What is it about?
Free-ranging dogs make up 75% of the world’s dog population. But because testing street dogs in their natural habitat is so challenging, very little is known about their behavioural traits. We developed a series of short behavioural tests that are easy to implement, leverage street dogs’ voluntary participation, and, at the same time, succeed in collecting reliable data on their behaviour.
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Photo by Simon Moog on Unsplash
Why is it important?
The majority of the global dog population is free-ranging and contrary to what most people believe, most of these dogs are not abandoned pets, but populations with a long history of living alongside humans without the selection for specific breed functions. Understanding free-ranging dogs’ behaviour doesn't just help the people who live around them - it can also teach us about dogs in general and how their behavioural traits changed over time. Now that we know that we can test these free-roaming dogs happily, reliably, and thoroughly in their natural habitats, we have unlocked an almost untapped wealth of new information for us to explore.
Perspectives
It's intriguing, isn’t it? How dogs hold such special places in our lives and yet, there's still so much we don't know about how these cherished traits develop, how the environment shapes them, and how that reflects in the vast majority of dogs out there. Free-ranging dog populations are as varied as the humans they live next to, yet so far there are only few studies out there on these diverse populations and we’ve barely scratched the surface on all the information they hold. I hope that seeing the feasibility of this test battery will open other scientists’ minds to what's possible, that it will spark their curiosity, and most importantly, that future endeavours will bring as much joy to the street dogs who participate as they've shown in this journey.
Svenja Capitain
University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Street-wise dog testing: Feasibility and reliability of a behavioural test battery for free-ranging dogs in their natural habitat, PLoS ONE, March 2024, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0296509.
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