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Research confirms prof’s choice of dog
After
reading the first sentence, “Here’s one professor whose research truly
has gone to the dogs,” I was hooked. Not only did I devour every word
of the news release about Western Carolina University psychology
professor Hal Herzog, I wanted to find out more.
Herzog,
it seems, had been wondering why people choose the types of dogs they
select for pets. I wondered why it occurred to him to wonder and how he
went about finding out.
Working
with colleagues at University College London and the University of
California-Davis, Herzog examined American Kennel Club records of more
than 40 million purebred puppies registered in the United States over
the past 50 years.
He
learned that people pick dogs not on the basis of reason or because a
given breed makes a good pet. It’s more a matter of what’s trendy.
When
asked what made him think of studying the topic, Herzog said he’d been
studying the psychological and cultural aspects of human-animal
interactions for 25 years.
He’s
done research on diverse related topics including cockfighting, why
people become animal rights activists, ethical issues faced by
veterinarians, and the decision process of ethics committees that
oversee animal research, he said.
When
he stumbled on the American Kennel Club Web site that had the
registration statistics for two years, he noticed that Dalmatian
registrations were declining.
“I
called a friend who is a Dalmatian breeder and is on the AKC board,”
Herzog said. “She helped me negotiate with the organization to get all
the purebred registrations for the past 50 years – nearly 50 million
dogs!”
Herzog
has not met either of his collaborators – Matt Hahn, a quantitative
geneticist at UC-Davis, and Alex Bentley, a London archeologist. But he
had seen a paper the two wrote on cultural drift and changes in the
popularity of names people give their kids.
“I
realized their mathematical models might apply to the patterns that I
was seeing in the dog breeds,” he said. “I e-mailed Matt, and he agreed
the dog data looked good.”
The two then got in touch with Bentley. The result, according to Herzog, was a great collaboration.
“They
had the math skills and theoretical framework to look at mechanisms
that fuel cultural change,” he said. “And I had the great AKC data set.”
The
results of the study were published in the April issue of the Royal
Society’s Biology Letters, a scientific journal in Great Britain.
According
to Herzog, dogs were first selected for domestication to help with
hunting or herding. Because most people no longer require dogs that
work, usefulness has become less desirable than style.
“Dogs
become popular through the same mechanisms that impel, say, wearing
baseball caps brim-backward,” he said. “A person selecting a pet dog
seems to be highly influenced by choices being made by others at about
the same time, without his or her knowing it. In this respect, dog
breed popularity is no different than changing tastes in food –
remember fondue pots? – clothing styles or music. They have become
fads.”
Certain
breeds can experience sudden shifts in popularity that can sometimes be
traced to a single event, like the rise in popularity of Dalmatians
after the Disney movie 101 Dalmatians, Herzog said.
“More
often, however, there is no apparent single cause of swings in
popularity, such as the booms that occurred in Doberman pinschers, chow
chows and Saint Bernards. The popularity of some breeds can just take
off, much like a social epidemic.”
Herzog
said he and his colleagues have proven that most shifts in dog breed
popularity in the United States are due to “random drift,” a process in
which individuals copy other people’s choices. As a result, many breeds
become popular just by chance. Similar studies have linked random drift
to other cultural trends, including popular baby names and designs on
ancient pottery.
What
are the current most popular dogs? The most popular breed in 2003 was
the Labrador retriever, followed by the golden retriever, German
shepherd and beagle. Breeds increasing in numbers include the Havanese,
cavalier King Charles spaniel, Brussels griffon and French bulldog,
while the Dalmatian, chow chow, rottweiler, Akita and Pekinese are
declining.
Herzog
said the biggest surprise to him is that massive changes in breed
popularity can occur very quickly. Old English sheepdogs increased
10,000 percent in about a dozen years, and they can fall just as
quickly, he said. Dog breeds have become fashion and show evidence of
“behavioral contagion,” he said.
According
to Herzog, there has never been a similar study with dog breeds because
his group was the first to put the AKC data into a computerized form
that could be looked at systematically, though there are studies that
have looked at other types of cultural changes using similar
mathematical models.
Herzog
especially enjoyed the interdisciplinary nature of the research project
– the fact that a psychologist, geneticist and archaeologist could work
together to examine one topic.
“It
raised my thinking about the relationship between biology, sociology
and psychology and the ways they can come together,” he said.
He also credits the Internet with helping their effort succeed.
“With e-mail we have virtually instant communication,” he said. “It’s not really necessary to meet.”
Their next project? A look at the geography of dog breed popularity.
What
kind of dog resides with the Herzog family? America’s popular choice –
a Labrador, a fact that did not surprise Herzog at all.
“Labs are great dogs: They’re good with kids, even-tempered, smart and playful – and they have low-maintenance coats.”
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