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Why The Domestic Dog of the Bolivian Rainforest Took Its Present Form

By Craig Perdue

In traditional indigenous households of forested lowland Bolivia the domestic dog is ubiquitous. The reason is primarily usefulness as a hunter, more specifically its ability to locate and to hold game at bay. Though it’s often unappreciated, the dog’s service toward household and camp sanitation is also highly beneficial. I can’t help but be struck by their uniformity of physical appearance. They are rather slightly built, lanky, long-muzzled, with relatively long ears, as you can see in the following photograph.

Domestic Dog From a Chimané Settlement. To me, young and old alike have this young-ish appearance.

The indigenous Small-eared dog (Atelocynus microtis) bears some resemblance to these animals, though it is really a somewhat dog-like fox, It’s very doubtful that Atelocynus or the rainforest’s only other wild canid – the bushdog (Speothos venaticus) – are even capable of hybridizing with the domestic dogs; whose physical appearance has much more in common with the Canaan Dog, say, and Pharoh Hound. I do not know of any case where such a hybridization occurred, much less one that produced fertile offspring. But the history of interaction between these indigenous animals and humans bears on the story of why the domestic forest dog took its present form.

Descola (1986) writes of the Achuar of Ecuador and Peru that “the Achuar maintain that the Speothos is practically untamable …. The hound hunts for its masters, while the bush dog always hunts for itself.”[1] If this is so, then it is quite likely a strong reason why the present domestic dogs of the rainforest have become so successful in terms of frequency: they would have void as a hunting aid for humans. However, my observations of captive individuals, of Speothos at least, lead me to believe that they are eminently tamable, and there is at least one first hand account confirming this.[2] It is the fact that Atelocynus and Speothos are very rarely encountered by human beings that could also, I am sure, make an impression on a people like the Achuar that these animals are not available to human-kind. It could well be that on this basis they are therefore regarded as strictly elements of nature, not wanting to associate with humans, and therefore not domesticatable. Granting for the sake of argument that they are domesticatable, it still remains that the capture or serendipitous adoption of these animals would have been very difficult and rare indeed. Therefore, their continuing use as hunting aids would have been a very formidable challenge (made worse by the problems their husbandry presents).

A better prospect for adoption/adaptation by pre-Columbian indigenes would be among the truly fox-like foxes of South America. The only species to really thrive in the forest is the Crab-eating Fox (Dusicyon thous), and it is much more abundant and accessible than Atelocynus or Speothos. Contrary to their name, they are not specialized feeders and eat the whole range of the typical fox diet. In the nineteenth century, Ignacio de Armas mentions the existence of “mute” dogs in the Americas, and, since foxes are not nearly as prone to bark or yip as our domestic dogs, this observation lends credibility (however minor) on the conjecture that Dusicyon may have been a teammate with humans prior to the Spanish invasions.[3] However, consider,

Some modern breeds or local populations of dogs do not bark normally (Eskimo dog, Basenji dog of Africa), and nonbarkers or their descendents learn to bark in association with barkers. Hence, it seems best to conclude now, in respect to these early Neotropical “mute” dogs, that they were local populations of one or of several breeds which, through severe conditioning …were nonbarkers. Barking, and even howling, may have been sternly suppressed by severe punishment as a precaution against disclosing hidden villages to human marauders.[4]

Gilmore nonetheless goes on to say that some of these non-barking dogs may well have been tame foxes or bush dogs. His alternate explanation of the dogs’ muteness, however, does not seem very plausible in light of the fact that, even for skilled modern trainers, training domestic hunting dogs not to bark is extremely difficult in the absence of electronic technology. (Even with electronic aids, it is skill rather than severe punishment that will produce results, rather than a break-down of the animal.) That indigenes would have had the skill and dispensable time resources for such a project is a proposition I very much doubt. It seems (to me) therefore that any non-barking tendencies would have been by natural inclination. And an animal like Dusicyon would have been so inclined.

However, there truly is a fly in the ointment for this rather romantic view concerning Dusicyon: though social in pairs, Dusicyon is not particularly social as a hunter. I am not sure how serious this problem is since I do not know what can be done with this animal through domestication. Dusicyon is versatile and intelligent and the question is, for me at least, an open one. It could well be that further research would be needed to settle it. It is intriguing that Gilmore makes reference to a seventeenth century work by Oviedo that he thinks reports the taming or domestication of an animal corresponding closely to Dusicyon.[5] And it does seem that since they were tamed on a widespread enough basis to have been noticed by different explorers, it is likely that they had a use to serve (like hunting). Even if it were not used for hunting, an animal like Dusicyon could well have played a ground-breaking function for the development of the use of more dog-like canids. An animal like Dusicyon may have been adopted, initially as pets perhaps. If so, they would have quickly demonstrated a very important function that domestic canines can play: the clean-up of food debris in the living area which would have otherwise attracted animal pests or begun to decay. And this alone may have been enough to spur the use of another canid, like the Techichi, for more interactive purposes (like hunting).

However this is resolved, it will remain a fact that the present domestic dog of the Bolivian rainforest is clearly quite dog-like. It is a dog, and not a fox (I won’t digress to describe the difference). But there is plenty of evidence that indigenous Americans had dogs long before first contact with Europeans. Initially, these animals very probably were Asiatic wolves or their direct descendents, having migrated from Asia with the first human arrivals to the Americas 12,000 years ago at the very least.[6] They were smaller than North American wolves, which have been more challenging to tame. Subsequent to their introduction to the Americas, these animals developed variously, and Allen distinguishes 17 breeds of domestic dog which he calls “American aboriginal dogs,” dogs present in the Americas before and independent of introductions from Europe.[7]

Allen attempts to solidify the nomenclature for a dog of “fox-like appearance” noticed by many of the early explorers as the “Techichi,” a type of dog described by Francisco Hernandez, who died in 1578. Hernandez’s description is obscure: “The third sort of dog, however, is called Techichi, and is … of sad countenance, though in other respects like ordinary dogs. It is eaten by the Indians. This then is briefly what I have to say of the dogs of Mexico”[8] In fact, all of the dogs I have seen in rainforested Bolivia do have a forlorn demeanor, and I wonder about how large an extent this is due to the harsh treatment I have generally observed that they receive. In any case, Hernandez’s description is telling if not much to go on in order to somehow link these dogs with the dogs of present-day forested Bolivia. The only other real evidence I know to make such a link comes from archeological remains. Very much like the present-day domestic forest dogs, Allen points out that there are remains of dogs indicating “a small light-limbed animal, with slender muzzle abruptly narrowed in front of the third premolar. Although the surface of the brain-case in adults is roughened for muscular attachment the sagittal crest does not develop until old age. All the teeth are small (upper carnassial 14-16.5 mm in length) the nasals long, and the skull normal, in that it seems not shortened or broadened in any way, the teeth are not crowded. A transverse line at the end of the palate falls about through the middle of the second molar.” As for the sites where these remains were collected, Allen cites Peru and Surinam. He also points out that such remains have also been found in mounds, burials, or refuse deposits in Ohio and the American southwest.

It is worth noting that if this interpretation of Allen is correct, Gilmore (1947), after citing Allen’s work, goes on to contradict the description of Techichi presented here, though he does not seem to offer reasons for his characterization. Even relatively modern research introduces confusion into the discussion of the origins of the domestic rainforest dogs as we find them today.

An alternate theory to the Techichi account above, my favorite, is that Techichi bred with European greyhound-like hunting dogs first introduced by the Spanish, and it is this that we see reflected in what we generally observe. Even if I am right about this, these dogs still retain all of the features Allen identifies as primitive: medium size, erect wolf-like ears, unshortened snout, drooping and moderately haired tail, low forehead, and reluctance to bark.[9]

Much, much more doubtful is that the modern dogs are a product of interbreeding between the Spanish imports and Dusicyon, due to genetic incompatibilities between the two. Obviously, it is even more incredible that the dogs of present are strictly derived from indigenous wild species like Dusicyon over the millennia, so that they, coincidentally, can breed with other domestic dogs from elsewhere but no longer with indigenous animals. Whether Techichi and Dusicyon interbred is a more open and viable question, though pretty doubtful on the face of it.

The account above involving Techichi, with or without modifications introduced by interbreeding European dogs, has us expect that at the time of the first Spanish incursions there was already a coexistence of humans and dogs in rainforested Bolivia. This general understanding is pressed, however, by observations attributed to Steward by Schwartz: “Before the Europeans arrived, groups on the margins of the vast rainforest possessed dogs, but there is no evidence that people in the interior ever had them.”[10] In an annotation, she further relates that she “does not know of any evidence of the dog in the pre-conquest faunal remains from the Amazon proper, further indication that dogs had not penetrated very far into the South American rainforest.” If this is so, it favors an account of the modern rainforest dogs as products of the Spanish imports, or Spanish imports crossed with a Techichi not inhabiting the forest.

It is almost certainly true that cohabitation with domestic dogs was spotty between major rivers. Here access to efficient travel and interchange with other people in a region was severely limited. However, it is unwarranted to conclude that dogs were not present at all in these areas on the basis of a lack of remains. Of course, almost anything organic decays very rapidly in the rainforest. Further, peoples in these areas were very limited in their subsistence resource options compared to people in riverine settlements, and therefore they tended much more to be nomadic or semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers. These societies did not construct large permanent settlements, developed by buildings, and, so, we ought to expect any remains there to have been forsaken to the forest. Notice should also be made that hunter-gatherer societies would have had an even greater need for dogs (for hunting) than people with the luxuries of crops and fish. As for riverine people, hunting still comprised a very significant dietary source, and their superior access to interchange with other people would likely have exposed them to the availability of dogs. In this case though, too, the rains, heat, and biological catalysts would have worked drastically to decompose remains, no less so than in the hinterlands.

References

1 Descola, P. In the Society of Nature. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. 1986: 235.

2 Bates, M. The Land and Wildlife of South America. New York, N.Y.: Time. 1964: 82-83.

3 Ignacio de Armas. La zoologia de colon y de los primeros exloradores de America. 1888: 32-34.

4 Gilmore, R. in Handbook of South American Indians. New York, N.Y.: Cooper Square Pub. 1963: 6: 425-426.

5 Gilmore: 377-378.

6 See Thurston, Mary. The Lost History of the Canine Race. Kansas City, Kansas: Andrews and McMeel. 1996: 147. It’s worth noting that although interbreeding between these animals and the North American wolf certainly did occur, there seems to be no good reason to think that the North American wolf played a significant role with respect to the modern domesticated dog of the South American rainforest.

7 Allen, G. Dogs of the American Aborigines. Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard College. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 1920: LXIII (no. 9): 482.

8 See quotation from Francisco Hernandez in N.A. Recchi and J.T. Lynceus. Rerum medicarum novae hispaniae thesaurus seu plantarum, animalum, mineralium Mexicanorum. Historia ex Francisci Hernandez…collecta, etc. 1651.

9 Allen, 437.

10 Schwartz, Marion. A History of Dogs in the Early Americas. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. 1997: 40.