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well, the biggie is that mech proposes that wolf pack hierarchy is not created or maintained by aggressive acts, but rather by submissive ones. that wolf packs are family units, not random assortments of unrelated wolves who fight for the top spot.
of course his study has no bearing on dog behavior, because it's about wolves.
but since you believe that dog and wolf packs are the same, and dogs and wolves are the same, i guess that's not true for you.
my point about the dates is that the author of that study may have changed their mind based on mech's findings. or they may not have. there's no way to know, unless they made a statement or published other similar studies.
well, the biggie is that mech proposes that wolf pack hierarchy is not created or maintained by aggressive acts, but rather by submissive ones. that wolf packs are family units, not random assortments of unrelated wolves who fight for the top spot.
but since you believe that dog and wolf packs are the same, and dogs and wolves are the same, i guess that's not true for you.
my point about the dates is that the author of that study may have changed their mind based on mech's findings. or they may not have. there's no way to know, unless they made a statement or published other similar studies.
I agree that wolves in the wild have different pack structures than feral dogs. But I don't think that means wolves are intrinsically different than dogs in terms of group interactions. I think it means that the environment has affected the way the packs are formed and maintained. Wolves in the wild have the benefit of having a natural pack - the way packs were meant to be. But feral dogs do not have this benefit. And so they have adapted and perhaps become more aggressive in the process because they are challenged more. They're pack is not all family. So their stature is not "given" as it is in the packs Mech studied.
Wolves in captivity have also shown to display more aggression - because the pack is composed of family and non-family members. So position needs to be established.
I will have to look up more info on follow up studies. But in general I don't think what Mech proposes contradicts the study I gave. We are talking about two different environments here. A natural familial environment and a rag-tag environment composed of roaming dogs, feral dogs and domesticated dogs. But the study does show that they do form packs and stability is sought despite the stresses.
oh and i'd argue that a home with domesticated dogs is closer to a natural familial environment than a "ragtag" one, wouldn't you agree? i mean it depends on the home, but we're talking ideally.
When dog owners with aggressive pets are looking for help, where do they turn? Popular TV shows, the Internet, books, and even some trainers have advocated various forms of corrective intervention that is punitive and aversive. The authors of a study published in the most recent issue of Applied Animal Behaviour Science wanted to discover what types of interventions owners of aggressive dogs used most frequently, where they found out about the interventions, and the owner-reported reactions of the dogs to the interventions. The authors were especially interested in whether any of these interventions made the problem worse by resulting in defensive aggression from the dog.
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