The Most Highly Educated Creature in the World.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 7 August 1914, Page 2

The Most Highly Educated Creature in the World.

(By RENE BACHE.)

Most people will say that man was the mostly educated of living creatures. But such is by no means the fact. It is the dog that deserves to be so characterised. The dog has undergone certain educational processes to which man has never been subjected. So extraordinarily effective have these processes been that to-day the brain of the dog is bigger by something like one-fourth than that of a wolf of equal size and weight. As everybody know 9, dogs are tho direct descendants of wolves. But let us see, to begin with, exactly what is meant by this statement. For' the precise significance of it is lot generally understood. Scattered over the earth are many species of the genus canis. Whereever any of these species has been found possible to tame, it has been domesticated. The species which have proved susceptible of domestication are called dogs. Those which, like the coyote, have proved incurably wild, are called wolves. That is all the difference there is between a dog and a wolf, at the •=■ isi rt. Hut the difference between the wolf and the dog as we find laeni to-day is enormous. The former is an enemy of man ; the latter is his most faithful and devoted friend. It is all a matter of education. But in order to realise how through education the dog has,been evolved from the wolf, we must go back to a period long before the earliest dawn of the most primitive civilisation —to the days, in short, of the Troglodytes, or Cave People. For it should be understood that the dog was the first domesticated animal. It was certainly domesticated tens of thousands of years Kef ore the horse or the sheep or any Cither living creature. Furthermore, its domestication was accomplished at the outset by women, in all likelihood, who brought home occasional wolf pups and raised them as pets. Wolf pups of any breed are rather Inclined to be fierce when they have £,"-' .--., imppyhood. But this fact necessarily resulted in a feeding put of the fiercer ones, of gentlest disposition being saved, to become in their turn the 'parents of other puppies, destined to undergo the same process of selection. It was through such artificial selection that the fiercer wolf qualities were gradually eliminated. Doubtless the reason for taking so much trouble in the breeding of the earliest types of dogs was that prijmitive man found them very useful. They may have been more or less serviceable in the chase, but If.heir principal usefulness vas doubtless for guarding the cave or other dwelling against surprise by an tnemy. Primitive man was himself a rather ferocious animal. We see to-day plentiful evidences of the sur- j vival of this ferocity in crimes of | violence, and most strikingly in the fact that civilised nations, for the settlement of their disputes, customarily resort to the expedient of wholesale murder and equally wholesale destruction of property, calling it "glorious war." Primitive man knew no such thing as peace. He was in constant apprehension of attack by people of near-by and rival settlements. By night and day he was "obliged to be on the alert, lest he be killed, his children .murdered, and his women carried away. Hence the value to him of a. four-footed guardian who could he counted upon to be always on the alert and ready to give a prompt alarm in case of danger.

Such was the beginning of the domestication of the dog. And it should be realised that the breeding of the animal was conducted, and has ever since been continued, on lines wholly different from those considered in the breeding of any other creature. Horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, and chickens are bred solely for the improvement of physical qualities — for speed, size, strength, beauty, wool-bearing, eggproduction, etc. The dog, on the other hand, has been bred chiefly for the improvement and development of its moral qualities and intelligence. Probably this has been going on for at least 100,000 years. During nil that period, from x generation to generation, the gentlest and most intelligent dogs have been selected for breeding. And, as a result, we have in the dog to-day the most faithful and devoted friend we know —an animal which in certain respects is on a. much higher level than ourselves, .morally speaking. Undeniably, the virtues which in human beings we regard as highest and noblest of all are loyalty and unselfish devotion. in these respects a good dog is superior even to the best human being. With him a disregard of self goes so far that at any time he is ready to lay down his life for his master. His love and devotion are absolute and unqualified. Human beings have never been bred for intelligence. Neither have they been bred for the improvement of their moral qualities. It is all chance medley from generation to generation, so that the son of a philosopher and philanthropist is just about as likely as anybody else to turn out a useless degenerate. Jt is interesting to consider iphat the human race might be like

to-day, and to what heights It m%hT have arrived, if it had been sub» jected to a process of selection for moral and mental attributes, like the genus canis, for 100,000 years.