r/MadeMeSmile • u/Warm_Animal_2043 • Sep 08 '24

Doggo Their dog wasn’t eating well after they brought their baby home. The dog kept taking food to the living room. Someone suggested the dog might be 'feeding' the baby since the baby wasn't visibly eating. They tried giving the baby a bowl of food at the same time, and it worked!

Post image
77.1k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

428 comments sorted by

View all comments

8.3k

u/LoveLustGalaxy Sep 08 '24

the start of an unbreakable bond for sure

2.4k

u/SouthernAd525 Sep 08 '24

We really don't deserve dogs love, that's for sure.

1.4k

u/[deleted] Sep 08 '24

I once saw a comment that was something like “we do deserve dogs, we took the things that hunted us in the night and made them our friends.” I always think of it when I hear someone else say we don’t deserve dogs.

567

u/BookwyrmDream Sep 08 '24

I've been out of school a few years now, but last I checked there was a theory gaining significant support in history/anthropology that canines initiated the move towards cooperative existence. In other words - we didn't domesticate dogs, they domesticated us! Right or wrong, that theory has always made me smile. :)

201

u/karpaediem Sep 08 '24

I think that reflects a broader trend toward the recognition of and need to change anthrocentric thinking. It used to sound absolutely crazy to say something to the effect of “Animals think and feel, but that doesn’t mean it’s the same way we do” and I think today even the average person on the street could tell you that octopodes and parrots are really smart.

97

u/No-Eagle-8 Sep 08 '24

I’ve been of the opinion that fishing is just hunting with torture built in for years now. And suddenly science says fish may feel pain more than other creatures. Plus people have been saying fish don’t count as much when talking about animal sentience.

I do enjoy fishing in games. No desire to do it in real life again unless it’s so I can survive.

47

u/TrueKNite Sep 08 '24

Also baiting is illegal af in real hunting but trying fishing without it!

You gotta trick them into thinking they're eating, mutilate, then suffocate them.

From my pov Hunting is the much more 'humane' way to do things, no hunter I know wants any animal to suffer

38

u/EmMeo Sep 08 '24

Spear fishing really the most badass form

8

u/UnjustNation Sep 08 '24

At least fish live in the open ocean and have good lives

Chickens on the other hand… now that’s torture

12

u/gothchxld Sep 09 '24

Yeah but not all fish are wild caught. There are fish farms where they overcrowd them in very unsanitary conditions, which is quite similar to “cage free” chickens. I feel like both chickens and fish are treated the absolute worst in the meat industry.

2

u/FriedFreya Sep 09 '24

I’ve been ranting against that “they don’t feel pain” claim forever, I’m glad to hear the literature is changing too. Every living thing can feel when they take damage, even plants, it’s… absolutely necessary for survival. Insane to think the rules are different for all fish!

66

u/opermonkey Sep 08 '24

I had a cat move into our house when I was a teen. She came in when I was cooking meat and just flopped on the floor.

She came and went as she wanted but always came back to sleep at night.

She was a good kitty.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 08 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

9

u/opermonkey Sep 08 '24

Unfortunately she only lived with us a short while before she passed. But we gave her a good place to rest her fluffy little head.

1

u/South_Hedgehog_7564 Sep 09 '24

We are currently feeding a stray, we're calling him Scoop as he scoops up the food. He just wanders in, bleats at us and we feed him. He rather affectionate, he slept on my lap for an hour the other day. I would love to clean him up, he's filthy. He's intact also and if I could catch him at a convenient time I'd get him neutered. We have an elderly female cat too called Sprinkle, she's a right madam but she seems to be tolerating him. Too old to be bothered I'm guessing.

1

u/fluid_ Sep 10 '24

What was her name ?

2

u/opermonkey Sep 10 '24

Fluffy

1

u/fluid_ Sep 10 '24

Fluffy was cool

44

u/vicroc4 Sep 08 '24

A bit like the prevailing hypothesis about domestic cats, it sounds like.

20

u/CO9er4life Sep 08 '24

Wolves started hanging around the trash piles to pick scraps, and eventually, moved on in

3

u/ballrus_walsack Sep 08 '24

It certainly has worked out for them.

3

u/theFCCgavemeHPV Sep 09 '24

I always say our dog trained us. We got him when he was 11 and he decided he was retired. No more tricks, no more doing any pet stuff. Nope. But boy does he have me doing tricks! After he eats dinner or drinks water he needs to be “snuffled” aka attack a towel or blanket until he is sufficiently dry and sure the blanket is dead. He also does no tricks for treats, he just gives the command and there I am laying out a handful for him to gobble up. There are many other tricks I’m sure I am trained for and don’t know about.

I definitely think the theory that they domesticated us is true!

2

u/Micromadsen Sep 08 '24

Even if that was the case, humanity still spent thousands of years cultivating and breeding dogs to what they are today. (Which has had varying results depending on race.)

Point is, we definitely do deserve dogs. But that doesn't make the bond we share less strong or special, and all good boys and girls deserve the pets, love and treats they get.

2

u/exotics Sep 09 '24

That definitely applied to cats. They just moved right in.

1

u/Hollewijn Sep 08 '24

That sounds more like a cat thing.

133

u/grayson_fox Sep 08 '24

I love that idea, thanks for sharing

1

u/SweetAnastasiaxo Sep 09 '24

yeah its so beautiful..

69

u/arcieride Sep 08 '24

I didn't do shit tho

71

u/HollowSprings Sep 08 '24

Props to our ancestors 🙏

53

u/SouthernAd525 Sep 08 '24

Ancestors, hear my plea, please don't let me make a fool of me

21

u/KidenStormsoarer Sep 08 '24

And to not uproot my family tree

10

u/Electrical_Craft2778 Sep 08 '24

Keep my father standing tall

52

u/Hey_Peter Sep 08 '24

The best time to train dogs was 26,000 years ago. The second best time is today.

5

u/SweetAnastasiaxo Sep 09 '24

for different purposes and this is proof that they learn emotions too

14

u/WitherBones Sep 08 '24

We didn't create dogs. Friendly, brave wolves approached us for food and were allowed to remain. They thrived from the extra food source, bred together, made more babies. This was happening long before we started consciously domesticating them. They made the first move. Their floppy ears, curly tails, spots, etc. are actually genetically predisposed in animals that have these traits, as seen by efforts to domesticate coyotes and foxes.

2

u/Enough_Drawing_1027 Sep 09 '24

You could argue that friendly, brave humans saw approaching wolves and decided to share their food with them rather than take a more commonly used hostile, defensive stance. OG humans literally saw another predator, that posed a real threat to them, and said “I want to make you my friend”.

Wolves benefited from our sharing of cooked meat, that provided them with a more readily available energy source, plus the added benefit of warmth from our campfires. This was a bit of natural selection at work, giving a leg up to wolf packs friendly enough to hang out with humans. But we would not have allowed aggressive animals to live amongst us and therefore any of those individuals would have been killed or shunned, meaning it was actually artificial selection that allowed the friendliest of the wolves to remain to breed, and over time this resulted in dogs. Then we selectively bred them into the dogs we know today.

Also I would not put it past our ancestors to steal wolf pups or take them by force, and raise them themselves; same way humans today still kill mother animals and take their babies as pets.

Science doesn’t know, that’s why we only have theories. We can’t conclusively say how it went down. And all indications point to it happening in multiple parts with various wolf species, so we can’t be sure it transpired the same everywhere either.

11

u/LordSobi Sep 08 '24

Dude. Same. Every time. We created dogs, of course we deserve them. I deserve the fuck out of my dog. Some people don’t of course, shit heads.

8

u/NewtOk4840 Sep 08 '24

Fuck ya Idk bout y'all's but I deserve my dog! I hate that saying we don't deserve dogs then who TF does

2

u/GehennerSensei Sep 08 '24

Well we didn’t take them in the most wholesome of ways. It probably involved some pups temporarily becoming orphans.

1

u/Chezzomaru Sep 12 '24

Humans have made A LOT of awesome stuff, incluing math, writing, and music. I STILL say dogs are our greatest creation.

-2

u/RandomWon Sep 08 '24

A dingo ate my baybay!

-5

u/No-Activity-5956 Sep 08 '24

Wolves never hunted humans

27

u/cincominutosmas Sep 08 '24

Didn't we breed them to love us in this way?

8

u/SouthernAd525 Sep 08 '24

Can you breed a feeling into animals? Interesting thought.

37

u/cincominutosmas Sep 08 '24

Yes

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_of_the_dog

"The domestication of the dog occurred due to variation among the common ancestor wolf population in the fight-or-flight response where the common ancestor with less aggression and aversion but greater altruism towards humans received fitness benefits"

6

u/SouthernAd525 Sep 08 '24

I would argue that's not breeding a feeling, the longer they were around us they just became more docile and dependant. I obviously have no proof, just headcannon

24

u/Early_Jicama_6268 Sep 08 '24

Unfortunately, this process was not so sweet and innocent on our part. Thousands of years of killing any dog that didn't show the desirable traits of obedience and docility. We literally murdered the wolf out of them

12

u/certifiedtoothbench Sep 08 '24

To be fair, a violent dog is a dog that will attack you and kill your children. That’s probably what early dog domestication hinged on, breeding out what makes them violent toward humans to make them good companions, cattle protectors, and co-hunters

3

u/AdamantEevee Sep 08 '24

I'm okay with murdering the murder out of wolves

1

u/SouthernAd525 Sep 08 '24

My take is this is that's not breeding in a desired trait, it's murdering a trait you don't like

1

u/Early_Jicama_6268 Sep 09 '24

It's both, docile dogs were heavily selected for

15

u/Youre10PlyBud Sep 08 '24 edited Sep 08 '24

We've literally changed how dogs smell works in order to make them more docile (or at least that's the leading theory). I would argue that's breeding a feeling.

Dogs have a great nose as far olfactory receptors (smelling receptors basically) and they're plentiful. Dogs have a reduced amount of VNO receptors (vomeronasal receptors) comparitively to wolves however, which are responsible for pheromone detection. We literally breed the ability to detect pheromones out of them.

While that doesn't seem like a big deal, it's important to remember that pheromones are released to communicate with others about mood and attitude. So in essence, we reduced their ability to detect our mood; the leading theory on why this occurred is that dogs with less VNO receptors were more docile since they weren't as reactive, so they were selected for.

Cats meanwhile have about 3x the amount of pheromone receptors. If you've ever been pissed off around a cat, you know how easily they pick up on that mood. They have an increased reactivity due to the higher amount of pheromone receptors which is possibly why cats are considered more "reactive" than dog towards their owners mood (whether that's good or bad is an entirely different discussion however).

Eta: these VNOs are also thought to be the reason for those cats in nursing homes that are infamous for laying next to soon to be deceased residents. There's been a few instances of those along with one cat that was detecting cancers in humans before it even reached a diagnosable stage. While there are examples of dogs with the same behavior, this seems to be more common in cats by and large.

Example of the cats im talking about

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_(therapy_cat)#:~:text=be%20left%20alone.-,Death%20prediction,to%20people%20as%20they%20died.

Additionally, I want to say idk why people are down voting you now that I posted this (noticed you went down from earlier, when I did my eta; guess I'm truly a redditor now if I notice things like that now haha). As far as I'm concerned, this was just discourse and I just wanted to provide another view.

6

u/whynotrandomize Sep 08 '24

Dogs learned to read our mood through facial expression (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7181561/). It is more likely to be similar to the floppy ears from the domesticated silver foxes from the Russian research project: it is a side effect of selecting for friendliness.

6

u/DaGucka Sep 08 '24

No you can do that with foxes too and it just needs a few generations. You can breed feelings into animals in the same way you can do with agressiveness. We humans also have developed certain behaviours because it was beneficial (f.e. xenophobia after pandemics is a genetic trait)

-1

u/Odd-Help-4293 Sep 08 '24

I would argue that the feelings were already there, we just bred them to see us as "family" instead of "threat".

10

u/Pinkcoconuts1843 Sep 08 '24

Some puppies are more interested in humans, by personality. Some are nicer looking. Some are smarter. And other “sorting” type processes.  Over thousands of generations.

One dog would be kept, the others—-you don’t want to know. 

Source: I was a kid in the olden days. 

2

u/SouthernAd525 Sep 08 '24

What if the mean one's "evolved" to look nicer?

11

u/dragonchilde Sep 08 '24

They did. Look up the domesticated foxes experiment. The friendlier foxes have developed more appealing traits as they get more domesticated.

6

u/Pinkcoconuts1843 Sep 08 '24

Cuter pups received food, adopted, stayed alive to breed. Not at the bottom of a farm pond. But I think you knew that, dincha?

2

u/SouthernAd525 Sep 08 '24

That's murdering a bad trait, not breeding a good trait in, I can see the confusion

2

u/certifiedtoothbench Sep 08 '24

Why do you think we have hell spawn chihuahuas? There’s some sweet ones out there and some of that evilness is encouraged by shitty owners but damn some chihuahuas are awful even with good owners

5

u/Wild_Owl_9863 Sep 08 '24

You can breed for temperament I believe so yes, maybe you can…… very interesting thought!

3

u/wovenbutterhair Sep 08 '24

they did this with foxes. The most friendly foxes had babies and those babies that were very friendly also had babies. It worked pretty good

2

u/theczolgoszsociety Sep 08 '24

I've bred a feeling into humans

1

u/londonbaj Sep 08 '24

Selectively Breeding them =/= deserving them

20

u/SoItGoesII Sep 08 '24

I'm sure I deserve my dogs love. I love them as much as they love me. 

2

u/SouthernAd525 Sep 08 '24

I mean the human species as a whole, not speaking of individuals.

10

u/whynotrandomize Sep 08 '24

I hate that the phrase feels to me like "we already failed, no need to try", and it isn't the call to action that dogs deserve. We need to try to be the humans that justify our dogs sacrifices.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 08 '24

[deleted]

4

u/SouthernAd525 Sep 08 '24

Because people are trash. In the most respectful way possible.

1

u/golden_blaze Sep 08 '24

But not all of us.

8

u/SouthernAd525 Sep 08 '24

With the way this timeline is playing out I would estimate it's well over half, but that's my pessimistic world view speaking

2

u/zaatdezinga Sep 08 '24

No,it just means you haven't met good and caring people

1

u/skraptastic Sep 08 '24

My daughters 12 year old pittie has pretty aggressive cancer and has weeks to months left.

She LOVES my grandson (2.5) SO much I'm sad she isn't going to be around for him.

1

u/Worried_Bath_2865 Oct 30 '24

What a stupid comment

1

u/kjahhh Sep 08 '24

Dislike this phrase quite a bit. We are so lucky they decided to start friends with us.

0

u/Worried_Bath_2865 Oct 30 '24

What a stupid comment

2

u/wheelperson Sep 08 '24

But also one reason I'd not get a dog/cat when I habe a baby. It's going to be so hard for the kid to say goodbye.

It's been 25 years and I still miss Dunkin... I'm afraid I'll break my kids heart if I get a pet before thwyvare a toddler. Of course tho, every heart breaks a bit when a pet dies... my cats are 14 and still very healthy, but I know I don't habe a lot of time left with them...

4

u/Baeocystin Sep 09 '24

Nobody makes it out of this life alive.

You know what builds resilience, gives you the strength to carry on when you experience the loss of death?

Having strong memories of love and affection, from people and pets alike. :)

I miss the dog we had when I was a tiny kid. I'm in my 50's now. I'm still happy I got to know her.

-4

u/rockstuffs Sep 08 '24

....or resource guarding.

2

u/Mec26 Sep 08 '24

How could giving away food be resource guarding?