03.30.08
The Engineered Companion
After fire, the dog was the first companion to man. Unlike fire, though, man did more than tame the dog; he invented the dog. Recent formal experiments have demonstrated that dogs can read human gestures in a way that their cousins—wolves—simply cannot. How is it that dogs seem to understand us so well? It seems likely that this talent is simply the result of thousands of years of behavior modification through breeding, and that dogs are not as perceptive or compassionate as they sometimes seem.
On the other hand, who is to say that some perceptiveness has not been engineered into dogs with all this behavioral programming? If a species can be engineered to respond to human gestures, is it not being engineered to perceive human gestures at the same time? And what a creature can perceive, it can also feel. We, for instance, may be slaves to our behavior, but even if that is true, we are passionately engaged in that behavior. Are dogs so different from us that we imagine that they cannot feel what they perceive?
This is not to suggest that this perceptiveness is due to a human-like intelligence, or that we can ever understand or appreciate the feelings of another species, but we ought not suppose that no feelings are there.
The dog might be seen as a genetically-engineered mirror, tuned to reflect feelings that we are generally oblivious to. In this sense, we may have much to learn from the dog.
Can one imagine a more impressive technology?
Still, it’s difficult to think of a dog as utterly unconscious. It seems that there must be more to a creature that seems so capable of reading our minds.
In some cultures, the dog is elevated to a nearly human status. Traditional Zoroastrians appears to recognize the dog as a human species, and give the dog a unique place in their burial rituals.
Remarkably, not all peoples share in this ancient partnership. Take for example the western neighbors of the Persians—the Arabs. I remember hearing from my Arabic language teacher that one of the worst insults in Arabic is kalb, which means dog. I suppose that wasn’t much of a surprise, but I was surprised to find that most Muslims regard the dog as ritually unclean, even a demonic creature. Occasionally one will hear a story of a Muslim cab driver who refuses to permit dogs—even seeing-eye dogs—into his car.
I sometimes wonder what it must be like to be a Persian Muslim. It seems in so many respects to be a contradictory existence. Does a Persian Muslim love dogs, wine, and song, or does he detest these things?
Say what you will about martyrdom, compensation, idolatry, and predestination in Islam. Muhammad really slipped when he failed to endorse the bond between man and dog. Muslims may suppose that this is due to the alien nature of the dog, but I suspect the opposite. There is a threatening aspect to the familiarity between man and dog, just as with the familiarity between men.
© 2008 Dan J. Jensen
