November 3, 2009
Crying Wolf
First it was breeding Mudis like livestock and now it’s breeding Mudis like wolves. What's next…breeding Mudis like humans?
Dogs are as far from wolves today as humans are from cavemen. Dogs are human companions, wolves are wild predators - the two have nothing in common. So why breed one like the other?
It quickly became clear as I read the article, that the author of this radical Mudi breeding idea, knows as little about breeding as they do about wolves.
Wolves breed as they do because of how and where they live and what they hunt. Most dogs don't live in family packs, don’t have to hunt for their meals and do not get to choose their own mates.
Most of the information that this breeder and many others today still believe was based on captive wolf research. Now it is known that wolves in the wild do things differently than wolves in captivity. Today wolf researchers no longer call them the alpha pair, but breeding or leading pair. According to wolf biologist L. David Mech, "Calling a wolf an alpha is usually no more appropriate than referring to a human parent or a doe deer as an alpha. Any parent is dominant to its young offspring, so alpha adds no information." and that basing observations on captive living arrangements (of wolves) would be like “…trying to draw inferences about human family dynamics by studying humans in refugee camps”.
Which leads us to the reality of wild wolf pack breeding vs Mudi breeding:
- Wolf packs can consist of 2 - 40 members, depending mostly on the size of the food they hunt; the bigger the prey animal, the larger the pack. In autumn and winter, packs can join up, only to separate again when in late winter the breeding season comes. Wolves don’t have to fight to breed. They separate before that becomes necessary. In captivity they cannot separate and this is why fights happen. (Mudis do not live in the wild, but when kept in large “packs” will fight over resources too: food, females, rank, etc.)
- Wolves that reach maturity in the wild, live for only 6-10 years (most Mudis live 10-15 years)
- Under natural circumstances both male and female young wolves leave their native pack between 9-36 months of age and form their own pack. It can be due to food and/or mate competition and the avoidance of inbreeding. (Mudis do not have the choice to stay or leave)
- Today most zoologists agree that a wolf pack is an extended family which includes the breeding pair and their offspring. In most cases a pack is formed by two young wolves that meet after they have left their packs and are strangers to each other, they share their life with companions that are 1-3 years old that are their offspring. (Mudis kept together are often parents and offspring, but they are kept together for the length of their lives in most cases, not by their choice)
- The breeding pair being the oldest, strongest and most experienced share the leadership role and can exert that over younger offspring, just as human parents do. (Mudis can exhibit this behavior, but it is not absolute in every Mudi family unit as it is in wolves)
- Young wolves leave the pack one at a time by their own decisions, but are sometimes forced to go. In most wolves, the drive to reproduce leads them to leave the pack. (Mudis cannot leave, but still have the same drive to reproduce)
- Breeding is stopped among the younger wolves in the pack in many ways, the females under wild conditions do not sexually mature till they are 2-3 years old (whereas in captivity females can mature at 1 year old); the breeding/leading male prevents the other pack males from approaching his mate during the period of mating. Both parents interrupt any other courtship attempts in the pack. (This sounds more like a human family than a Mudi “pack”)
- The craving for higher social status by the young wolves is counteracted by the need to maintain close emotional ties. Most fighting occurs between neighboring packs, not within the pack. Quarrels are more intense between juveniles if the parents are not present, but within pack fights are not life threatening as those fights from territorial disputes can be (this is not the case in Mudi “packs”, within pack dog fights can be life threatening and the parents have no affect on it)
-The breeding pair of wild wolves reproduces the same litter over and over for many years in a row (humans do this too, but this breeder and many others do not agree this is wise in Mudi breeding)
The breeding pair are parents due to their being of breeding age and having successfully found a territory to inhabit, not as a result of fighting other pack members for it. As the pack mostly consists of parents and offspring, if breeding were allowed to happen inside the pack, it would be inbreeding in most cases, which is another reason the breeding pair suppresses the younger members from mating, not because they are superior animals which fought for the rights.
The reason dogs and wolves are so successful, however they are bred, is that they are very adaptable to their current circumstances. This means that the average Mudi should be able to do whatever is asked of it, whenever it is asked, from wherever it is waiting for its human companions call.
It is quite obvious that breeding dogs like wild or captive wolves is not a viable alternative, it is also apparent that how wild wolves breed is not the only thing which makes wolves what they are – which is everything a dog is not. But what is evident, is how much human and wild wolf family units have in common.
Maybe this breeder’s next article should be about breeding Mudis like humans, at least then it would be closer to their idea about breeding Mudis like wolves…
References: (Dog behaviour, evolution and cognition, Ádám Miklósi, 2007), (Wikipedia), (Many published articles by Mech, Boitani, Packard, Gadbois, and Medjo, as well as others in the field)
