I was talking with guy with a documented wolf hybrid. Offspring of a wolf stud and big shepherd dog bitch. The owner had done rudimentary training work for the month or so he’d had the six month old 110 pound beast.
I told him I wouldn’t be comfortable with a hybrid. He poo-pooed my concerns. Then, when it misbehaved (tugging on leash, barking, wanting to leave) he gave a sharp tug on the prong collar. It spun around and slammed its front paws into his shoulders, pining him to the wall. No growling, but intense eye contact. I was on the other side of the room and I was scared.
Idiots who breed wolf-dog hybrids thinking the result will be an animal that they can control and be safe around are fooling themselves and everyone else. Because these animals have a mixture of domestic and wild genetic traits, their development is very unpredictable. You may hope for the best of both worlds, but just as easily get the worst. The worst traits in these canid worlds are something to fear, not something to take for a walk around the neighborhood.
Things may be fine and dandy so long as the wolf-dog remains happy and content. But, piss Wolfgang off one too many times after he’s grown into a massive, strong creature, and you may pay the price with your life, or an innocent bystander’s life. They may look regal, warm, and cuddly, but a wolf-dog can easily kill even a large, strong human being.
Pound for pound a wild animal is always more aggressive, more intelligent, and more deadly than a domesticated animal in the same family on the phylogenetic tree. I can think of no exceptions. Your Pit Bull, Kangal, or Dogo Argentino is not going to come out on the winning end in a fight against a gray wolf.
Domestic cats are a different story. Unlike all other domesticated animals, house cats are more wild than domestic. Wildness was only minimally bred out of “domestic” cats. The only reason your Snowflake and Simba pose no danger to you is that they are too tiny to f*#k you up when you piss them off. If my lovable 6 cats were upwards of a hundred pounds, I have no doubt I’d be on the menu after they finished their Kibbles & Bits.
With the exception of semi-wild domestic cats, wild animals should not be kept as pets or bred into hybrids. Leave them be, in the wild.
…on second thought, there are too many people and not enough wildlife. Maybe it’s time to reverse that trend. Let’s all get a pet Nile Croc. Name him Mr. Snippy.
I think there’s some nuance to this. Wild animals are much more deadly when they decide to engage. But when there is no good reason to engage, they will often simply avoid the risk of confrontation.
Whereas fighting dog breeds have been deliberately bred to lose this prudence and discretion about violence, they will engage in violence more readily (and pointlessly) than a wild animal. In that sense, a Pit Bull is instinctively more aggressive than a wolf, notwithstanding the fact that it would certainly lose if a wolf chose to fight.
Perhaps I should have said wolves aren’t necessarily more aggressive than all types of dogs, but because they need to kill to survive (not given dog chow daily by a caring human), they are more experienced and skilled killers. They don’t kill with malice, they kill to protect territory and eat. Maybe they think, sorry I gotta eat you fella, but it’s either you or me, and I choose me.
I’m pretty sure cheetahs think this when they outrun and kill gazelle (successful only ~5% of the time). They always look a little sorry when they catch one.
I’m not sure what “malice” is supposed to mean here. It is no more gratuitous violence than any other violence in nature, or natural selection would favor lions that didn’t do it.
“Hatred” and all other emotions are simply mechanisms that have evolved to modulate behavior, whether in humans or lions.
It is possible that violent instincts that arose through natural selection can give rise to non-adaptive violent behavior by chance. Not all behavior is adaptive. But you have a strong burden to prove the implausible notion that lions killing hyenas cannot be explained as adaptive behavior, when they are obviously both predators competing for the same food resources.
Lions don’t eat hyena. They do kill them to protect habitat. I firmly believe they also kill them out of hatred. They certainly have good reason to hate them. Hyena harass lions all the time. Would you hate hyena if they harassed you constantly? Why do you think lions haven’t evolved emotions to the same degree humans have?
Yes, but humans evolved emotions similarly to other higher vertebrates. So, if we can say humans “hate” (instead of saying perhaps more accurately it’s just an adaptive behavior) I think we can also say lions hate.
I’m simply saying lions hate hyena the same way I hate people who try to steal from me or harass me. Lay language is often shorthand for more complicated terminology.
But the issue was that you seemed to be drawing some kind of qualitative distinction between the malice/hatred that drives lions to kill hyenas and other adaptive killing behavior.
I wasn’t. And, you have my permission to remove my “also.” I think human hatred of people who steal from them can be explained as an adaptive behavior too. Hate is just easier to say. It’s only one syllable.
Thinking more about this, I believe there is a distinction to be made between mere protection of habitat and hatred in the case of lions vs. hyenas.
Protection of habitat is a trait that evolved much earlier down the evolutionary tree, in species that had no capacity to “hate”, or emote in general. My guess is that hatred is a higher-order supervenient mental process that emerged in more cognitively advanced mammals as a result of any number of adverse stimuli, including habitat infringement, being attacked, being stolen from, being harassed, and in the case of humans—being cheated on, being abandoned, being ridiculed, etc.
I believe lions protect their habitat from other animals, like wild dogs, jackals, cheetahs, and even competing male lions without feeling hatred toward them. But, I have no doubt lions hate hyenas. Their behavior toward hyenas goes over and beyond the protection of territory. They don’t just want to avoid them, or scare them off, or reduce their numbers. They want to do all those things, but they also want to hurt them.
You can have adaptive killing behavior without hatred, and you can feel hate that’s not a result of adaptive killing behavior. Therefore, I revoke my revocation of “also.”
