Three old guys talk at a local diner. One of them, a retired truck driver [you’ll note the stereotype doesn’t hold] called TD, is perplexed by modern culture; the second guy, labeled EG is an evolutionary geneticist. The third guy, called E, is an ethologist.
TD: What have we become? We have biological men competing against biological women in sports and biological men dancing in taffeta. Hell, I went to a highway rest stop the other day and saw a guy go into the women’s room. What’s next?
EG: Well, then, if you haven’t seen the New York Post for today, TD, you’ll be even more puzzled by this story. * Seems there’s a guy who calls himself Toco who spent $14,000 on a dog costume to make him look like a collie. So, now we also have humans pretending to be dogs. Yeah. As the President says, “No joke." Toco’s been seen in public on all fours, rolling over Fido-style, and—who knows?—maybe peeing on a fire hydrant or tree. I can see your frustration with our species, but as a geneticist, I can note the mix of genes we all carry, and maybe some of those genes influence behavior. What do you think, E?
E: There are still many patterns of behavior for which we have little knowledge about their origin. But acting like a dog and having a dog costume is possibly more an economic matter nowadays than some psychological aberration. Here’s that article. The guy’s YouTube video has pulled in 32,000 subscribers. He’s on his way to making money from his dog behavior if he monetized his YouTube channel.
TD: So, if I understand, this guy Toco is like those costumed people on Times Square and along the Strip in Vegas who make money by posing for pictures with tourists. I’ve always wanted to tell those people, “Get a real job.”
EG: Maybe he is just another Bourbon Street actor trying to hustle some money. I don’t know his motivation. I just know that I’m as perplexed by human behavior as you are. I can point out similarities between humans and dogs, however. Open your mouth, TD. Yep. Maxillary and mandibular canines right there near your incisors. TD, you have incisiform fangs! Help us out with the behavior stuff, E.
E: There’s a line that separates animal behavior and human behavior. Most animals I have studied, like dogs, have predetermined behaviors according to their breed. But they can imitate others’ behaviors, dogs learning from older dogs, for example. And dogs originally bred for one human purpose can be behaviorally modified by conditioning, an “attack dog” becoming rather calm around strangers. Imitation seems to be part of many animals’ behavioral repertoire. I just saw a younger dog imitate an older dog drinking from a running hose. And birds imitate one another, for instance, in learning how to catch a worm; parrots learn to “parrot.” Among all animals we humans are highly imitative, thus a world of theatrical performances and rituals that dominate our communities. We can pretend to be everything from a snake to a robot, so why not also a collie? Think of all those films with humans dressed like gorillas or chimpanzees. Acting for the sake of acting alone breeds human behavior. It’s that “ars gratis artis” logo above the MGM lion. And once introduced into any society, any behavior can breed imitation. Those men dressed in taffeta are mimicking a behavior they believe to be “female,” even if such behavior is an exaggeration of femininity. Then others imitate them and so on. The recent “furry” craze has college students pretending to be animals. With all that said, it doesn’t surprise me that the so-called ordinary human finds animal-mimicking behavior to be anomalous behavior. All of us wear masks of some kind, I’d say; all of us imitate to some degree those who influenced us along the road of life. We might not have been raised by wolves like Romulus and Remus, but we have been been reared with dogs for more than 30,000 years. Call the behavior convergent behavior. Heck, aren’t some variations of Kung Fu modeled on specific predatory animals?
EG: Great thought. I can say that we certainly seem to have some convergent evolutionary traits with dogs as well as shared genes. We get similar cancers, for example. We have shared a taste for some of the same foods. We appear to have some of the same emotions, though this is your area, E. And if I am correct, dogs have learned that human smiles which expose those canine teeth of ours are not threats that wolves and dogs make when threatening each one another or some perceived enemy. Maybe we just project our emotions onto dogs. But of course, we have those canine teeth which genetically link us.
TD: But putting on a collie costume? Again, I want to say something like “Get a life.” I’ve traveled across the nation delivering stuff for 35 years, and I’ve seen all sorts of humans: Some very strange, some deranged, some dangerous. Always kept my crowbar handy when I traveled. But even if these strange people pose no threat, they serve no productive purpose. Drive a truck, I say. Make a gizmo to be shipped by truck. Provide a service. But walk around like collie? I can’t see it other than the end of a culture of human value…er dignity.
E: Wonder whether this Toco guy will inspire someone to dress like a wolf. By the way, I know of another ethologist who studies the differences between dogs and wolves. We’ve long assumed that sometime during our hunting and gathering prehistory, we domesticated wolves….
EG: There’s some evidence that wolves had produced dog-like breeds before domestication. The evidence is morphological and comes from buried remains.
E: Yes. Well, it seems that at the Wolf Science Center in Austria, Zsófia Virányi has detailed some differences between wolves and dogs. In their experiments, the scientists can teach dogs and wolves to follow some similar commands, but when it comes to refraining from eating a piece of meat under the command “No,” dogs obey; wolves don’t. They exhibit a greater independence than dogs. **
TD: Well, maybe some people could learn from wolves. All this imitation stuff. All these people acting like animals after all the years we’ve had to become civilized humans. What’s next, people acting like trees, maybe bacteria, ultimately viruses? We are, what do you guys call it, in some sort of retrograde, some sort of infinite regression—see I might be a trucker, but I also read.
EG: Good point, TD. That’s why E and I like to talk to you.
TD: it just seems to me that every time we take a step forward, we have a new generation that wants to take a step backward. Maybe it’s because we have so much and because like domesticated animals, our children have been coddled and buried in affluence and abundant food. Or maybe it’s because education has gone off the deep end as more and more people who have no useful skills teach subjects that have no productive end products. Think of the stuff college profs are teaching nowadays.
E: Look. Behavior is a complex subject. We know that it can be influenced by culture and health, both mental and physical health. It can also be influenced by economics. If there’s money available to support a college position, someone is going to occupy that position. If the bottomless pockets of politicians fund education, then educational programs of all sorts, useful or not, will have proponents. And the proliferation of majors in college is just as complex as human behavior. During my career, just about every cultural fad has generated some academic discipline, most of them just self-perpetuating studies with students becoming professors in the same field and little else. Not that I’m advocating a purely utilitarian educational system, but a civilization does need some sense of reality to continue. Otherwise, it succumbs to various degrading and evil forces like drug addiction, crime, and even outside enemies. Utilitarianism has its flaws, but no one can get around having the minimum utility, growing food, for example, or making gizmos necessary for interstate commerce like your truck, TD.
Yet, as a behaviorist, I can’t really define what exact behaviors truly enhance a civilization’s development and maintenance. I certainly don’t want to live in a culture that is devoid of entertainment, devoid of entertaining people. But I might point to industriousness as one potentially good behavior—or should I say positive behavior? Can I define industriousness? Toco certainly had to have some industry to make the $14,000 for his collie suit. He had to have some industry to put up his YouTube video. But other than that self-serving utility, Toco hasn’t really done much for advancing civilization.
TD: Call me a philistine, but I know I need a truck, spare parts to repair that truck, and diesel to run that truck. I know I need to make good time in crossing the nation to get fruit from California to other states. I know I need to transport chemicals and materials to make the stuff on which we built this civilization. I guess I’m utilitarian. And that’s made me upset with all the frivolous antics of people like this Toco guy. What’s Toco’s role? To show some collie stereotype? I’ve seen collies. They imitate collies better than any human. I’ve seen other furry animals, also. They, too, imitate their species better than humans. And I’m now not sure that some of these strange people could actually imitate humans. We’ve gone to the dogs in more ways than one.
*Brooke Kato. Updated 31 Jul 2023. Man who spent $14K to transform himself into collie steps out for first-ever walk in public. New York Post, 28 Jul 2023. Online at https://nypost.com/2023/07/28/toco-the-human-border-collie-steps-out-for-first-ever-walk-in-public/
**Virginia Morell. 1 Jul 2015. How Wolf Became Dog. Scientific American. Originally published as"From Wolf to Dog" in Scientific American 313, 1, 60-67 (July 2015)
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0715-60 https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=0CDkQw7AJahcKEwjA_J67k7mAAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAw&url=https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-wolf-became-dog/&psig=AOvVaw33RwMn3RwrL-dlk1Zfozgu&ust=1690889487751696&opi=89978449
TD: What have we become? We have biological men competing against biological women in sports and biological men dancing in taffeta. Hell, I went to a highway rest stop the other day and saw a guy go into the women’s room. What’s next?
EG: Well, then, if you haven’t seen the New York Post for today, TD, you’ll be even more puzzled by this story. * Seems there’s a guy who calls himself Toco who spent $14,000 on a dog costume to make him look like a collie. So, now we also have humans pretending to be dogs. Yeah. As the President says, “No joke." Toco’s been seen in public on all fours, rolling over Fido-style, and—who knows?—maybe peeing on a fire hydrant or tree. I can see your frustration with our species, but as a geneticist, I can note the mix of genes we all carry, and maybe some of those genes influence behavior. What do you think, E?
E: There are still many patterns of behavior for which we have little knowledge about their origin. But acting like a dog and having a dog costume is possibly more an economic matter nowadays than some psychological aberration. Here’s that article. The guy’s YouTube video has pulled in 32,000 subscribers. He’s on his way to making money from his dog behavior if he monetized his YouTube channel.
TD: So, if I understand, this guy Toco is like those costumed people on Times Square and along the Strip in Vegas who make money by posing for pictures with tourists. I’ve always wanted to tell those people, “Get a real job.”
EG: Maybe he is just another Bourbon Street actor trying to hustle some money. I don’t know his motivation. I just know that I’m as perplexed by human behavior as you are. I can point out similarities between humans and dogs, however. Open your mouth, TD. Yep. Maxillary and mandibular canines right there near your incisors. TD, you have incisiform fangs! Help us out with the behavior stuff, E.
E: There’s a line that separates animal behavior and human behavior. Most animals I have studied, like dogs, have predetermined behaviors according to their breed. But they can imitate others’ behaviors, dogs learning from older dogs, for example. And dogs originally bred for one human purpose can be behaviorally modified by conditioning, an “attack dog” becoming rather calm around strangers. Imitation seems to be part of many animals’ behavioral repertoire. I just saw a younger dog imitate an older dog drinking from a running hose. And birds imitate one another, for instance, in learning how to catch a worm; parrots learn to “parrot.” Among all animals we humans are highly imitative, thus a world of theatrical performances and rituals that dominate our communities. We can pretend to be everything from a snake to a robot, so why not also a collie? Think of all those films with humans dressed like gorillas or chimpanzees. Acting for the sake of acting alone breeds human behavior. It’s that “ars gratis artis” logo above the MGM lion. And once introduced into any society, any behavior can breed imitation. Those men dressed in taffeta are mimicking a behavior they believe to be “female,” even if such behavior is an exaggeration of femininity. Then others imitate them and so on. The recent “furry” craze has college students pretending to be animals. With all that said, it doesn’t surprise me that the so-called ordinary human finds animal-mimicking behavior to be anomalous behavior. All of us wear masks of some kind, I’d say; all of us imitate to some degree those who influenced us along the road of life. We might not have been raised by wolves like Romulus and Remus, but we have been been reared with dogs for more than 30,000 years. Call the behavior convergent behavior. Heck, aren’t some variations of Kung Fu modeled on specific predatory animals?
EG: Great thought. I can say that we certainly seem to have some convergent evolutionary traits with dogs as well as shared genes. We get similar cancers, for example. We have shared a taste for some of the same foods. We appear to have some of the same emotions, though this is your area, E. And if I am correct, dogs have learned that human smiles which expose those canine teeth of ours are not threats that wolves and dogs make when threatening each one another or some perceived enemy. Maybe we just project our emotions onto dogs. But of course, we have those canine teeth which genetically link us.
TD: But putting on a collie costume? Again, I want to say something like “Get a life.” I’ve traveled across the nation delivering stuff for 35 years, and I’ve seen all sorts of humans: Some very strange, some deranged, some dangerous. Always kept my crowbar handy when I traveled. But even if these strange people pose no threat, they serve no productive purpose. Drive a truck, I say. Make a gizmo to be shipped by truck. Provide a service. But walk around like collie? I can’t see it other than the end of a culture of human value…er dignity.
E: Wonder whether this Toco guy will inspire someone to dress like a wolf. By the way, I know of another ethologist who studies the differences between dogs and wolves. We’ve long assumed that sometime during our hunting and gathering prehistory, we domesticated wolves….
EG: There’s some evidence that wolves had produced dog-like breeds before domestication. The evidence is morphological and comes from buried remains.
E: Yes. Well, it seems that at the Wolf Science Center in Austria, Zsófia Virányi has detailed some differences between wolves and dogs. In their experiments, the scientists can teach dogs and wolves to follow some similar commands, but when it comes to refraining from eating a piece of meat under the command “No,” dogs obey; wolves don’t. They exhibit a greater independence than dogs. **
TD: Well, maybe some people could learn from wolves. All this imitation stuff. All these people acting like animals after all the years we’ve had to become civilized humans. What’s next, people acting like trees, maybe bacteria, ultimately viruses? We are, what do you guys call it, in some sort of retrograde, some sort of infinite regression—see I might be a trucker, but I also read.
EG: Good point, TD. That’s why E and I like to talk to you.
TD: it just seems to me that every time we take a step forward, we have a new generation that wants to take a step backward. Maybe it’s because we have so much and because like domesticated animals, our children have been coddled and buried in affluence and abundant food. Or maybe it’s because education has gone off the deep end as more and more people who have no useful skills teach subjects that have no productive end products. Think of the stuff college profs are teaching nowadays.
E: Look. Behavior is a complex subject. We know that it can be influenced by culture and health, both mental and physical health. It can also be influenced by economics. If there’s money available to support a college position, someone is going to occupy that position. If the bottomless pockets of politicians fund education, then educational programs of all sorts, useful or not, will have proponents. And the proliferation of majors in college is just as complex as human behavior. During my career, just about every cultural fad has generated some academic discipline, most of them just self-perpetuating studies with students becoming professors in the same field and little else. Not that I’m advocating a purely utilitarian educational system, but a civilization does need some sense of reality to continue. Otherwise, it succumbs to various degrading and evil forces like drug addiction, crime, and even outside enemies. Utilitarianism has its flaws, but no one can get around having the minimum utility, growing food, for example, or making gizmos necessary for interstate commerce like your truck, TD.
Yet, as a behaviorist, I can’t really define what exact behaviors truly enhance a civilization’s development and maintenance. I certainly don’t want to live in a culture that is devoid of entertainment, devoid of entertaining people. But I might point to industriousness as one potentially good behavior—or should I say positive behavior? Can I define industriousness? Toco certainly had to have some industry to make the $14,000 for his collie suit. He had to have some industry to put up his YouTube video. But other than that self-serving utility, Toco hasn’t really done much for advancing civilization.
TD: Call me a philistine, but I know I need a truck, spare parts to repair that truck, and diesel to run that truck. I know I need to make good time in crossing the nation to get fruit from California to other states. I know I need to transport chemicals and materials to make the stuff on which we built this civilization. I guess I’m utilitarian. And that’s made me upset with all the frivolous antics of people like this Toco guy. What’s Toco’s role? To show some collie stereotype? I’ve seen collies. They imitate collies better than any human. I’ve seen other furry animals, also. They, too, imitate their species better than humans. And I’m now not sure that some of these strange people could actually imitate humans. We’ve gone to the dogs in more ways than one.
*Brooke Kato. Updated 31 Jul 2023. Man who spent $14K to transform himself into collie steps out for first-ever walk in public. New York Post, 28 Jul 2023. Online at https://nypost.com/2023/07/28/toco-the-human-border-collie-steps-out-for-first-ever-walk-in-public/
**Virginia Morell. 1 Jul 2015. How Wolf Became Dog. Scientific American. Originally published as"From Wolf to Dog" in Scientific American 313, 1, 60-67 (July 2015)
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0715-60 https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=0CDkQw7AJahcKEwjA_J67k7mAAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAw&url=https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-wolf-became-dog/&psig=AOvVaw33RwMn3RwrL-dlk1Zfozgu&ust=1690889487751696&opi=89978449
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