Comment by sdfjkl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sdfjkl | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

This article sounds very naive. Couldn't be bothered to read further after these silly questions:

> How would you stay warm?

Just like any regular outdoor dog. Find shelter, huddle together, grow winter fur and eventually adapt to the climate. Meanwhile, spend the nights in sleepless shivering fits - but survive. Evolution is brutal, but it works.

> What would you do when it rains?

Get wet! So what?

> What would you eat?

Whatever is available! In any place with a stray dog population, this quickly becomes obvious: Any other animal you can take on (unless it has guns), including other, smaller dogs. Forage for trash or vegetable matter. If humans weren't so crafty and well armed, they'd be yummy too. Stray packs certainly do have a history of nomming the occasional lost human (post-war Croatia for example).

> And most importantly, wouldn’t you be lonely without me?

Hell no. Most of the strays I've seen formed packs or sometimes pairs if they were strong enough to defend their territory.

> This article sounds very naive.

I am getting PETA vibes from this article actually. Plus the listing of pain management via acupuncture as a benefit makes me question the author.

To be fair most of the questions were rhetorical, not naive, the answers were a few paragraphs lower.

As for eating it's not so simple. Stray dogs are still depending on humans for food in many ways, either by random people feeding them occasionally, them eating our trash, or hunting prey that human hunters feed so they can shoot it (at least in my country hunters are notorious for feeding wild animals in the winter which causes overpopulation which in the spring and summer they use as an excuse to shoot most of them).

I've had 2 stray dogs adopted - a medium size mongrel that was doing pretty well in the wild (hunting and begging random people for food), and then an irish setter abandoned in the woods and living in the wild for months. She was barely alive when my sister (who is a vet) found her, I've never seen dog that was so starved, despite being a hunting dog supposedly.

In general, the death rate of wild dogs/abandoned dogs is very high, especially as puppies. Dogs evolved to have a willingness to essentially eat almost anything. They are obsessed with food sources out of necessity of survival. Wild dogs will eat basically anything they think is edible and keep eating it if they find that it is edible. Abandoned dogs are less conditioned to eat just anything, so they are much less able to survive in the wild (that's dependant on age of abandonment, though).

By evolving to also be extremely open to human partnership, they have much longer lives when living with humans because humans are extremely consistent and persistent food sources. Their "loyalty" and "love" is, instinctually, to our supply of food.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com