in canids.

And are you suggesting that they can't like to do something they're deadly serious about?

I've always thought the dingo in the Kelpie/ACD story was pretty unconvincing. Kelpies and old-fashioned working ACD are kind of the 'universal' working dog type, and so are Dingoes, so them looking alike isn't evidence of anything apart from that shape being 'average' and sound. But again, that particular crosses of wild dog into domestic dog did not produce individuals who were good workers is not evidence of anything particular, except what happened in those cases. Noone is arguing that every time a wild dog with a more 'authentic' prey sequence is bred to a domestic dog, a herding version of the sequence will occur. It probably took good luck, and lots of generations to get that degree of modification, just because that is how change in species usually occurs.

You're right, the old job of the Foxy was to chase foxes out of holes rather than actually kill them, but again, I think that moving 'prey' back towards the rest of the group is within the predatory sequence (although my personal feeling with that breed is that they are individual hunters and when they appear to work together they're actually all just doing the same thing in the same space). More recently many Foxies (her family were farm dogs, so this would have applied to them) have been used as ratting dogs, and ratting dogs definately like to kill things. And most Foxies have no natural retrieve, although once taught the game often are insane about it. When they were used for hunting foxes and didn't kill the fox, it would probably not have been that they didn't want to, it would have been that they were fighting something that would often have been larger than them (yes, I know they were often used in pairs, but that would make them usually about the same size together or a bit larger than the fox, still not easy to kill another canid of that size).

To quote multiple times or from multiple posts, you can cut and paste from the posts, highlight the quote and use the 'wrap in a quote' button. I've just worked out how to do it too.

dingos still hunt around here and maryborough old jeff had one of his horse's killed by dingos about a mth back, he had only used the horse the day before and it was in good health and had not been over worked so it was not tired. around maryborough i could not keep chooks when living at mungar as the dingos came around every six weeks and all the chooks were taken in one night each time and you would hear them hunting the roos at night and often find what was left of the roo that they had been chasing i have noticed the difference in colours in individual packs of dingos around mungar the dingos were that sandy red colour but out near thinoomba which is only about 40kms away the dingos were more the colouring of a shepherd and the roos were not as plentiful at thinoomba and the dingos were a lot skinny-er, as yet i had not seen many dingos around proston but the ones that i have seen are a darker red then the maryborough dingos and i have read some were that the dingos colour changes to to country they live in and that would be right the mungar area has sandy soil but thinoomba has a lot of blue metal rock and a darker sandy soil with low scrub lands and around here we have a lot of red soil and black soil and i also read that up the far North there is black dingos in the rainforests

And there would be a big influence in their type according to how many domestic dogs there are in the area.

We have a problem in a particular area here with wild dogs. Crosses with dingos, some of them are the size of German Shepherds. Their prey is domestic pets like cats and dogs. They hunt in packs, the problem is not an issue at the moment plenty of kangaroos and native stock due to the rains that we have had here. Our pure bred dingos are more of a sandy colour here.

There is a farmer around here that has two dogs with less than a 1/4 dingo. They are friendly and play with my dogs. Ceejay and one of the dingo crosses have very similar movements and size. The other one is more darker coloured and if you put Izzy and this one side by side they have very similar markings. I have also heard about the kelpies originally bred with dingos, if this is the case I think there would not be much of the dingo strain left due to the breeding with kelpies to kelpies.

Dingos here came from the asia area then moved to the indonesia area and then came with the aboriginals to Australia. Not too many predators were in Australia till the Dingo came across, that is why our native species don't have too many defences no major predators as such.

We are now on Page 12!!

Our dingos up here (commonly called scrub dingos) are a darker muddy colour or black and tan with four white socks and tip on the tail. I have a half dingo (and supposedly half red acd) and she is a dirty brown with four white socks. The ones in the rainforest on this property seem to travel singlely and don't seem to be a problem to my dogs so far. Occasionally on my rainforest track they leave their scent and my dogs go crazy tracking around the area, but if they are there they can't find them luckily.

We had two supposed dingos (one sandy colour and one black and tan) in the Council pound for about 6 months that were confiscated by Department of Natural Resources and Water. They owner took DNR&W to court saying that they were dingo crosses and were pets (even though it is illegel to keep a dingo of any dilution as a pet in Queensland) he ran an animal sanctuary and eventually got a permit to keep them. He won his court case because the expert that he consulted claimed that a pure dingo had no dew claws and these two were crossbreeds because both dogs had dew claws. This has now set a precedent that if a supposed dingo had dew claws it is a cross. They were both desexed and released to the owner.


My Koolies catch rabbits and eat the whole thing fur and all. My dogs are well overfed and not starving, they just like rabbit. Poppy unfortunately started killing bandicoots and rats and such but she doesn't eat them only rabbits... these seem to be a delicacy.

Apparently when there is human intervention to reduce the population, it fractures their packs and they become more or less solitary, although they may stay together as a pair while they raise their young. Although this possibly reduces the number of born pups (?cubs) that survive - because the females have less support from a group - it may not, because the dingo pack has built in population control mechanisms in the form of alpha female infanticide - unlike in wolves where the intervention of the alpha female prevents most matings by other bitches (who are usually her daughters, so she's got some say with them ;-) dingo females typically all mate each yr but in packs the alpha female kills everyone else's pups.

And while theoretically domestic dog blood in dingoes could contribute to a population explosion because the females would have 2 litters a yr, at least in remote areas, this is not the case, as there is good reason they evolved to breed at the very specific time of yr they did (May-August), and pups from a litter born at other times of yr are much less likely to survive. This probably doesn't apply to places where they can access plentiful resources, though.

http://www.ashgi.org/articles/color_troub_merle.htm

I found this page interesting - I like her wry observation that 'merle is a gene that doesn't behave itself' :-)

She mentions the study of dapple daschies that found high incidence of eye abnormalities in heterzygous dogs. She also intros what is for me a new term - 'merle ocular dysgenesis'. And wonders about the rate of other abnormalities not affecting the usual areas that might be associated with M.

I've been thinking about the patterning of Wal's brother Skipper (who died at about 1 yr of age, about 9 yrs ago). He was a blue merle tri. But in the tan markings on his legs (across the front of his legs) he had horizontal black stripes. Is this something others have noticed?

I was told once that the tan gene doesn't allow the mere gene to take hold or have an effect in that area.
But my Dari from this last litter has merle or stripes all through his points.

So I guess that's a furrfy.

I wouldn't have called Skippers stripes merle - they were more regular than I would expect if that was the case. And they were black stripes on phaeomelanic tan. But I wonder if they do have a relationship to merle. And tan points seems not to allow visible merling normally, or all the merle and tans would have mottled points, but maybe there's something that allows it to show sometimes?

Had to just go have a closer look at Dari's pics. It's hard to be sure from the pics - his points are definately tan? In some of the photos to me, they looked greyish, and in some they looked tan. If they're tan, I wouldn't have thought that black markings on them could be merling.

I wondered whether in Skipper's case it could have been related to brindle, although in that case I think the stripes would need to be vertical.

Royalla - not sure if this was the thread where we were talking about Summa's colouring - feels like too much work to try and find those posts...
I was wondering whether she could be saddle patterned?