bill..you said it not i... are you having 300 white balloons and 400 lit candles at your funeral?..merle Merle,
Dogs, other canines, and many other predators bury bodies to preserve them so they can eat them later. But...if after they buried them they released balloons or lit candles I could be wrong... ...Bill! --- In [email protected], Merle Lester <merlewiitpom@...> wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > >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. > > > > > >To see the video, go to > >http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rrCnUN5LN0&feature=youtu.be > > > > > >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 > > > > > > > >Regards, > >Jay R. Feierman > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >
