The city of Moscow, Russia hosts a large population of free-ranging dogs. Many operate in packs and have become accustomed to seeking food from passersby. Some of them who frequent or inhabit the subway have attracted international attention for learning how to use the trains to commute between various locations. The most famous Muscovite street dog is Laika (Russian: Лайка) who ended up being one of the first animals in space and the first to orbit the Earth.
The issue of Moscow's stray dogs was first mentioned by Russian writers such as journalist Vladimir Gilyarovsky in the late 19th century. [1] Their sad lot was dramatised by Anton Chekhov in the famous short story Kashtanka , by Mikhail Bulgakov in the novella Heart of a Dog , and by Gavriil Troyepolsky in the novel White Bim Black Ear . As of March 2010, there were an estimated 35,000 free-ranging dogs living within Moscow's city limits, [2] or approximately one dog for every 300 people, and about 32 per square km (84 per square mile).
According to Andrei Poyarkov of the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, a biologist and wolf expert who has studied Moscow's dogs for over 30 years, the quantity of food available to them keeps the total population of homeless dogs steady at between 35,000 and 50,000. Most pups don’t reach adulthood, and those that do essentially replace adults who have died. A life of more than 10 years is considered rare. Many, if not most, street dogs share certain physical similarities: medium-sized with thick fur, wedge-shaped heads and almond eyes, with long tails and erect ears. [1]
Most dogs are born homeless; others arrive on the streets as rejected or abandoned house pets. Poyarkov estimates that fewer than 3 percent of abandoned pet dogs live long enough to breed. [1]
Over the years that Poyarkov observed the dogs, he noticed that the population has lost such features as spotted coats, wagging tails, and friendliness, characteristics known to distinguish dogs from wolves.
When the number of street dogs massively increased in the nineties and they began to bite humans, the dogs were hunted and killed. In recent years the attitude and strategy towards street dogs has changed. The dogs are caught and neutered, and are given enough to eat. The dogs keep the city free of food leftovers and rats. Stray dogs in Moscow have adapted their behavior to the traffic and life of Moscow. The dogs ride the Metro and understand the rules of traffic lights. The stray dogs of Moscow are often called Moscow's Metro dogs. [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
Poyarkov classified their evolving social structures into four groups:
The urbanized beggars in particular are unfazed by high levels of activity going on around them, [2] even managing to sleep in the midst of busy areas. They also have the most specialized behaviors, [1] which differentiate them from both domesticated dogs and wolves. Beggars may live in packs, but a pack's leader will interact with other packs. The leaders are not necessarily the strongest or most dominant dog, but rather the most intelligent, and are acknowledged as such by the other dogs in the pack who depend on them for survival.
One technique some dogs have for getting food is to sneak up behind a person who is holding some. The dog will then bark, which sometimes startles the human enough to drop the food.
The dogs have learned to cross the street with pedestrians and have been observed obeying traffic lights. [2] Since dogs have dichromatic vision, researchers theorize that the dogs recognize other cues, such as the shapes or positions of the changing signals.
The dogs have become adept at intuiting the psychology of individual humans in order to determine which techniques will work best on whom. Dogs who locate themselves in high traffic areas realize that, in such places, they often won't need to make any effort to procure food, as pedestrians will simply toss it as they pass by. Malnourished-looking dogs are uncommon. Food is often easy to come by, allowing dogs the luxury of being selective.
The reduced need to compete for food has contributed to stable social behavior, although incidents in which humans were harmed by packs of dogs have been known to occur, particularly in less urban areas.
According to Alexei Vereshchagin, a graduate student of Poyarkov's who has studied them, the dogs generally go out of their way to avoid conflict with humans, and rarely defecate in busy areas or onto pavements. [8] Among the general human population, the dogs are simultaneously viewed affectionately and as a problem, [2] but moreover they are generally tolerated. Many people choose to feed them and some people will even build basic shelters for them in the winter. They have come to be considered by many a component of the city's character. [8] Sterilization efforts have had little effect on curtailing the population. [2]
The Moscow Metro is the second most heavily used in the world by daily ridership, behind the Beijing Subway. On average, about 500 dogs live in its stations, especially during colder months. Of these dogs, about 20 are believed to have learned how to use the system as a means of commuting. [1] Theories to explain how they are able to correctly determine their routes include a combination of:
Author Eugene Linden, a specialist in the subject of animal intelligence, believes the dogs' behavior exhibits "flexible open-ended reasoning and conscious thought". [2] There are also instances when these metro dogs gave birth to pups during their commuting time. [9]
In 2001, a woman mortally stabbed a dog named Malchik, a black feral dog who had made Mendeleyevskaya station his home, guarding it against other dogs and drunks, because he had barked at her dog. The incident, which occurred in front of rush-hour commuters, [1] provoked outrage among celebrities and the general public. [8] The woman was arrested, tried and underwent a year of psychiatric treatment. [1] Funds were raised to erect a bronze statue of Malchik in memoriam, which now sits at the station's entrance. [8]
One effect of the large feral population is a high and rising level of dog attacks on humans. [10] In 2007 official statistics suggest that 20,000 attacks took place, of which 8,000 were sufficiently serious to require police or medical intervention [11] and at least one being fatal. [10] In part, the problem is traced to status dogs that are abandoned when they become troublesome, [11] and in part due to those dogs living in forested areas that are poorly socialized and more prone to aggressive territorialism. [8]
The dingo is an ancient (basal) lineage of dog found in Australia. Its taxonomic classification is debated as indicated by the variety of scientific names presently applied in different publications. It is variously considered a form of domestic dog not warranting recognition as a subspecies, a subspecies of dog or wolf, or a full species in its own right.
An animal shelter or pound is a place where stray, lost, abandoned or surrendered animals – mostly dogs and cats – are housed. The word "pound" has its origins in the animal pounds of the agricultural communities, where stray livestock would be penned or impounded until they were claimed by their owners.
A feral animal or plant is one that lives in the wild but is descended from domesticated individuals. As with an introduced species, the introduction of feral animals or plants to non-native regions may disrupt ecosystems and has, in some cases, contributed to extinction of indigenous species. The removal of feral species is a major focus of island restoration.
A wolfdog is a canine produced by the mating of a domestic dog with a gray wolf, eastern wolf, red wolf, or Ethiopian wolf to produce a hybrid.
Dog intelligence or dog cognition is the process in dogs of acquiring information and conceptual skills, and storing them in memory, retrieving, combining and comparing them, and using them in new situations.
A bark is a sound most often produced by dogs. Other animals that make this noise include, but are not limited to, wolves, coyotes, foxes, seals, frogs, and barking owls. "Bark" is also a verb that describes the sound of many canids.
In some countries there is an overpopulation of pets such as cats, dogs, and exotic animals. In the United States, six to eight million animals are brought to shelters each year, of which an estimated three to four million are subsequently euthanized, including 2.7 million considered healthy and adoptable. Euthanasia numbers have declined since the 1970s, when U.S. shelters euthanized an estimated 12 to 20 million animals. Most humane societies, animal shelters and rescue groups urge animal caregivers to have their animals spayed or neutered to prevent the births of unwanted and accidental litters that could contribute to this dynamic.
A semi-feral animal lives predominantly in a feral state but has some contact and experience with humans. This may be because it was born in a domesticated state and then reverted to life in wild conditions, or it may be an animal that grew up in essentially wild conditions but has developed a comfort level with humans through feeding, receiving medical care, or similar contacts.
The dog is a domesticated descendant of the wolf. Also called the domestic dog, it was selectively bred from an extinct population of wolves during the Late Pleistocene by hunter-gatherers. The dog was the first species to be domesticated by humans, over 14,000 years ago and before the development of agriculture. Experts estimate that due to their long association with humans, dogs have gained the ability to thrive on a starch-rich diet that would be inadequate for other canids.
Dog behavior is the internally coordinated responses of individuals or groups of domestic dogs to internal and external stimuli. It has been shaped by millennia of contact with humans and their lifestyles. As a result of this physical and social evolution, dogs have acquired the ability to understand and communicate with humans. Behavioral scientists have uncovered a wide range of social-cognitive abilities in domestic dogs.
Ma-Mha is a 2007 Thai comedy-drama film directed by Pantham Thongsang and Somkiet Vituranich about a pack of stray dogs in suburban Bangkok who want to cross a busy highway in hopes of finding a better life on the other side of the road. It is the first Thai live-action feature film to feature main characters that are animals.
A feral child is a young individual who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age, with little or no experience of human care, social behavior, or language. Such children lack the basics of primary and secondary socialization. The term is used to refer to children who have suffered severe abuse or trauma before being abandoned or running away. They are sometimes the subjects of folklore and legends, often portrayed as having been raised by animals. While there are many cases of children being found in proximity to wild animals, there are no eyewitness accounts of animals feeding human children.
Compassion and Responsibility for Animals (CARA) is a registered non-profit, non-government animal welfare organization in the Philippines. It was founded in 2000 by a group of animal lovers determined to help the plight of animals in the Philippines. The current president of CARA is Nancy Cu-Unjieng.
A Dingo-dog hybrid is a cross between a dingo and a domestic dog. The current population of free ranging domestic dogs in Australia is probably higher than in the past. However, the proportion of the so-called "pure" dingoes has been on the decrease over the last few decades due to hybridisation and is regarded as further decreasing.
Malchik was a black mongrel stray dog living in Moscow, Russia. For about three years, Malchik lived at the Mendeleyevskaya station on the Moscow Metro. In 2001, he was killed when a 22-year-old woman, Yuliana Romanova, stabbed him with a kitchen knife. The incident sparked a wave of public outrage regarding the treatment of animals, and, in 2007, a monument was erected in Malchik's honour at Mendeleyevskaya station.
A free-ranging dog is a dog that is not confined to a yard or house. Free-ranging dogs include street dogs, village dogs, stray dogs, feral dogs, etc., and may be owned or unowned. The global dog population is estimated to be 900 million, of which around 20% are regarded as owned pets and therefore restrained.
Ivan Mishukov is a former Russian feral child who lived with dogs for about two years between the ages of 4 and 6.
Some domestic pets, feral animals and wild animals have learned to use human public transportation to travel independently. This is tolerated or even celebrated by passengers, although most public transportation systems only allow service animals and forbid pets.
Street dogs are a notable subpopulation of dogs arising from and existing in Bulgaria's capital Sofia since approximately 1990. There is a large overlap with the local free-ranging dog population. The first publicly available data on street dog population counted 11,124 dogs in mid-2007. After an incident in which a prominent person was killed by a pack of strays in 2012, the municipal government of Sofia proclaimed plans to reduce the stray population by 95% by 2016. Following their mass removal from public spaces, in mid-2018, 3,589 dogs reportedly remained outside.
The Turkish city of Istanbul hosts a sizeable feral cat population, with estimates ranging from a hundred thousand to over a million stray cats. Many Turkish citizens view street animals as communally owned pets rather than traditional strays, and the country has a blanket no-kill, no-capture policy.
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