Semi-stray dogs in the Philippines and dog domestication

It’s not that stray dogs (and cats) are completely nonexistent in the Philippines, but this gets complicated by the fact that many of these free-roaming dogs actually have owners. It could be a matter of owner carelessness but a charitable interpretation would have free-roaming dogs be the byproduct of human urbanisation and cultural practices where owners inherited that habit of allowing their dogs to stray from their peers and relatives.

As for dog predation, at this point it’s anecdotal where we have reports of dogs hunting sea turtles and their eggs as well as anecdata about owned dogs hunting rats and snakes (I got this from my aunt). Although contemporary free-roaming dogs may not always be the best example of how dog domestication got to be, the way owners allow their dogs to roam and the fact that stray dogs were mentioned in early texts and are shown to scavenge give a good idea of how it all began.

While Raymond Coppinger may’ve missed the mark at times, I think Russian and Indian biologists‘ findings provide a better idea of what stray and semi–stray dogs do everyday. It helps that Russia and India have a lot of stray dogs (including free-roaming pet dogs) to work with, that enables them to draw compelling conclusions from. According to Russian studies, there are different types of stray dogs depending on their ecology and degree of socialisation to humans.

They range from properly feral dogs to stray dogs that are socialised to humans but not too close to them to those that are owned pets roaming freely, I think this also occurs in the Philippines and China to varying degrees. From what I experienced in the Philippines, the most common kind of stray dog is really the free-roaming pet then comes the street dogs that are familiar with but not that close to humans. Not to mention, stray dogs have been noted to hunt animals (for better or worse).

This is also true in the Philippines among owned dogs where my aunt said that her dogs hunt rats and snakes, Michael Tan said that his dogs hunted rats and one of my dogs hunted frogs but it was such a problem that my father had to install fences to minimise this. I actually think the findings of Russian biologists give a better insight into stray dogs and how dog domestication got to be, if because they’re more frequent (from personal experience) and there are more stray dogs to work with and base on.

This might also be true in Taiwan, China, The Philippines, Cameroon and India wherever there’s a substantial number of both owned dogs roaming around, truly feral dogs and semi-feral street dogs. Reading up on the findings and writings of non-Western journalists and scientists when it comes to stray dogs gives a far better idea of what they’re actually like, especially in those places because it’s something they intimately know or experienced.

The best Raymond Coppinger has done is to observe non-American dogs roaming freely as an outsider, but I think studies and anecdotes by those who live in those countries give a better insight of what those dogs actually do. (The best way to know this would be to go there and experience it yourself.) To give you an idea, if you want to really know about cats in Cameroon and Kenya the best way to know this is to read writings by Cameroonians and Kenyans both scientific and otherwise.

Judging and inferring from the data provided by non-Western scientists, I suspect that the path to dog domestication was a rather convoluted and messy process if because owners have a habit of allowing their dogs to roam (and breed) freely, since contraception wasn’t widely available back then, that I think semi-feral dogs may have been the default for millennia. Even today, some people who want their dogs to stop breeding may not always afford what’s needed.

I’m afraid anybody who viciously criticises the Coppingers actually misses the real point they’re making about dogs, well what they’re trying to make at best. It seemed to me that dogs led a semi-feral existence for a long time, perhaps far longer than anybody realises, if because owners have a habit of allowing them to stray and if more recent studies suggest, their dogs do have a habit of eating refuse and hunting animals on their own. So what these dogs do may’ve not been so different from what’s been noted much earlier.

A cursory glance at history shows that the majority of dogs were stray and still are to some extent today, now that’s something Coppingers’ critics fail to realise even if they may know dogs more than others. But they may not know dogs as much as actual biologists do, if because it’s something they’ve studied for a long period of time. And because they habitually study dogs wherever they go, their words carry more weight than somebody who doesn’t.

My own dogs have a habit of rummaging through rubbish, so studies about dogs eating refuse aren’t that far off. There’s even a study about dogs eating faeces in Zimbabwe and one of my dogs habitually ate faeces a lot, again that’s not much of a stretch that dogs can and will scavenge from time to time. It seemed whoever criticises the Coppingers hasn’t been around stray dogs much, doesn’t know much about them and doesn’t bother looking up on those a lot.

Even if the Coppingers are flawed, I still think they’re onto something when it comes to how dogs came to be.

BIPOC hunters, pet owners and fishers part two

As I said before, the hunting practices of black cultures can vary as much as individual motivations do. To recap, the differences between Cameroonians and African Americans become more evident in that more Cameroonians own pets and more Cameroonians are involved in hunting even if not all of them do. Whether if it’s their cultural tendencies and traditions (pastoralists if they’re Fulani, intensive-agriculture if they’re Bamileke or Ewondo) or personal preference (there are Cameroonians who lead very sedentary lives).

In America (and possibly the rest of the Western world), this gets complicated by the fact that although representation is much needed most hunters tend to be white and male and most vegetarians and vegans are female but with a considerable POC representation. That’s not to say nonwhite female hunters don’t exist, but those who do tend to hunt smaller game and/or do pest control. They also tend to hunt with their children, mostly either to teach them something or to accompany them.

As for Asia, hunting traditions and practices do exist but they vary depending on the country, individual and community. In the Philippines, where I live, if hunting does exist it’s either subsistence hunting (especially among the Aetas) or pest control when it comes to rodents. However, from personal experience, while there are dogs that do hunt rodents either on their own or been raised to do so, it’s more common for dogs to be raised to guard premises.

I don’t know anybody who hunts game in the Philippines and probably other than Aetas, who tend to be hunter-gatherers, if they ever made a dog hunt it’s to chase away vermin. Hunting for sport isn’t really that popular in the Philippines, hunting for pest control however is. Hunting wildlife, save for certain demographics, is illegal here. Other than select ethnicities, the only kind of hunting that’s permittable would be hunting vermin.

This proves my point that hunting animals isn’t that popular in the Philippines, if it does exist either only certain cultures do it or it’s done to get rid of vermin. Now if you want a country where hunting game is more common and entrenched it would be China, now that’s a country that has a history of aristocrats hunting game. There are instances of non-aristocrats hunting game there too, be it the poor to earn income or farmers relief from farming everyday.

Then again, there are instances of dogs hunting rodents on their own and that dogs can also be used to hunt vermin (well in Hong Kong at some point), but since dogs have multiple uses in China so in addition to hunting they’re used for guarding and herding (well for some demographics). In Laos, some people also make their dogs hunt a variety of animals ranging from wild rats, bamboo rats, snakes to monitor lizards and boar. I say some, since there are probably other Laotians who keep dogs for guarding.

Japan’s an interesting case where although wolves were extirpated there in the 19th century, they could’ve interbred with feral dogs and sometimes it was even encouraged. The wolf was sometimes known as the mountain dog, Japanese dogs were reputed to have wolflike traits well by 19th century Western standards. While Japanese wolves are no more, Japanese feral dogs are still around especially in the countryside where they hunt wildlife and livestock alike and are considered an invasive species there.

As for Asian Americans, similar to their black counterparts, don’t commonly own pets and as far as I’ve tried searching online that hunting among them is practically nonexistent. It’s not that there aren’t any Asian people who hunt, they do but sometimes they don’t necessarily hunt for game but rather pest control and subsistence. It’s not that there aren’t any Asians and Asian Americans who use guns, but with the latter it’s for self-defence in response to racism.

Not to mention, guns negatively affect both Asian Americans and African Americans so this could partly explain why so many of them refuse to hunt animals. You might say it’s more Asian/African of them to hunt but this ignores that a good number of African cuisines are plant-based (not necessarily completely vegan or vegetarian) and Buddhism’s one of those native Asian religions where vegetarianism’s mandatory as to practise nonviolence to all beings.

Among laypeople, though they can hunt for sport others hunt to feed themselves or do pest control. So hunting as a practice varies among communities, countries and individuals and the motivations also differ, also not every Asian and African are necessarily involved in hunting and many lead very sedentary lives.

Banned

If national parks are going to ban dogs from entering to curb dog predation, that’s because dogs are increasingly seen as an invasive species. Some people have suspected this, but it took a few studies to blow it up. Dog predation has become increasingly scrutinised in both news reports and academic studies, if you’re keen on it the idea that dogs are an invasive species isn’t that far off. Invasive not just because they harm endangered species through predation, but also through disease and competition.

Dogs are behind cats and rats, but way ahead of ferrets, minks, foxes and muskrats. Consider this, fur industries are either nonexistent or too small to exert a big influence throughout the tropics. So minks, muskrats and foxes wouldn’t be in big demand, if because the climates don’t allow it. Why wear fur when you’ll sweat real badly in the desert, savannah or rainforest? Mink coats will never become a big thing in the Philippines and Nigeria, which might be a blessing in disguise.

While this isn’t always the case, but when you have free-roaming dogs you have potential for wrecking havoc on wildlife. Even if not all dogs have a high prey drive, the potential’s still there if a dog manages to decimate a lot of frogs in a garden (this happened to me before with one of my dogs). Surely, you’ll complain a lot about this but the thing here’s that dogs are perfectly capable of decimating wildlife populations if given the chance and opportunity.

Even if it’s not all dogs, if you have some dogs killing wildlife then don’t let them off the hook especially now that they’re recognised as an invasive species. So much so that biologists will request national parks to ban dogs to minimise the threat, it wouldn’t be pretty for dog owners even though it’s necessary to save more lives this way. Though dogs can help in conservation, they’re fire in animal form because even if they’re useful they’re still harmful.

If you leave a fire unattended, it will burn everything and anything in sight. Leave a dog unattended and it will wreck havoc on wildlife. Now you might object to this and say that humans are an invasive species, but if humans are invasive species why aren’t they scrutinised to the same extent as dogs have and are subjected to? Wouldn’t that mean calling dogs invasive is more scientifically valid because there are more studies dedicated to this?

That’s why dogs are ranked as the third most damaging animal, behind cats and rats but far ahead of other mammalian invaders. Humans have yet to be scrutinised to the same extent dogs have recently been subjected to, they could be invasive but the full extent isn’t shown yet. This will surely strike a nerve with dog owners once national parks begin banning dogs there, but that involves a growing awareness of the damage dogs do and why these studies and reports exist.

You might even bring up pigs, but since they’re not ranked as the third most damaging animal after cats and rats this says a lot about the way pigs and dogs are brought up in. It’s not that there aren’t any pigs roaming either on their own or allowed to by people, but it’s not as common as you get with cats and dogs. It’s even the case in the Philippines where I’ve seen dogs and cats roam despite having owners, but it doesn’t happen to pigs.

If pigs are an invasive species, they’d be behind dogs in that their negative impact on the environment isn’t that big and not yet as scrutinised. You might say that dogs are behind cats in their impact on the environment, but once you bring up pigs and minks they’d be behind dogs by this logic. Seems like this would strike a nerve among dog owners, even though it’s been long suspected by other people and it took a study to confirm their suspicions.

If dogs are an invasive species, it’s an uncomfortable truth. Better to face the bitter truth than to believe in sweet lies.

Not yet quantified

When it comes to dogs and humans being invasive species, while the latter is considered the former is verified by such due to growing quantitative evidence about it. While it’s suspected for both of them (or perhaps either one of them), only the former’s ever rigourously studied for their impact on wildlife (via predation, pathogenesis and competition). It’s not that I dislike dogs, but the fact that humans have yet to be verified as such whereas dogs are reported as such in scientific studies.

There’s hard data for dog predation, enough to support the idea that they are an invasive species. In order for humans to be considered an invasive species, they have to be rigourously studied and quantified to understand how big their impact on the environment is. Honestly, I don’t think there are a lot of studies (as of yet) pointing out that humans are invasive the same way dogs are though that’s because I’ve read a lot of studies about dogs.

You need a lot of hard data to prove that humans are an invasive species, otherwise it feels like a misanthropic gotcha moment that derails any attempts at taking dog predation seriously. In the case with dogs, there were some studies (a few in Portuguese and English and some in Russian) proving that dogs are an invasive species but it took a 2017 study to verify and validate this suspicion. This has yet to be done with humans, even if it’s suspected.

The fact that dogs are scientifically regarded as the third worst invasive animal species after cats and rats says a lot about growing evidence about their dubious activities, whereas humans have yet to be regarded similarly. It’s not that they don’t do good for conservation, but when man’s best friend’s now increasingly regarded as an invasive pest whereas man himself has yet to be seen as such is telling when it comes to amounting evidence.

When there are far more studies about dogs negatively impacting the environment, calling dogs invasive holds far more water than calling people such since there’s just only one study (at this point) where humans did spread like an invasive species.

Aquaman and conservation

Somebody said that Aquaman, if he ever existed in the real world, would actually be an aspirational figure in that he can not only rescue people whenever they drown but also undo environmental damages such as oil spills in the sea. Here’s what he has to say about him:

DC needs to own Aquaman. He is a tough bastard. He rules 80% of the freaking planet. If there’s an oil spill somewhere or trouble on an oil rig, who are you calling? When that oil drill burst off the coast of Louisiana, leaking millions of barrels of oil, wouldn’t you have liked to see a goddam Aquaman swim down there and plug it up in about five minutes?

Submarine disasters. Sinking ships. Sea embargoes. For crying out loud, Aquaman has the trademark on sea rescue. It’s not his fault if he’s been saddled with creators who can’t think of anything to do with him (he actually has had, on occasion, some decent writers working on him)

If Aquaman were a real, actual, living being, he would be regarded as one of the most amazing people on the planet. I bet you that he would be one of the most — if not the most — popular superheroes, if for no other reason than our ever-present worries about climate change. Aquaman would be a fetish figure all over the world.

In light of dogs preying on sea turtles and dogs being something of an invasive species themselves, how much more important it is to have a superhero actually stand up for endangered species and animals like them for instance. That’s not to say dogs are entirely bad for conservation, but like fire dogs are capable of both good and bad. With fire is when everything’s left unattended and unless if other factors like rain were taken into consideration, it will be very destructive.

To put it this way, fire has beneficial uses like keeping buildings warm, cook food and light one’s way in the dark. But it’s also bad if left to its own devices like burning somebody real badly, even killing them if given the chance and opportunity. The same can be said with dogs and their interactions with other animals, they can help conserve endangered species but only with human intervention, technology and training.

If left on their own, they’ll surely kill them through predation and pathogenesis. Fire has been humanity’s oldest and earliest source of light and heat, but it’s also very destructive and unlike water where some wet things can be salvaged and dried fire can and will destroy what’s left of it. Especially if it’s not caught in time or beforehand. Since Aquaman lives underwater and water puts out fire, it’s a befitting analogy.

It doesn’t help that from my experience, whenever somebody thinks of an invasive mammalian predator attacking animals it’s going to be a cat (at least in the WEIRD* world) so stories about Aquaman saving sea animals from being eaten by dogs, though it does have a basis in reality when it comes to news reports and studies like these, is a path never taken.

Even if it’s taken seriously or considered in other places, it seems whatever damages dogs do to the environment through predation is hardly ever thought of much by other people. Even when there’s growing evidence that they do, it’s not taken into consideration. Let alone publicised and dramatised in a way that’s accessible to outsiders, which could’ve been done with Aquaman when one thinks about it.

Aquaman could easily be DC’s biggest environmentalist champion, after Poison Ivy, but one who would hit where it hurts especially if you’re a dog owner when it comes to dog predation and that might be partly why we won’t be seeing stories about Aquaman rescuing seals from dogs anytime soon.

Even if Aquaman might be a better fit, because unlike Poison Ivy, he’s a hero longer stories about him saving endangered wildlife from dogs is something that may never come to fruition because most people either don’t take dog predation on wildlife seriously or sadly ignore it. That’s why it’s a path never taken by Aquaman writers.

*Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic; it’s a case where a disproportionate amount of studies in some cases come from the Western world. Not that academic studies are nonexistent in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries and anywhere outside of the West, but it can be problematic if anything taking place in the Western world is more easily found than its African counterpart for instance.

Conservation, Fire and Water Style

When it comes to dogs and conservation, the best analogy would be the comparison to fire. Fire can be used to promote a healthy ecosystem, allowing organisms to coexist with one another. But in other cases, it can be destructive especially when it not only destroys habitats but also is a byproduct of global warming. One could start a big fire, especially if they’re not that careful. Dogs are like this, while they can be trained to detect invasive species if left to their own devices they become a highly destructive invasive species. They even endanger 188 species and render 11 extinct, which makes the analogy to fire very appropriate. Much like dogs, fire can be used in constructive ways. For a long time, it served as both the sole light source and the sole heat source.

But if you’re not careful, you will get hurt. You will get burnt, in fact you can get burnt real badly and fireworks can blind you. Dogs are like that, they can help but they can also hurt. While water does have destructive properties, whether if it’s freezing something to death, making it harder to tease out pages of certain kinds of paper or kill you while drowning other times it isn’t. Sometimes something that’s wet can still be salvaged, whereas fire almost always destroys if one’s not careful. Water is actually easier to manage than fire is, so if there’s any animal that can be compared to water it would be sheep. But in the sense that while there’s yet to be a study on training sheep, sheep’s damage to the environment is less than that of dogs. Based on what I know about dogs, they not only prey on endangered species but also compete with them and spread deadly pathogens to them.

In Tanzania, by spreading canine distemper dogs nearly killed off lions there. Dogs even mate with wolves, which can make it harder to conserve wolves as they are. If dogs are like fire, sheep are like water because the latter can be used for conservation more effectively. The fact that water’s more manageable than fire should say something about my analogues here.

The sad truth about dogs

When it comes to dogs in Africa and South America, if there are no pure wolves in those continents then there wouldn’t be any dogs to domesticate from unlike what happened in North America and Eurasia. Actually if you believe some historians, the earliest fossils of dogs in Africa come from Egypt which would mean that dogs (as well as chickens, horses, sheep and goats) would have to be imported from the Middle East* to get there.

This would neatly coincide with the arrival of Afro-Asiatic people and cultures in Africa, but that would mean dogs are an introduced species. They’re not native to Africa, not helped by that Africans never domesticated any canid. In fact, they never came close so rather than domesticating the African wolf they’d have to import its relative from the Middle East. If there’s proof that African dogs are related to Middle Eastern wolves, this only proves my point right.

It can even be argued that not only are dogs not native to Africa, they’re even invasive in that they spread diseases that nearly killed off lions in Tanzania and prey on primates like Vervet monkeys in Uganda and endangered Barbary macaques in Morocco. They’re even considered an invasive species in countries like Brazil and Chile, but don’t get their people wrong as they have two of the highest dog ownership rates in the world.

To ask you a question, if African wolves are the descendants of both grey wolves and Ethiopian wolves how come no African has ever domesticated them? Wouldn’t that mean dogs aren’t native to Africa? You might even say they’re naturalised, but the fact that they’d have to be brought over to Africa from the Middle East says a lot about how and why they’re an introduced and even invasive species in a way donkeys aren’t.

Also if there aren’t any grey wolves in South America, then their domesticated counterpart would have to come from elsewhere. If dogs aren’t native to South America and Africa, where they’d have to be brought over there and may even be considered an invasive species in some South American countries despite a high rate of dog ownership then they’re introduced. There’s no other way around it, that’s the sad fact about them.

This reflects either an overly positive bias towards dogs or perhaps an ignorance of what actually goes on in those continents, if both then that’s not looking at dogs at an objective angle. You might as well be really ignorant and ignorantly biased to not know that dogs are an invasive species, even if they harm wildlife through predation and disease. What I’m saying is the sad fact about them.

I also think bias can make it easier for misinformation to spread, especially if it’s not backed up by either archaeological or linguistic data. I could be wrong in here, but if dogs have to go from the Middle East to Africa then they’re not going to be native there. If African dogs are related to Middle Eastern wolves, then they’re not native to Africa anyways.

A spade is a spade, regardless of your feelings. You might even contradict yourself and then accidentally prove me right when it comes to dogs being nonnative to Africa in a way that donkeys aren’t.

*I’m using Middle East to strictly refer to countries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel while I use Africa to mean all African countries, including Egypt.

She looks young

Some people have all the luck when it comes to looking young for their age, not just because they exercise and eat right but also because they have certain genetic expressions that make them age more slowly than others. That’s based on the stuff I’ve read, some of them are called exceptional skin agers as they look younger than their ages suggest. I’ve even been considered by others as looking younger than my expected age, which if it’s true then I probably have the genes for looking young as well.

Okay, I might not have the genes for ageing slowly but the possibility does factor in why according to my sister I look so much younger than my expected age. While there are other factors that influence skin ageing, such as sun exposure and bad habits, there are other cases where it’s genetic. Certain genes can make somebody look older, so logically there are certain genes that make you look younger. If true, there are some people who do look effortlessly younger than their actual age.

If some people have all or most of the luck, then they won the genetic lottery in this regard.

Proving The Word Right

When it comes to the subject of dog predation, I remember this sermon* on YouTube about dogs in the Bible where it says beware of dogs and how science validates the Bible. This led me to a study on dog predation, if this were true then you can’t doubt the Bible in any way. I’m not saying dogs are entirely bad animals, they do have their use even in the Bible where they show up as licking the sores of Lazarus, hunting down Jezebel and guiding Tobit (well depending on which version of the Bible you read).

From what I understand and know, dogs (as well as cats) have a mixed reception in Christianity. On one hand, they are associated with saints, nuns and monks especially as guards and sometimes pest control. On the other hand, though depending on the culture and country or community, they are associated with witchcraft. Whether as the witch’s familiar or the witch’s guise, not helped by that there’s a Bible verse that mentions both sorcerers and dogs in the same sentence.

In biology, though dogs can be used to hunt invasive species they are also recognised as an invasive species in their own right. This is backed up by growing studies on dog predation, the idea that dogs are an invasive species was considered before but it took a study in 2017 to confirm this. Not to mention, dogs aren’t always reliable when they’re made to hunt game that sometimes they hunt on their own.

If you think it’s strange to say that dogs are an invasive species, if they’re introduced elsewhere (as it is in Africa and South America) and cause detrimental effects to wildlife like pathogenesis (canine distemper killing lions in 1994) and predation (there’s a report of a dog killing a lot of kiwi birds and there are many reports of dogs hunting wildlife on their own) then they’re an invasive species.

It’s not an antidog insult, it’s calling a spade a spade. That’s what the spade is, that’s what the spade does. If the Bible’s mostly negative stance on dogs can be backed up by anthropology, it can also be backed up by biology when it comes to dog predation. Even if it’s not entirely negative, dogs are practically second stringers when compared to sheep. An inverse of what goes on in secular cultures and spaces.

While the word sheeple is used to refer to people who blindly follow anything, Christians are often compared to sheep not so much to demean them but that God is like a shepherd and the word for pastor, pasture and pastoralism are closely related. In some languages like Spanish, the word for shepherd is pastor. Same spelling, similar pronunciation but different meaning.

Still the shoe fits in one way or another, to be fair sheep aren’t entirely blameless and faultless. There are some studies where sheep do have a negative impact on the environment, but from what I remember it’s not as numerous as studies on dog predation which is saying. Likewise, the only cultures that ever associate sheep with witchcraft are the French, Ivorian Beng and the Nigerian Yoruba (well as far as I can recall).

Nonetheless, it’s still more common for people in countries like Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, non-Beng Ivory Coast, Uganda and Western countries like Spain, Britain and France at one point to associate dogs with witchcraft. Whether as demon guises, witch guises or witch familiars, the dog’s association with witchcraft is already mentioned in the Bible in some way or another.

Not to mention, sometimes dogs aren’t always reliable for hunting game as they take the time to hunt other animals on their own. Sometimes they even hunt animals when they’re not supposed to, which might influence the mostly negative portrayal of dogs in the Bible and to some extent, Christianity in general. Not that the portrayal of dogs in the Bible is entirely negative.

There are monasteries that breed dogs like New Skete, there are monasteries that have dogs for hunting vermin and guarding just as there are the admittedly few and scattered positive portrayals of dogs in the Bible. But as it stands, dogs are pretty much second stringers compared to sheep. They can be and are good, but they’ll never overshadow sheep in any way. God uses the lowly to shame the lofty, so it makes sense that the comparison to sheep would be a badge of honour if you’re a Christian.

Even if not all Christian and Biblical portrayals of dogs are entirely negative, they’re not going to be held in the highest regard as sheep are. If you are reading this, you would say this is speciesist or think the Bible’s full of lies but if you are speciesist so is God. (Though admittedly, humans are the only animals that can be revived from the dead the closest for nonhuman animals is to have God recreate their likenesses onto another specimen.)

It’s not that dogs are entirely bad, they do good but they’ll never take the top spot of beloved biblical nonhuman animals the way sheep are regarded as. Likewise, even if sheep can be an invasive species it’s not on the same scale dogs are.

*Sadly, I can’t find the exact video but this is the closest.

Why the sheep?

Of all the animals in the Bible, only the sheep has high status and the one that is Christianity’s sacred animal. In fact, pastors are often likened to shepherds; the word pastor is related to pastoralism and pasture and that in some languages the word for shepherd is pastor or some variation of it. Christians and Jews are likened to sheep, so much so that the latter sacrifices sheep to atone for their sins and Jesus himself is likened to a lamb that gets sacrificed. I’m not saying other animals are entirely despised in the Bible, they do have their good use.

Dogs are used to hunt down Jezebel and guide Tobit, snakes are even used by Moses to demonstrate his power and goats can be likened to sheep but even then these animals are practically second tier at best. Even if Christianity and Judaism does have cats and dogs for good use like pest control and guarding, they’ll never have the same sacred animal status as sheep do. It’s parsimonious to say that some of these animals are flawed in some way, so much so they’re even linked and likened to or used by witches perhaps more often than sheep do.

(There aren’t a lot of people linking sheep to witchcraft, the only demographics to do so, to my knowledge, are Yoruba and Beng people, the former from Nigeria and the latter from Cote d’Ivoire.)

Let’s not also forget that some of these animals are invasive species, dogs for instance are recognised as the third worst invasive species after cats and rats (as I discovered after listening to a sermon about dogs). Goats are invasive to the Galapagos Islands and Australia, there’s a species of snake that’s invasive to Guam. If they’re theologically flawed, they’re also biologically and ecologically flawed as well.

Sheep, like dogs, do have good practical uses. They can be made into meat, but they can also be used for dairy and wool. They know people they know well and that they can recognise different faces like people do, honestly I have no intention of eating sheep and goat but there are Hindus who won’t and never eat beef and usually have cattle for ploughing and dairy. They have sacred status in Hinduism and so do sheep in Christianity.

If Jews are the chosen people of God, then sheep are the chosen animals of God. Both of them are set apart from others, which Jesus would be born and likened to. This is why sheep have such a high and sacred status in the Bible, no other animal can claim that even if they have good traits. Not that sheep lack any bad traits, but they’re very exalted in the Bible and among Jews and Christians alike.