Differences in the Behavior of Landraces and Breeds of Dogs - Genetics and the Behavior of Domestic Animals - page 205

access to waste animal products simply because of their proximity to live-
stock activity. They also elicit feeding because humans notice their behavior.
The feed from livestock activities (including milk, cheese, whey, dead ani-
mals, and grains) is perhaps higher quality than what dogs can find in village
dumps and latrines.
Some of the newly founded “breeds” of these animals hunt and kill wild-
life ( Coppinger et al., 1988 ). Many, however, seem incapable of predatory
behaviors. Stillborn calves fed to a pen with 10 livestock-guarding dogs
imported from Italy, Yugoslavia, and Turkey had to be cut open before the
dogs would feed, indicating that they did not have dissecting motor patterns,
whereas the herding dogs (border collies) had no difficulty dissecting a carcass
( Coppinger and Coppinger, 2001 ).
Reproduction
Reproductive survival of food-enriched dogs may be better than that of their
village counterparts. As in village dogs, there is little or no imposed reproduc-
tive isolation of individuals by people. However, there can be reproductive
isolating mechanisms. A group of dogs attentive to a flock of sheep will have
an edge over outside males to breeding their flock-guarding females in heat.
A breakdown in this dog/sheep group plus a similar social disruption in a
diminishing wolf population, Boitani (1983) argues, are the causes of hybridi-
zations between the landrace dogs and free-ranging dogs and between dogs
and wolves in Italy. Wayne et al. (1995) state that wolf/coyote hybridization
occurs with population (social) and habitat disruptions, and further suggest
that this hybridization resulted in the present red wolf (C. rufus). Although no
geographic isolation occurs over the generations, some temporal isolation
does, resulting in temporal homozygosities of racial formation (landrace).
Additionally, humans practice culling for the purpose of limiting litter
sizes, often to two pups, for a variety of management reasons. Shepherds
frequently cull pups that do not display the guarding dog characteristics. The
survivors are often chosen simply for the preferred local color, perhaps a color
that is reminiscent of a previous good animal. Often the color becomes the
distinguishing characteristic of the “breed.” An Italian shepherd showing us a
litter with a large color and pattern variation identified the two white pups as
the “pure” maremmas. Another shepherd in Puglia when asked why maremmas
are white just laughed and said only the white ones were allowed to live.
Hazard Avoidance
Dogs that kill, injure, or are disruptive to the management of stock are killed.
The display of predatory motor patterns, such as eye-stalk or chase and bite,
is considered a fault and may be the cause of culling adults, thereby elimi-
nating animals with these behaviors from the gene pool. There is little