Cinematic Canines: Dogs and Their Work in the Fiction Film

Chapter 10: The Dog at the Side of the Shot: Incongruous Dog (Canis familiaris) Behavior in Film

219 10 The Dog at the Side of the Shot Incongruous Dog (Canis familiaris) Behavior in Film ALEXANDRA HOROWITZ Familiarity is both a boon and a bane to the domestic dog, Canis familiaris. On the one hand, it has allowed dogs to occupy our homes and enjoy a share of the resources, both nutritive and protective, that their humans have secured for themselves. On the other hand, the familiarity afforded by this ubiquity prevents us from seeing dogs for who they are. Generally, humans anthropomorphize : we attribute human characteristics to animals without sound evidence for the existence of those characteristics. In particular, our assessment of the meaning of the dog’s behavior, and our extrapolation from that behavior to claims about an individual’s or the species’ knowledge, cognitive capacity, or emotional experience, is often flawed. That great observer of the natural world, Charles Darwin, was an avowed anthropomorphizer, attributing magnanimity, shame, pride, and a sense of humor to dogs (Darwin 1871/2004). The dog’s success at integrating him- or herself into human homes may make it difficult for us to see their true natures: having a shared ancestry with Canis lupus tens of millions of years more recent than that with Homo sapiens. In this essay I use the science of ethology to explore dogs’ roles in films as exemplifying the ways that humans misread the dog. Movies using dogs represent various manifestations of 220 • Cinematic Canines the use of dogs as props, as veritable family members, or even as nonindividuals, instead of as animals. Bringing Ethology to the Movies Those people who study animal behavior in natural settings practice ethology, the science of animal observation. Ethologists research the biological basis of behavior through field experimentation or through long-term observations of their subjects. These observations can reveal the intricacies of behaviors previously unseen or underappreciated. Behavior that might have seemed unitary is revealed to have many integral component parts. For instance, what may look like simply “play” between two dogs, an enjoyable if uncomplicated engagement , is revealed through frame-by-frame review of video recordings to involve highly coordinated behaviors (Horowitz 2009b). In particular, dyadic roughand -tumble play includes instances of turn-taking, self-handicapping, role reversal, and metacommunicative play signals sent by the participants (Bekoff 1972; Bekoff and Allen 1998). These behaviors are not just components of play; they are constitutive of it. Long-term observations of dyadic play have revealed that when a stronger dog fails to self-handicap—modifying his actions so as to reduce their severity—with a weaker partner, or when the turn-taking grows asymmetrical, play breaks down. Similarly, observations reveal that if play is attempted prior to sending a “play signal,” it is usually unsuccessful. As play bouts involve behaviors used functionally in other contexts, such as reproduction , hunting, and defense, specific signals must be wielded to “frame” the bout; essentially, they indicate “everything that will happen now is untrue” (Bateson 1972). Without a play signal, a bite on another dog’s rump is just a bite, worthy of a response of umbrage; preceded by a signal, a subsequent bite is seen as “pretend.” This bite can then safely lead to any number of similarly tuned behaviors. Play serves as an example of a general animal behavior phenomenon: behavior , considered as a category, can be deconstructed, is describable, has relevance, and is context sensitive. While it may appear to a lay observer viewing a moment in an animal’s life that the animal is “not doing anything,” an animal’s behavior is comprehensible if one appreciates the context in which it emerges. That context includes information about the local situation in which the animal finds itself, the animal’s age and developmental history, and the perceptual and cognitive abilities of the species. Standard protocol in animal behavior studies is to compile and use an “ethogram ” of behaviors. This ethogram lists the numerable, describable behavioral acts the animal may do. After much research, an ever-expanding catalogue of species-typical behaviors is formed. This catalogue is a perpetually in-progress encyclopedia of behaviors. Characteristic behaviors, poses, expressions, vocalizations , and so on can be named and their contexts described. Ordinarily, this The Dog at the Side of the Shot • 221 catalogue, and its “entries,” would be used to help further delineate a species’ behavioral repertoire or to understand a category of behavior previously unexplored . The end state in ethology is...