Dogs and All About Them | Page 4

The silver fox of North America is the only species
recorded to have bred in the Zoological Gardens of London; the
European fox has never been known to breed in captivity. Then, again,
the fox is not a sociable animal. We never hear of foxes uniting in a
pack, as do the wolves, the jackals, and the wild dogs. Apart from other
considerations, a fox may be distinguished from a dog, without being
seen or touched, by its smell. No one can produce a dog that has half
the odour of Reynard, and this odour the dog-fox would doubtless
possess were its sire a fox-dog or its dam a vixen.
Whatever may be said concerning the difference existing between dogs
and foxes will not hold good in reference to dogs, wolves, and jackals.
The wolf and the jackal are so much alike that the only appreciable
distinction is that of size, and so closely do they resemble many dogs in
general appearance, structure, habits, instincts, and mental endowments
that no difficulty presents itself in regarding them as being of one stock.
Wolves and jackals can be, and have repeatedly been, tamed. Domestic
dogs can become, and again and again do become, wild, even
consorting with wolves, interbreeding with them, assuming their
gregarious habits, and changing the characteristic bark into a dismal
wolf-like howl. The wolf and the jackal when tamed answer to their
master's call, wag their tails, lick his hands, crouch, jump round him to
be caressed, and throw themselves on their backs in submission. When
in high spirits they run round in circles or in a figure of eight, with their
tails between their legs. Their howl becomes a business-like bark. They
smell at the tails of other dogs and void their urine sideways, and lastly,
like our domestic favourites, however refined and gentlemanly in other
respects, they cannot be broken of the habit of rolling on carrion or on
animals they have killed.

This last habit of the domestic dog is one of the surviving traits of his
wild ancestry, which, like his habits of burying bones or superfluous
food, and of turning round and round on a carpet as if to make a nest
for himself before lying down, go far towards connecting him in direct
relationship with the wolf and the jackal.
The great multitude of different breeds of the dog and the vast
differences in their size, points, and general appearance are facts which
make it difficult to believe that they could have had a common ancestry.
One thinks of the difference between the Mastiff and the Japanese
Spaniel, the Deerhound and the fashionable Pomeranian, the St.
Bernard and the Miniature Black and Tan Terrier, and is perplexed in
contemplating the possibility of their having descended from a
common progenitor. Yet the disparity is no greater than that between
the Shire horse and the Shetland pony, the Shorthorn and the Kerry
cattle, or the Patagonian and the Pygmy; and all dog breeders know
how easy it is to produce a variety in type and size by studied selection.
In order properly to understand this question it is necessary first to
consider the identity of structure in the wolf and the dog. This identity
of structure may best be studied in a comparison of the osseous system,
or skeletons, of the two animals, which so closely resemble each other
that their transposition would not easily be detected.
The spine of the dog consists of seven vertebrae in the neck, thirteen in
the back, seven in the loins, three sacral vertebrae, and twenty to
twenty-two in the tail. In both the dog and the wolf there are thirteen
pairs of ribs, nine true and four false. Each has forty-two teeth. They
both have five front and four hind toes, while outwardly the common
wolf has so much the appearance of a large, bare-boned dog, that a
popular description of the one would serve for the other.
Nor are their habits different. The wolf's natural voice is a loud howl,
but when confined with dogs he will learn to bark. Although he is
carnivorous, he will also eat vegetables, and when sickly he will nibble
grass. In the chase, a pack of wolves will divide into parties, one
following the trail of the quarry, the other endeavouring to intercept its
retreat, exercising a considerable amount of strategy, a trait which is

exhibited by many of our sporting dogs and terriers when hunting in
teams.
A further important point of resemblance between the Canis lupus and
the Canis familiaris lies in the fact that the period of gestation in both
species is sixty-three days. There are from three to nine cubs in a wolf's
litter, and these are blind for twenty-one days. They are suckled for two
months, but at