Page 38 - Dog

Feral dogs
Pottery vessel – from the Colima
culture in Mexico, a.d. 300–900 –
of a hairless “techichi” dog
After the first dogs were domesticated
about 12,000 years ago, some of them, like the
dingo, eventually reverted to life in the wild. They are
known as “feral” dogs. They hunted for their own food
except when they could scavenge for a few scraps left
by human hunters. In many parts of the world, dogs
still live like this. Many populations of dogs live and
breed without any human contact at all. The most
successful of all feral dogs is the dingo of Australia, but
there are also feral dogs in India and many other parts
of Asia, where they are called “pariah” dogs – “pariah”
is a Tamil, or Sri Lankan, word meaning “outcast.”
All over Africa feral dogs live on the outskirts of
villages, where they serve a useful function in
cleaning up all the garbage. At times these dogs
are allowed into the houses, but they are seldom
given anything to eat because there is often not
enough food for the people, let alone the
animals. So the dogs must fend for themselves.

FERRETING FOR FOOD
The feral dogs of Egypt are sometimes lucky and find
scraps of food left by tourists.

IN THE WILDS OF INDIA
Pariah dogs have been living wild
in India for thousands of years.
Some look like the dingoes
of Australia. SANTO DOMINGO DOG
This dog must have looked very similar to the wild dogs
that Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) probably
found in the West Indies when he
discovered America.

PERUVIAN PARIAH
Long before the Spanish
first went to South
America, the native
peoples had dogs
that lived around
the settlements, just QUINKAN SPIRITS
as their descendants, In these cave paintings near Cape York in
the feral dogs of Australia, these “Quinkan spirits” – the Great
today, do. Ancestors of the aborigines – are accompanied
by a dingo.

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