Begging strategy of Andean Dogs (con Alessandro Finzi)

Begging Strategy of the Andean Dogs Alessandro Finzi, Eleonora Rava Centro Studi S. Rosa, via O. Benedetti, 21 - 01100 Viterbo, Italy Correspondent author: [email protected] Prendidos a la magia del polvoriento camino, esperaban los perros hambrientos con sus hocicos agudos. Néstor Taboada Terán, El precio del estaño. Abstract The strategy by which Andean dogs begs for bread is described. Notwithstanding their attitude to form packs, in the height of an Andean road dogs sit lonely in the external part of the road’s bends where the vehicles must slow down and the probabilities of being seen and receiving morsels of bread are the best. Considering correct this choice, the percentages were 81.2% (P<0.001) among dogs and 63.6% (NS) among humans in comparison with wrong locations. Another similar case is quoted by literature confirming the observed phenomenon. Introduction Along the winding Interandina road from Quillacollo to Oruro in Bolivia, at the height of 3,000 metres or more, it is easy to observe dogs sitting at the border still and lonely. Since dogs have the tendency to form packs this behaviour looks unusual, but it can be partially explained when people are seen throwing them chunks of bread from cars or buses running along. The complete excerpt of the phrase quoted in the epigraph says: “Folded in the magic aura of the dusty road, the hungry dogs were waiting with their pointed snout. Travellers threw them chunks of bread. Beyond the dogs, the indios children of the road, without shoes and skirt.... Swelling up their ponchos they run after the lorries. Mummy, daddy, give us a morsel of bread! Accustomed to this endless show, travellers threw them some coin, the same as to the hungry dogs”1. It was then planned to study the distribution, location and behaviour of the animals to understand better their begging strategy in its actual manifestation. Materials and methods Andean dogs are middle size dog with dense woolly fur of different colours (fig.1). The unsurfaced road was gone to and fro, in the morning and in the afternoon respectively, starting from Quillacollo, in the range from km 70.0 to km 163.3, between the villages of Parotani and Cahiuasi where the dogs were sitting. After the pueblo of Caihuasi, the road becomes asphalted, the vehicles get speediness and no more dogs could be found. Where the mountain side becomes very steep, the winding road makes many hairpin bends that oblige the cars to a quick slow down. This is the place mainly chosen by dogs to sit at any bend 1 Prendidos a la magia del polvoriento camino, esperaban los perros hambrientos con sus hocicos agudos. Los viajeros les arrojaron pedazos de pan. Después de los perros, muertos de hambre los llocallas de los caminos, sin zapatos ni camisas. .... Inflando sus ponchos perseguían el camión. ¡Madrecitas, padrecitos, regalennos pancito ¡ Habituados a ese sempiterno espectáculo, los viajeros les arrojaron su limosna, igual que a los perros hambrientos. (Néstor Taboada Terán, El precio del estaño, La Paz, Ed. Gisbert y Cia., 1983, p.47). waiting for food. The position of the dogs in relationship with the bends, their attitude and the distance from each other were recorded to evaluate the rightness of their ‘begging strategy’. Fig. 1 A typical Andean dog. Dogs’ locations were classified according to a score evaluation of easiness to receive food. Observed typologies were: 1. external border of the bend (fig. 2; the dogs are highly visible and the vehicles are slowing down): score 2 2. internal border of the bend (the vehicles are slowing down) a. the bend is covered by the mountain slope (the dogs are not visible): score 0 b. the bend is not covered (fig. 3; the dogs are easily seen): score 2 3. straight road (the dogs are visible but the vehicles are running): score 1 Fig. 2 Dogs waiting at the external bend of the road. In the figure at right a bus is coming. To compare the behaviour of the dogs with the humans’ one, it must be considered that nearly only children and/or old people are seen on the road2. The main difference in the begging strategy is that people are nearly always two or more. But, since when they are two the probability to get a 2 Adult people are normally at work and, if on the road, they crowd round the vehicles at regular stops to sell drinks or local foods. coin is halved, similarly the scoring has been halved or anyway divided by the number of children or people present. Dogs were rarely observed in couple and in this case the score was also halved. Fig. 3 The dog is waiting in the internal part of the bend. Nevertheless it is well visible and the vehicle must slow down. The occurrences of the correct positioning at the external and internal part of the bend were compared by a Chi Square Test for dogs and people respectively 3 . The same was done with reference to scores of dogs and people. Results and discussion On a range of 93.3 km, the dogs were observed to sit always at the border of the road, as shown in fig. 2, 3. They were sitting mainly alone (96.3%) and mainly where the hairpin bends were formed because of the strong sloping, obliging the vehicles to slow down very much and giving people time to throw the animals the chunks of bread they brought with them with this specific purpose. The frequency of dogs was one every 2332 metres as a mean. But from km 116.0 to km 139.1, where bends are many, dogs were sitting at each hairpin bend at very short distance form each other (m 962.5). It was also observed road’s lags of about a km were the mean distance was every 240250 metres. On the contrary people were observed mainly in groups and generally not far from villages. On the way back, in the early afternoon, more dogs and people were recorded (table 1). The increase of number was 89.7% and 80.9% for dogs and people respectively on a range of the road also increased to 126.9 km. The mean frequency of dogs was every 1775 metres, but again lags of road were observed where dogs were sitting, as before, about every 250 metres. Dogs couching in the external part of the bends were 81.2% (P<0.01) and people were 63.6% (NS). It is clear that dogs are aware of the correct position to be easily seen when the vehicles must slow down. People looks not even equally aware. 3 M. Ferrán Aranaz SPSS para Windows. Programación y análisis estadístico. Mcgraw Hill/Interamericana de España, S. A., 1996. ISBN: 84-481-0589-3 When the wrong positions were calculated on the total of blind bends, the percentages were 8.7 % and 40.0% for dogs and humans respectively (table 2). In the open bends, sitting in the internal part is still correct. Dogs looks aware of this chance since the number of animals that choose this position increases to 24.4% though the number choosing the external part, that is in any case correct, remains three times more frequent. Table 1. Location of dogs and people in the checking of morning and afternoon. Parameters Dogs Subjects Number Occurr. 1 Morn. Aftern. Total 39 74 113 37 72 109 People Morn. Aftern. Total 21 38 59 11 22 33 Location on Road Bends External Internal Internal Total Open Close 16 6 1 23 36 4 1 41 52 10 2 64 3 11 14 4 2 6 1 1 2 8 14 22 Straight road 14 31 2 45 3 8 11 1 Occurrences are less than the number, because more subjects can be present in the same observed occurrence. In this group two cases are included in which the vehicles were obliged to slow because of a steep sloping and a road hump. 2 Table 2 Data are analyzed to show better the rightness of ubication. Ubication Dogs People Blind bends* External Internal (wrong) 21 2 (8.7%) 3 2 (40.0%) Open bends* External Internal 31 10 (24.4%) 11 6 (35.3%) * The ubication in the internal part of the blind bends is wrong since the subjects are seen too late to receive food or charity. Both location are correct in the open bends. The highly frequent presence of the dogs at the external border of the bends, or anyway where they are easily seen in advance, is explained by the fact that dogs seem ‘to know’ that the chosen position is the best to receive food. It is also clear that dogs seem also to have learned that breaking with the strong ancestral packing instinct (fig. 4) gives the advantage to get all the food offered without competitors. This behaviour makes astonishing contrast with the humans, since they are frequently in groups (44.1%), sometimes in places where cars don’t slow down. In the way back the weather changed suddenly and rain came with heavy hail but the dogs were observed to remain still at their place. Considering that the maximum score is 2, the mean score was 1.48 and 0.65 for dogs and humans respectively. The difference was highly significant (P<0.001), showing that dogs rich an high efficacy of begging strategy (more then twice) while people show a score very low that confirm why the difference previously observed in people location was not significant. Humans Dogs Fig. 5. The location score of dogs is more then twice in comparison with humans. To explain the lower scoring of people it must be considered that children can share the coins received or bring them home to contribute to family income. Also, may be, people dislike children stay alone and frequently make and adult person, generally an old person, to stay with them. But still remain that they frequently wait in wrong positions and the differences are not significant while the wrong behaviour is very rare among dogs. The same phenomenon, referred to another road of the country, is quoted also in a technical article on sanitary problems in Bolivia, titling significantly “Begging dogs” to symbolize “the miserable human condition”, as specifically declared by the AA. The excerpt says: “A situation revealed everywhere, dogs included, from this the title, because from Sucre to La Palma (40 km along the Andean precordillera) there is a provincial road where begging dogs are sitting about 500 metres from each other. They are of different breeds but all of them have the common trait of extreme skinniness. Lonely, they wait for the food thrown to them from the few vehicles crossing through: all of them defended its territory and we have seen, coming back after 8 hours, that they were still there.“4 The distance of 500 m indicated as separating dogs summarises well and confirms the differences more analytically observed by us that were more than 1.5-2 km as a mean, but only about 250 m when the winding road made the conditions very favourable to begging. The quoted excerpt suggests different behaviours of dogs and even cases of animals facing the cars to oblige them to slow down. Such differences were never observed by us. The only exception was the case of dog that, after having noticed the move of throwing bread, ran barking after the car for a while. Similarly a territory defence was not noticed; on the contrary dogs looked to assume an ordered distribution nearly appearing coordinated. It is difficult to explain the begging strategy of dogs basing it only on an instinctual behaviour. Dogs clearly understand that only if they are alone they can get all the food without needing to fight. As a consequence the appearance is as if a dog, when a place is occupied, moves spontaneously to another place. Only a desirable long research on the place should show if a hierarchy do exist and the stronger animals take the better places at the winding part of the road. The second quotation confirms that the analysed behaviour of dogs, though looking unnatural and learned, is not exceptional since it is also observed in another road in the altitudes. It is supposed a kind of symbiosis is learned: animals getting food and humans getting the pleasure to feed the animals. Conclusions Andean dogs begging strategy has reached such a high level of efficiency and diffusion to be described even in literature, as an astonishing behaviour, and in a technical essay, as a symbol of human miserable life condition in Bolivia. It is interesting to observe that the begging strategy of dogs looks much more efficient in comparison with people, inasmuch as the latter place themselves in a wrong position 4.5 occurrences more frequently than dogs. They choose a correct location in x% while people do it only in y% of the occurrences. The evaluation by individual mean scoring (xx vs yy) makes still more evident this difference. References Néstor Taboada Terán, El precio del estaño, La Paz, Ed. Gisbert y Cia., 1983. Grupo de Análisis Sanitario de la SEMG, Perros mendigos, “Revista de la SEMG”, n. 58, nov, 2003, pp. 596-601. www.medicinageneral.org/revista 4 Perros mendigos [....] Una situación que trasunta por todos los rincones del país, incluso en los perros, de ahí nuestro titular: porque entre Sucre y La Palma (40 Km por la precordillera de los Andes) hay una ruta provincial que tiene parados a los lados del camino y cada 500 metros aproximadamente a perros mendigos, de diferentes razas aunque su característica común es su extrema flaqueza. Solitarios esperan que desde los pocos vehículos que transitan les arrojen alimentos: cada uno defiende su territorio y hemos comprobado recorriendo el camino de ida y vuelta que tras 8 horas seguían ahí. La actitud de cada uno era diferente: uno enfrentaba el vehículo obligándole a reducir la marcha, otro estaba parado con expresión melancólica, otro inquieto... Todas las características que se puedan imaginar. Es que en este territorio abandonado de la mano de Dios, hasta los perros imitan lo que hace la mayoría de gente (Grupo de Análisis Sanitario de la SEMG, Perros mendigos, “Revista de la SEMG”, n. 58, nov, 2003, pp. 596601. www.medicinageneral.org/revista ).