Differences in the Behavior of Landraces and Breeds of Dogs - Genetics and the Behavior of Domestic Animals - page 198

people regard dogs as unclean animals, based on religious predilection. They
feel that dogs have diseases and have parasitic organisms living in their
mouths and nasal passageways. The wet noses of dogs are indications of
these infectious agents and should not be touched. In East Africa and many
other places in the world, rabies inflicted by dog bites is common. People
are also repulsed by dogs because they eat human feces and corpses; it is a
common notion to bury bodies deeply and cover them with stones so dogs
cannot get to a body. In places like Zulu-Natal, dogs digging up shallow
graves and eating bodies is a common problem in shallow rocky soil. In
countries where bodies are sometimes rafted away down rivers, when they
strand up on a beach dogs often eat the remains. Dogs are regarded the way
we regard rats: an animal ubiquitously present, a potential vector of disease,
a scavenger, and occasionally a thief, whose population needs to be culled
from time to time. In most areas of Africa the dog is regarded as both the
reservoir and the vector of rabies whether true or not.
In our interviews, the cultural dislike for dogs was invariably presented
first, followed by various individual modifications. These ranged from peo-
ple who were disgusted by the thought of touching a dog, to others who
thought dogs had some value as alarms or hunters of pests.
Ortolani et al.'s (2009) study in Ethiopia suggested there was a difference
in behavior of village dogs depending on the predominant religion of the
village. In Muslim villages the dogs tended to disperse from approaching
strangers, whereas in Christian towns they tended to ignore strangers.
However, in Muslim mountain towns, a slightly higher percentage of dogs
were found in houses, a consequence of keeping sheep and goats in a section
of the house.

Phenotype
The dogs of Zanzibar are phenotypically similar to other village dogs we
have studied. As has been noted, village dogs around the world appear
remarkably similar. They are medium to small (12 16 kg), with solid color

or piebald coats, in any mammalian color possible and in any combination.
Conformation is not without variation; ears, for example, range from pricked
to pendulous.
The small but numerous variations in size and shape are most likely the
results of local adaptation (dogs at the equator tend to be smaller than those
at increasing latitude and altitude), local founder effects (such as a high fre-
quency of some color pattern), or genes introduced by household dogs or
local working breeds that stray into the village dog population. The dogs of
Mucuch ´ es are larger than 10 kg, and are referred to locally as if they were a
breed descended from Simon Bolivar's dog, Nevado. Occasionally,
Mucuch´ans introduce/release European dogs (Pyrenean mountain dogs or
Saint Bernards) to “improve” the qualities of this free-ranging “breed.”