Differences in the Behavior of Landraces and Breeds of Dogs - Genetics and the Behavior of Domestic Animals - page 216

another (e.g., a Chesapeake Bay retriever as a livestock-guarding dog,
livestock-guarding dogs as border collies, and vice versa) not only failed to
produce good working dogs but essentially hindered the individual for
retraining in its natural work.
It is hypothesized that herding-dog and gun-dog behaviors are analogous
to the individual motor units of the ancestral predatory sequence (eye-
stalk

dissect) that characterize the functional
carnivore foraging behavior ( Coppinger and Coppinger, 2001 ).
Two differences are evident in these motor units in dogs, compared
with their ancestors. First, in several wild species these behaviors are often
linked together in the adult. If the performance is interrupted, the animal is
inhibited from proceeding. Some species of cats are classic in this regard
and cannot perform a motor pattern unless the prerequisite behavior is per-
formed. Thus, they cannot eat carrion because they have to perform the
entire eye-stalk

chase grab-bite kill-bite

. . . .

. chase . bite . kill sequence in order to dissect and feed

( Leyhausen, 1973 ).
Second, in dogs, these motor patterns are not only individually displayed
but are often exaggerated (hypertrophied) or ritualized. Dogs get stuck in the
performance and cannot proceed. Pointers and border collies get stuck on a
point and have to be rescued. The performance in these cases is not func-
tional in moving an animal toward a food reward, but the display appears to
be its own reward (autotelic), as well as the end of the sequence.
Coppinger and Smith (1989) argue that there are three stages in the
development of a mammal: the neonatal period of innate stereotyped motor
patterns, a transition stage where the neonatal motor patterns cease and adult
behaviors onset (metamorphosis), and an adult stage with stereotypical innate
and functional motor patterns. During the transitional or metamorphic period,
motor patterns individually onset and offset, and can be displayed individu-
ally, in nonfunctional sequences, and against a backdrop of behaviors contex-
tually inappropriate to either neonatal or adult functional sequences. This
same theory was reiterated by Burghardt (2005) .
Changes in the timing (heterochrony of a breed in a juvenile or metamor-
phic stage provide an event for creating an hypothesis to explain the display
of individual predatory motor patterns throughout the adult life of a dog,
independently of the ancestral functional sequence. Differential retardation
or acceleration would then change each breed's development in a narrow
ontogenic (developmental) stage where some but not other predatory motor
patterns had emerged.
Lord (2010) found that the onset of adult foraging motor patterns in
border collies and shutzhund German shepherds did vary heterochronically
as compared with wolves. These variations also translated into differences in
the frequency at which motor patterns were incorporated into play. However,
behavioral differences between wolves and dogs and breeds thereof were not