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>The question I (jrf) have is whether this behavior on the part of the living
>dog is burying another dog because the dog is dead and it is better that dead
>dogs be buried rather than just lying on the top of the ground. That could be
>anthropomorphic projection. The alternative hypothesis is that dogs frequently
>bury food to eat later. If one feeds a dog to satiety and then gives the dog a
>beef bone with meat on it, the dog will almost certainly bury the beef bone if
>given access to the outside where there is dirt. In burying a bone, which
>might qualify as what some ethologists call "action sequences," there are
>three different coordinated motor patterns used. One is a running type motion
>of the front paws that creates the hole in the ground, second is the placement
>of the bone in the ground with the mouth, and third is the behavior seen on
>the video, which is a forward shoving motion of the face that pushes the dirt
>back into the hole. What was different
in this video compared to burying a bone with meat on it is that the only
behavior used was the forward shoving motion of the face that pushes the dirt.
Instead of covering a bone with meat in a hole, the dirt was covering a dead
dog that was lying on the surface of the dirt. I suspect that one could do some
experimentation to figure out what was motivating the dog's behavior: a sense
of reverence for a deceased member of the species, or an instinctual behavior
to bury a large piece of meat.
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>To see the video, go to
>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rrCnUN5LN0&feature=youtu.be
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>Mark Bekoff reports that he has observed a fox "bury" another dead fox killed
>by a cougar (mountain lion) in the wild. See
>http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/200907/fox-cougar-and-funeral
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>Regards,
>Jay R. Feierman
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