Some differences

I think I’ve noticed this before, but I get the impression that there’s more awareness of dogs as an invasive species in Brazil, Argentina and Chile than in America. Either that these three have more stray dogs than America does or even if these three have a lot of dog owners and dog lovers, there’s more awareness of the damage they inflict on the environment than America does. Maybe not always the case, but speaking from personal experience even if there are studies on dog predation in America not a lot of Americans see dogs as an invasive species the way they do with cats.

There might be an anti-cat sentiment in Brazil, Chile and Argentina since not a lot of them own cats, but even then despite having a high dog ownership rate a good number of them are aware of the damage dogs inflict on the environment enough to make considerable amount of studies on that. It’s possible that Chile, Brazil and Argentina still have a lot of stray dogs and free-roaming dogs in general, so they’re more aware of their faults than America does. So aware they even see them as an invasive species, despite having even more dog owners than America does.

Okay, I might be speaking from experience where it seems there are more Americans and Australians who mostly or solely cats as an invasive species but don’t say much about dogs whereas relatively more Brazilians, Chileans and Argentinians see dogs as an invasive species as well. I might be biased in here, but either that Brazil, Chile and Argentina have more stray dogs wrecking havoc or that despite having a higher dog ownership rate than Australia and America do more Australians and Americans disproportionately blame cats.

It could be a bit of both, but I have a nagging feeling that even if there’s ever an anti-cat sentiment in Brazil and the Southern Cone in general there are more Brazilian, Chilean and Argentinian studies regarding dogs as an invasive species than America and Australia do. Again, it’s due to my experience going to Lusophone and Hispanophone websites where by going there I get idea of what’s actually going on there that gets missed out in Anglophone websites. True, dog predation on wildlife has been understudied but I actually think dogs might present the best example of the social-ecological mismatch.

While they are a valued asset in conservation, they can also pose threats to it and this is why they are the best example of the social-ecological mismatch. We’re used to seeing them as valuable pets and companions that we can’t see them as anything other than those roles, even though they’re perfectly capable of killing wildlife on their own. One of my former dogs had a habit of killing frogs that my father had to install fences to minimise this. Another dog ate a skink.

I think it is important to take what goes on in nonwestern and global South countries, if because a lot of insight that those in North America and Europe miss out. Well to an extent, but it’s still important to take note of these.

That never happened

If dogs are going to be seen as an invasive species that justifies them getting banned in national parks, you might come up with an argument that animals like pigs, mink and rabbits are much worse. The problem is that what makes dogs the number three invasive species and neither pigs nor rabbits is that not only are they more commonly found, but kill far more animals (they rendered 11 extinct and could be worse than that if a new study comes out just in case) whether through predation or through pathogenesis.

By this logic, dogs are worse than minks are even though minks are also invasive. But the thing here’s that there’s no need for a fur industry in many African and Southeast Asian countries, it gets really hot here and since fur traps heat well it would only exacerbate it. Even if animals can and do get hunted for their pelts, I don’t think most Africans and Southeast Asians necessarily wear fur not even as folk costumes. The go-for natural textiles in these places tend to be cotton and barkcloth and silk to a lesser extent, so folk costumes are more likely to be made from those fabrics.

Fur would be really useless here, as it would be in most of Africa. So the fur industry tends to be more of a thing in temperate and colder places like parts of China, Russia and Canada. Not to mention nobody ever imported wild boar into the Philippines, pigs aren’t allowed to stray independent of humans the way dogs get to do and rabbits aren’t popular pets so this minimises their potentially negative impact on the environment here. This would also play out similarly in other tropical countries.

With the exception of rabbits, if pigs and cats (as invasive as dogs are) did come to the Philippines it would have to come from peninsular Southeast Asia and this would’ve predated Westernisation. The same can be said of Africa. If African dogs turn out to be related to Middle Eastern dogs, this shouldn’t be surprising as the first African dog skeleton came from Egypt and in light of their predations on African primates like Barbary macaques emphasise how much of an introduced (and invasive) species they really are.

It’s not flattering, even though there’s growing evidence supporting the idea that dogs are an invasive species. You might say that pigs and rabbits are worse, but there’s not a lot of studies supporting this idea well not yet to the same extent dogs are getting. Not to mention, feral rabbits and the problems they pose to the environment only occur in the Global North. The fullest extent of their status as invasive species mostly occurs in Australia and New Zealand.

Likewise for minks, as a major invasive species, it’s also mostly greater in the Global North. These factors keep them from receiving third worst invasive nonhuman animal status the way dogs got, if I’m not mistaken the places where dogs negatively impact the environment the most are in Asia, Central and South America and the Caribbean. But I think it could be worse if one were to bring up Africa when it comes to canine distemper killing Ethiopian wolves and lions as well as predations on Barbary macaques.

All three species are highly endangered and all three are negatively impacted by dogs, sadly it makes dogs look worse than they already do scientifically speaking that’s if it ever gets considered in a future study. While dogs can do wonders, the fact that they endanger 188 species (and a little more than that in a potential study) puts them at the number three position of worst invasive animal.

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.

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.

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.

Dogs as an invasive species

I think I brought this up before but it does bear repeating when it comes to people’s near ignorance of this subject matter: dogs are an invasive species and have killed animals themselves. There are studies that show dogs as efficient predators of wildlife such as pudu and fallow deer. There are many news reports of dogs hunting roe deer and sometimes ibexes. This is enough to warrant a study in Spain and suspicion from hunters, as far as I remember and know about it. Another way of knowing that dogs are an invasive species is when they disrupt the environment of native birds, which’s stated in one study.

When it comes to awareness of dog predation, there are those who do take it seriously but not enough to override people’s perceptions as far as I’ve experienced. When it comes to dogs having a prey drive, one of my dogs ate and killed frogs and another ate a skink. My cousin’s dogs have killed rats. While not all dogs necessarily have a prey drive, it’s also true that many dogs can and do hunt wildlife on their own if reports of dogs straying and hunting deer are any indication. There’s even a study in Poland showing that dogs do prey on wildlife on their own.

That’s one of the ways they’re an invasive species and why more people should take it seriously.

Dogs, the original invasive animal

As of now, dogs are currently ranked as the third most destructive invasive animal as revealed in an Indian study though it has been suspected before in other studies. If dog domestication came before cat domestication, it’s only logical and realistic that dogs would be the first invasive animal or at least one of the earliest. There are case studies and reports of dogs hunting wildlife such as seals, deer and wild asses as well as mating with wolves that they not only negatively impact the ecosystem but also risk diluting the DNA of the latter animal. If invasive species are introduced, it makes sense that dogs would constitute an invasive species in the entire continent of Africa as they’re not native there and would’ve been introduced from Western Asia.

Dogs are probably the only canid not native to Africa so if they come from the Arabian peninsula, that only proves my point right. One way of knowing how bad they can be to wildlife in Africa is through case studies done on their habit of harassing Barbary macaques in Morocco and vervet monkeys in Uganda. There’s also another case study of a dog preying on a long-tailed macaque in Singapore, so even if the dog was first domesticated in Asia it’s still an invasive species if it negatively impacts wildlife. Not just through predation but also spread of disease in some cases as well. It would be parsimonious to say dog predation could’ve occurred in prehistoric times, if studies on dogs in one hunter-gatherer society’s any indication.

You could argue about cats doing the same thing in ancient societies but since dogs came first, they’d have the dubious honour of being one of the earliest invasive animals in the planet, next to mice. A distrust of dogs was apparent in some ancient texts such as the Old Testament so dog predation could’ve existed back then as well that proves my point right.

Being objective

When it comes to dog and cat predation, the more objective stance’s that they’re capable of doing both good and bad depending on the situation where if they hunt vermin, they’re good or that’s good but if they hunt wildlife then that’s bad. But that involves putting aside biases and to be more open about it, that’s what I learnt when it comes to my attitudes to dogs.

Like cats, they could do a lot of good whenever they hunt vermin in farms and houses where canine and feline predation might be a good thing in those cases. Like cats, it would be bad if they hunt wildlife and livestock, which’s already a problem in some cases. But that involves knowledge on both sides of the party to see the wider picture of things.

You might as well shoot yourself in the foot when your knowledge of animals is almost one-sided when it comes to animal predation that I think it does serve both good and bad depending on the circumstance. But that involves being actually objective about it, where it can’t always be contaminated by biases but openness to it.

One needs to be equally open about the good and bad cats and dogs do, where some cases they do bad if they hurt wild animals but good if they hunt down vermin.

You may not be comfortable about it

If I were to be honest, as much as I like dogs if some have a high prey drive in bad cases, they can hurt wildlife as much as in good cases they hunt vermin on their own volition. The problem’s that even if it were true on some level, you may not be comfortable about it as I think it does clash with what you see them as.

To be fair, canine and feline predation can serve good if they hunt vermin, bad if they hunt wildlife but I don’t think people will be comfortable about it even if they were honest. Like say it made a good impression on you, that pointing out the flaws will hurt you in some way whether if you’re aware of it or not even if it were true you won’t like it.

You won’t be comfortable if I dare say that dogs hunt wildlife, some of them hunt it well like they do with vermin but I suspect ignorance is bliss, you don’t have to be hurt about it when you (choose) to ignore and dismiss it. Even if that’s true in many studies, it’s also true not many people will be comfortable about it.

You will not feel comfortable about it if I say that dogs do kill wildlife a lot, almost on par with cats to the point where they do pose a problem but I guess honesty hurts when it comes to some people.

Cities as Nature

As odd as it sounds, I could go on arguing that almost any anthropogenic environment can count as natural environments of sorts for as long as animals can adapt to those locales (I think cats, dogs, monkeys, cockroaches, cows, goats and the like might fit the bill well) where some do study those pretty well.

If wild animals could adapt to those environments, not only are they more adaptive than we give credit for but also worth studying (some Russian scientists have already observed stray cat and dog ecology in action), that puts them in a good position to know that cats and dogs are commensals.

I suspect if anthropogenic environments are also nature, that also leads to a can of worms like supposing if the family cat/dog were to eat the neighbours’ guinea pig (especially if kept for meat) then that pet could easily be an invasive species to the neighbours’ environment, same with rabbits or anything else.

That’s the bad part for people who keep livestock (let’s not forget how upset they’d feel around those), though it could be argued the upshot’s that if cats and dogs are kept for pest control they could act as predators of other invasive species like say rats and mice (that’s if nobody wants those rodents coming to their house).

Or for another matter, termites and cockroaches. Also if anthropogenic environments (cities as well as farms, towns, houses and gardens) maybe some wild organisms are more adaptive than one realises. Something like moss growing on the outer walls of a house, foxes (and wolves) scavenging on rubbish or horrible to some, leopards eating pesky pets.

Let’s not forget documentations of bears eating rubbish or raccoons eating food from humans (where some willingly do so) that wildlife might be more adaptive than one realises and perhaps proof of dogs (and cats) being commensal.