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.

Charismatic invasive species

As I said before in another post, if biologists urge more parks to ban dogs to curb dog predation that’s because dogs are the third worst invasive nonhuman animal after cats and rats. A new study would point out they’d even be worse than that, if their impact in Europe and Africa are considered. You might argue that pigs and minks are worse than dogs, but the problem is that not only is it appealing to sentiment but also because their negative environmental impact is less than that of dogs.

It’s not that minks are any better than dogs or vice versa, but the fact that there’s not a big fur industry in other countries (especially in the tropics) minimises their impact which makes it a blessing in disguise. It’s not that there aren’t any animals being used for their fur at all, but because fur traps heat well (maybe too well in some cases) that it’s impractical in other countries. The most commonly used natural textiles in the tropics (and subtropical areas) are cotton and silk, which endear better to those climates than fur clothing ever would. Conversely speaking, the fur industry’s present in more temperate or colder climates.

You might say that dogs are more useful than minks are or are domesticated far longer, but so are mice though you won’t see people admitting this even though they’re extensively used in scientific experiments and are commensal longer than minks are. Then again, dogs are proven to render 11 species extinct and endanger 188 more (possibly larger than that should a new study come out). The real problem has to do if that invasive species (such as dogs) turn out to be charismatic, which complicates matters. It’s pretty much the case with horses.

It wouldn’t matter about how bad they are for native vegetation in places like Australia and America, too many people have a strong connection to horses that it clouds and occults whatever attempts at addressing the problem. It’s the same with dogs, especially in light of the fact that they’re the third worst invasive animal. Being the first domesticated animal, dogs might as well have the dishonour of being the first invasive nonhuman animal. Dog predation has been suspected in some reports and studies, it took a few studies to blow it out.

Feelings don’t matter, once hard facts are brought up. The hard reality’s that dogs are an invasive species, damaging to native wildlife such as sea turtles in the Philippines and Mexico, Barbary macaques in Morocco or Ethiopian wolves in Ethiopia. Since the latter two are in Africa, if African dogs turn out to be more closely related to West Asian dogs and if dogs are proven to negative impact wildlife in Africa then they are invasive and introduced.

But it gets complicated by a strong emotional attachment to these animals (dogs and horses), even if they know they do wrong to the environment they’d turn a blind eye due to this sentiment. This is why it took a long time to recognise that dogs are an invasive species, even if it’s been suspected before. This is also the same for horses and why charisma makes it harder for some invasive species to be recognised as they really are. There’s also a discrepancy between the species’s cultural value and the damage they inflict on the environment.

It’s even called social-ecological mismatches for a reason, this rings true for dogs where they’re valued for many things but they also kill so many wild animals and drive some of them extinct. For another matter, the same can be said of horses where although they cause ecological damage but many people (even those who’re aware of invasive species) ignore this. That is the power of the social-ecological mismatch, if something is charismatic they’ll put it on a pedestal even though animals like dogs are proven to be a nuisance to wildlife.

A bad model for dog domestication

As I said before, fox domestication’s not and will never be a good model for dog domestication no matter how hard you try to make it out to be. Not just because some of the genes involved in domestication have more to do with diet, but also a matter of anthropogenic usage. If fox domestication is comparable to dog domestication, how come foxes aren’t used for hunting the same way dogs are? I feel any attempt to compare fox domestication to dogs would result in shooting one’s foot.

To reiterate, dogs actually have more in common with cats and monkeys. The first for pest control and the second because they are trained to retrieve something, the latter’s a stretch but the fact that monkey training schools exist in Thailand should tell you something about dog domestication in a way foxes never will. I could go on saying that dogs also have more in common with pigs, both of them are used for meat and for retrieving truffles. Although foxes also possess a good sense of smell, there’s not a single instance of them being made to sniff for truffles.

Not to mention both pigs and dogs scavenge, there are even studies where dogs do scavenge for faeces. Likewise pigs in China were historically noted to feed on excrement, if because pig toilets were attached to pigsties. A little gross, but in some regards closer to the rather embarrassing fact than any of the other theories on dog domestication. As for dog domestication, there are cases of dogs where they haven’t strayed that far from their ancestors whether dietary (some dogs can’t process starch) or reproductive (some dogs beget puppies once a year).

So it seems when it comes to comparing fox domestication to dog domestication, it’s off not only in terms of anthropogenic usage but also because some dogs haven’t strayed that far from their ancestors in terms of diet, gestation and behaviour (including hunting behaviour, for better or worse). The study stated that those Prince Edward Island foxes are more like a breed in the sense that they’re descended from a select population, especially in light of the larger urban fox population.

I still think it makes more sense to compare dogs to pigs and cats, not just in terms of usage but the fact that all three of them are devastating invasive species. You could argue that foxes are also this as well, except that theirs is more limited to just one place (Australia) whereas dogs are roaming and hunting freely and transmitting diseases anywhere else so their potential for damage is far greater. Foxes are related to dogs but they aren’t used for hunting and pest control, they also trail behind dogs in terms of environmental damage.

(I feel if dogs are the first domesticated animal, in light of their devastating impact on the environmental they’re also the first invasive nonhuman animal.)

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.

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.

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.