Summary: <p>Humans and dogs have more in common than what initially meets the eyes. As non-extinct land dwelling mammals, we are both species that are in a special category that makes up 1/20th of 1/20th of 1 percent of all the species of animals who have ever lived. Annie attempts to look at the dog/human relationship from the long lens of the evolution of life on Earth, and helps us think about about what we can extrapolate about dog behavior based on what we know about ourselves. </p> <p>Show notes: http://anniegrossman.com/podcast5<br> A dog trainer's view of evolution: http://anniegrossman.com/evolution<br> 6 ways in which dogs and humans are exactly alike: http://anniegrossman.com/6ways </p> <p>Please make sure to subscribe & rate 5-star on iTunes!<br> Annie Grossman owns and operates School For The Dogs in NYC. Studio: http://schoolforthedogs.com Shop: http://storeforthedogs.com Instagram: http://instagram.com/schoolforthedogs Facebook: http://facebook.com/groups/schoolforthedogs</p> <p>Partial Transcript:</p> <p>Annie:</p> <p>Hey Humans. So, so far on this podcast in past episodes we have talked about things pertaining to dog owners like where your dog is going to pee or poop, what your dog is going to eat, etc. But today I want to about two things that affect all of us whether or not we own dogs.</p> <p>Say hello to our special guests: time and evolution.</p> <p>Now I don’t think most people think a lot about evolution when they’re training their dogs. This might be because they're simply too busy trying to figure out where their dog should pee and poop and what they should eat. But it also might be because we tend to think more about dog training than we do about dog learning and dog learning, like all animal learning, has been a huge factor in their success on this planet as a species. A key to survival is the ability to adapt your behavior in such a way that’s going to be conducive to living in a given environment and natural selection has favorite animals who are good at figuring out what works in order to not expend energy unnecessarily and to stay alive. The inability to adapt to certain environments has caused many other species to not succeed.</p> <p>In the last couple decades, so much about dog training has gotten muddled up with trying to understand wolf behavior. Now there's some problems comparing dog behavior to wolf behavior, but I don’t even want to get into that right now. My larger feeling about trying to understand dogs by understanding wolves is that it's kind of over-complicating the situation because wolves learn in the same way that dogs learn but dogs learn also in the same way that we learn and we know a lot more about ourselves than we know about wolves. So if we are fishing for kind of animal to compare dogs to in order to better understand them, I think we are better off looking at ourselves.</p> <p>One thing that I often tell my clients is that dog training is all about understanding animal behavior and we all understand animal behavior a lot more than we give ourselves credit for, simply because we are animals and we are behaving, all the time.</p> <p>Full transcript available at <a href="https://www.schoolforthedogs.com/podcasts/episode-5-our-canine-cousins-on-behavior-evolution/">Schoolforthedogs.com/Podcasts</a></p>
