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Tsayad

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Everything posted by Tsayad

  1. Tsayad
    Doesn't grain get weevils in your part of the world?
  2. Tsayad
    Don't think I want the pink ones... It's hard enough training dogs to hunt close to me as it is. Make it harder if they were ashamed to be seen with me. <ROFL>
  3. Tsayad
    I think we've all had the experience of having a perfectly good pair of laces spoilt by the tags falling off and the ends fraying to the point where they are too soft and floppy to easily put through the holes or loops on our boots. Anyone have a quick and easy solution. Have tried dipping them in glue, but those I've tried have been too thick to wick through the lace materiel well. Cotton laces, so melting the ends doesn't work...... and no, I'm not going to try viagra on them.
  4. Tsayad
    A quick search couldn't find that anyone else has posted a link to this vid. The Carisbrook Running-Dog and Terrier show, as filmed by 4WDTV. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cPh7aDE1jw
  5. Tsayad
    hutch... I challenge you to name a single place and culture where we see primitive people - whether hunter-gatherer, subsistence-farming, or a mixture of both, that has this kind of mythical, mutually-consenting relationship with the large predators in their area. Africa? No. Asia?... No. North America... Nope. Europe?... Not even slightly. What I've described has been observed and has been seen to work. The Jungle Book and the Just So Stories are fiction. Dating the domestication of plants and livestock is tentative, and speculative at best due to the ambiguous and ephemmeral
  6. Tsayad
    Yes, they are. But that is not domestication, and the gulf between the level of cooperative hunting that I suggested, and domestication is bigger than you seem to think.. There are many animals that have learnt that association with man brings benefits. from mice to bears. They eat our food and seem to have lost all fear of us. But try treating them as if they are tame, and you rapidly discover the difference. ... and again. Please pay attention. The Fraser Island population is not only the purest population of wild canines left in Australia, it has not been sub
  7. Tsayad
    Sherlock... What evidence have you that "first contact" and domestication occurred at the same time? For you argument to work, it requires that wolves had not had prolonged , competitive, occasionally adverse experience of each other prior to domestication. I don't believe that that scenario is a realistic one.
  8. Tsayad
    Casso. The Northern Australian record is a record of a nomadic stone-age hunter-gatherer culture. There is little evidence that it has changed greately over the supposed 50-60 thousand years that this country has been occupied. As the best evidence is that domestication of the wolf predated that of either herd animals or grains, the only circumstances in which this could have happend was in a nomadic stone-age hunter-gatherer cultures. So your claim that the circumstances were completely different is is without foundation.. If you wish to convince me otherwise, all you have to do is prese
  9. Tsayad
    So how does that explain wolfish behaviour in Northern USA, Canada and Siberia..... all areas with little or no history of domesicated livestock, herding and the kind of "persecution" (nice choice of emotive term there) ? Not even close to 100% right, Also... Here were have a real account of hunter-gatherer nomads interacting with the local canines. Not speculation. Observation. If Not the basis for an animated feelgood movie for the kids, but reality...
  10. Tsayad
    That hurts. Even when we have time to prepare, it hurts. Losing one like that....
  11. Tsayad
    Sorry, to clarify.... Yes, I am familiar with the fact that there have been discovered certain "naive" populations of wildlife. All of those with which I'm familiar are on isolated islands with no significant predator populations. So while the concept is possible, I doubt that it is probable in the context of your question. Wild canines have always had to deal with other predators, as well as competitors whether man is present or not. Secondly, I am very, very sceptical of the notion that the relationship between men and wild canines was universally happy in the absence of domestic
  12. Tsayad
    Sherlock.... Thinking of wolves as "nasty and viscious" is on the same level of anthropomorphism as thinking of them as "nice and noble". They are what they are; Top-level predators that compete with humans for game and are a threat to our livestock and children. Too many wolves mean not enough deer, as is being proven in Yellowstone right now.
  13. Tsayad
    Hutch... As I said before, in this continent, the sole occupants prior to European settlement were nomadic hunter-gatherers. Yet they had domesticated canines that were indistinguishable from wild canines in the same area. This is observed and recorded history, not inferred history from 50,000 years ago. Secondly, I am a farmer. It doesn't matter whether you are talking modern farming, or primitive farming and herding as practiced in Africa to this day, farmers and large predators do not live together comfortably. To the predator, the farmer is not a source of scraps and pests, he is a
  14. Tsayad
    Last Saturday morning... It was after a wet day - 30mm for those who speak French - and the country was oozing water. Cool, buckets of dew and a fog lifting off the hills. Nice time to go for a jog. Oh, no,,,, I'm not one of those run-for-the-fun of it types, but there's a little matter of hypertension, Doc's orders, and a vehicle needing retrieval from the back of the place. So it's on with the joggers, unclip the girls and trot off down the hill.. About a mile from the house I'm starting to warm up internally. The sweat on the torso is cool and slick and the breathing deepens as I pu
  15. Tsayad
    Sorry, but you don't understand genetic selection and you seem to have stopped listening. When I can point to a number of cultures that put canine on the menu by choice , not merely necessity (which all hunter-gatheres face from time to time) is is far from grasping at straws to note that this is one very plausible scenarion in which a primitive man might raise an immature canine. Denying this is denying the obvious. What is also obvious, is that man is far more intelligent and adaptable than canines, good as they are, so it is far more plausible that the initiative for domestication c
  16. Tsayad
    You are still confusing inherited behaviour with learned behaviour. Epigenetics relates to how the information relating to inherited behaviour is stored, expressed and passed on. When discussing the phenomenon of canine domestication, learned behaviour is still a more reasonable explantion than changes in inherited behaviour.
  17. Tsayad
    Skycat... Yes, some things are instinctive. Caution when faced with the unusual is a normal survival instinct.... Which is why arguing that canines gradually became genetically less cautious around humans has problems. Lack of caution in animals that are still wild and not yet under the protection of humans is not a positive survival trait. Let me try a more obvious example of caution that must be learnt instead of being instinctive. Dogs are not normally frightened of a fence. However a dog that has experienced the shock from an electric fence, especially more than once, will be very
  18. Tsayad
    Casso... Collective memory is knowledge gathered from the experience of many people over multiple generations. Humans don't need to burn their hand on the hot stove to know that it hurts. We can know this because our parents tell us. Dogs cannot learn this way. They must learn by experience. With respect, mate, genetics doesn't work the way that you seem to think. The fox experiment simply showed that certain genetic traits are linked. The linked traits are expressed through forced genetic selection. They are not expressed through learned tolerance for human presence. The retenti
  19. Tsayad
    The Russian experiments in fox-breeding are interesting, but not particularly appliccable. To claim that the association required an acquired genetic predisposition to less fear of man requires either a a positive selection pressure amongst animals that did not hunt with man preior to losing their fear, or a belief that learned behaviour can be passed on genetically. Neither seems very probable. Bear in mind that the Russian experiment involved direct human intervention in breeding. Moreover, the "tamer" foxes are expressing genetic traits that are only advantageous to individuals that are
  20. Tsayad
    Casso... Problem with the idea that trust developed gradually and mutually is that canines do not develop a collective memory and learn by revelation, as humans do.. My thinking on this is influenced by behaviour demonstrated by the local canines. Canis Lupus Dingo, a subspecies of the Grey wolf. These wild canines hunt coooperatively, and they also hunt utilising natural and man-made features. If a canine can learn that chasing prey into a wire fence makes for an easier kill, I see no reason why they cannot learn that chasing prey to humans does the same thing. Likewise, having spen
  21. Tsayad
    Roald Amundsen thought so... I do not dismiss the shared instinct to hunt. It's one of the keenest delights that I find in hunting with dogs... their obvious enthusiasm. However when it comes down to primitive hunter-gatherers, I find utility a more credible motivation than entertainment.
  22. Tsayad
    Given the distance and variation between tribes, it is not reasonable to speak of "Native American Culture" as a single, consistent entity. There is historical evidence of some tribes considering the wolf to be a competitor, to be killed in order to preserve sometimes scarce resources. Let's not romanticise either wolves or hunter-gatherer lifestyles, either. Most canines will scavenge if the opportunity presents itself, and most hunter-gatherers experienced periods of shortage as well as periods of plenty. Inclement weather was just as common then as now, and they were far less well-equip
  23. Tsayad
    That's open to challenge.... Man developed techniques that permitted him to kill game that was too large for your average canine to hunt succesfully, and in numbers. Think of the hunting strategy of some canines, whereby some pack members "herd" (it's the same instinct that we exploit in our stock-herding dogs) prey into an ambush by other pack members. Humans may not have the speed and stamina of canines, but their tools, weapons, pits and snares enable them to kill larger game with less risk. How did canines learn to herd prey to humans as they would to stronger pack-members? That's
  24. Tsayad
    Titley Scientific used to make a tracking unit not much bigger than a "AA" battery, with good range. Unfortunately, they don't currently make anything that size that is rechargeable. They can make you something small enough to stick on a lizzard, a frog or a sparrow, but not with the attributes that I want. Hence the question.
  25. Tsayad
    If you can't see them dead, don't count them dead. It's frustrating at times, but at least you know in yourself that you are honest and not indulging in internet one-upmanship. Love the photos and the story
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