About the Work
Man Meets Dog is a wide-ranging study of the origins, behavior, and psychology of domestic animals, written by the Austrian zoologist and ethologist Konrad Lorenz. The book blends scientific observation with personal anecdote, drawing heavily on Lorenz’s own experiences with the dogs, cats, and other animals that shared his home in Altenberg, Austria, as well as his academic work in comparative psychology. The text moves fluidly between speculative prehistory, detailed behavioral analysis, and affectionate memoir, presenting its arguments through vivid narratives of individual animals rather than abstract scientific exposition. Lorenz writes as both a trained scientist and a lifelong animal keeper, and the book reflects this dual perspective throughout.
“Few men have contributed more to the modern study of animal behaviour than Dr Konrad Lorenz.”
The work is grounded in Lorenz’s observations of his own animals—dogs of various breeds, cats, a lemur, monkeys, and others—and in his broader knowledge of zoology and animal behavior. It also draws on historical and archaeological material to reconstruct the early relationship between humans and domestic animals, particularly dogs and cats. The book is written in an accessible, conversational style, with frequent digressions, humorous asides, and literary references, yet it consistently returns to serious scientific questions about instinct, learning, and the nature of the bond between humans and animals.
Context
Lorenz was a pioneer in the field of ethology, the biological study of animal behavior, and is particularly associated with the concept of imprinting. His work on animal behavior was conducted against the backdrop of major developments in comparative psychology and evolutionary theory in the mid-twentieth century. The book reflects the intellectual climate of its time, when scientists were increasingly interested in understanding behavior as an evolved trait shaped by natural selection, rather than as a purely learned or conditioned response.
The author’s personal circumstances also shape the book. Lorenz writes from the perspective of someone who lived through the upheavals of the Second World War, including time spent as a prisoner of war in Russia. Several of the dogs he describes were acquired or lost during this turbulent period, and the disruptions of war—separations, relocations, and the constant threat of loss—recur throughout his accounts of his relationships with his animals. This historical context gives the book an underlying seriousness, even as its tone remains warm and often humorous.
The book also engages with contemporary debates about dog breeding and the relationship between physical form and mental character. Lorenz is critical of the fashionable breeding practices of his day, which he sees as prioritizing appearance over temperament and intelligence. He writes as an advocate for working strains and mixed breeds, and his views on these matters are informed by his scientific understanding of heredity and by his practical experience with many different dogs.
Structure of the Book
The book is organized as a series of chapters that progress from the ancient history of domestication to practical advice on training and care, interspersed with extended case studies of individual animals. The opening chapters are speculative and historical, reconstructing the likely process by which jackals first attached themselves to human bands and eventually became domestic dogs. Lorenz imagines the first feeding of a jackal by early humans, the gradual taming of successive generations, and the eventual adoption of dogs into human dwellings. He also traces the very different history of the cat, which was domesticated much later and under different circumstances, beginning with its sacred status in ancient Egypt.
Following this historical introduction, the book turns to the psychological foundations of the dog’s attachment to humans. Lorenz distinguishes between two distinct origins of canine fidelity: the lifelong preservation of youthful dependence on a parent figure, and the loyalty of a pack member to its leader. He explores how these two tendencies manifest differently in dogs with more jackal ancestry compared to those with more wolf ancestry, and he illustrates these differences through detailed portraits of his own animals.
The middle sections of the book are devoted to what might be called the practical ethics and technique of dog-keeping. Lorenz discusses training methods, offering general principles and specific advice on commands such as “lie down,” “basket,” and walking to heel. He emphasizes the importance of understanding the dog’s point of view and of avoiding punishment that the dog cannot connect to its offense. He also addresses the question of choosing a dog, offering guidance on selecting puppies and bitches, and he makes an extended appeal to breeders to prioritize mental qualities over physical perfection.
Later chapters examine the social behavior of dogs in detail, using a series of observed encounters to illustrate the subtle expressions and rituals by which dogs communicate dominance, submission, friendliness, and fear. Lorenz analyzes the “chivalry” that male dogs show toward females and puppies, and he discusses the enmity that exists between wolf-strain and jackal-strain dogs. He also explores the remarkable “truce” that can exist between dogs and other species within a household, describing how he taught his own dogs to tolerate cats and other animals.
The book concludes with reflections on the relationship between master and dog, the ways in which dogs come to resemble their owners, and the deeper significance of the human-animal bond. Throughout, Lorenz moves freely between scientific analysis and personal reminiscence, so that the structure of the book follows the contours of his own experience and thinking rather than a rigid academic outline.
Inside the Book
The First Feeding of a Jackal
The story begins in a time before dogs existed, with a band of early humans camped in the wild. The leader of the band smiles as he hears jackals fighting over scraps of meat, and he signals his companions to continue what they are doing. One man, slower to grasp the leader’s intention, finally understands: he takes nearly bare ribs, imitates the jackals’ barking, and lays the bones down away from the camp. The two men grin and burst into laughter like mischievous boys. That night, by the campfire, a jackal is seen gnawing the bones. It is apprehensive but continues to feast as no one moves. This is an epoch-making event: the first time a useful animal has been fed by man. The humans sleep with a feeling of safety.
Many generations pass. Jackals become tamer and bolder, surrounding camps in larger packs. Men now hunt wild horses and stags, and the strongest jackals have become diurnal, following hunting expeditions. Hunters track a pregnant wild mare lamed by a spear. The mare lays a false trail by doubling back and turning into bushes, baffling the hunters. The jackals follow the humans’ trail, not the mare’s, as she is too large a prey for them alone. However, they have associated blood trails with food. The old, grey-muzzled bitch, the potential pack leader, notices the deflection of the blood trail that the humans missed. The jackals follow it independently; the hunters turn back, hear the jackals, and see their tracks. For the first time, the order is established: first the dog, then the man. The jackals are swifter and bring the mare to bay. A psychological mechanism is described: a hunted animal that flees man will defend itself against dogs, forgetting its more dangerous enemy in anger at smaller aggressors. The weary mare lashes out but does not flee. The hunters surround it. The pack leader, devoid of fear, barks furiously and buries her teeth in the mare’s throat when it is impaled, retreating only when the hunter leader approaches. This man, a descendant of the first to feed jackals, slits the mare’s belly and throws a portion of gut to the side of the animals—an act of intuitive tact. The grey pack-leader, after a moment of hesitation, takes the entrail. As she withdraws, her tail wags in short strokes from side to side—the first time a jackal has wagged its tail at a man. This is a step toward friendship. Such behavior is not acquired through sudden experience but through association built over many recurrences. Months passed before the bitch again led hunters, and perhaps a later descendant regularly led humans and brought game to bay.
The Turf-Dog of the Lake Dwellers
At the beginning of the later stone age, man made settlements. The first known houses were on pillars, built by lake dwellers in shallows for safety. The dog was already domesticated, as skulls of little Spitz-like turf-dogs, found among pillar dwelling remains on the Baltic Sea, show descent from the jackal and signs of domestication. There were no indigenous jackals on the Baltic coasts; man likely brought them as he advanced north and west. With pillar dwellings and the canoe, a basic change in relations occurred: water prevented jackals from surrounding camps. Man likely brought a few tamer specimens into the dwellings, making them house-dogs. Primitive dog-keeping involves many dogs loosely connected to a settlement; another type is the European village dog dependent on one master. The latter likely evolved with pillar dwellings. In-breeding in small numbers favored hereditary domestication. The turf-dog, with a shorter muzzle and domed skull, is a domesticated jackal form, found almost exclusively in lake dweller settlements. These dogs must have been tame enough to enter a canoe or swim.
The taming of the dog may have occurred before or with the building of pillar dwellings. The passage imagines a little girl ‘playing dolls’ raising an orphaned puppy, perhaps the sole survivor of a litter taken by a sabre-toothed tiger. She finds the puppy, cuddles it, and feeds it, imitating women. Her parents find a sleepy jackal pup; the father wants to drown it, but the weeping daughter clasps his knee, and the pup is allowed to stay. The dog grows strong, transferring its allegiance from the child to the father, who represents the pack leader. The man finds the attachment tiresome but realizes the tame dog is more useful for hunting than half-wild jackals, being more courageous due to its sheltered life. The dog becomes the man’s companion, to the daughter’s chagrin. In spring, the father brings home a skin bag with four puppies, to the daughter’s joy, though the mother grimaces, thinking two would have been enough.
The passage admits uncertainty about whether it happened exactly so. It is not known if exclusively the golden jackal (Canis aureus) attached itself to man. Various larger, wolf-like jackal species may have become domesticated and interbred. A strong argument is that pariah dogs do not mingle with wild Canis aureus; Mr Shebbeare noted localities in the near East where both abound yet never intermingle. The northern wolf is not the ancestor of most domestic dogs. A few breeds—Eskimo dogs, Samoyeds, Russian Lajkas, Chowchows—originate from the extreme north and are mainly, though not entirely, wolf-descended. Man likely brought jackal-blooded dogs north, where they crossed with wolf-blooded animals.
In contrast, the cat has only recently become domesticated. The dog dates back forty to sixty thousand years; the first feeding of a jackal about 50,000 years ago, and the first adoption of a dog in a pillar dwelling about 20,000 years ago.
The Cat’s Sacred Origins and Slow Spread
Research into domestic cat history reveals the cat was revered in ancient Egypt not for its own sake but as a symbol of the lioness, which was sacred to the goddess Basd. The priests of Basd chose a smaller, more tractable animal than a lioness for their ceremonies—Lorenz jokes that perhaps a lioness had once eaten a portly Basd priest on a ceremonial occasion. Lorenz finds appealing the thought of the cat as a miniature edition of the royal beast of prey; for him, the cat’s charm lies in displaying, within his home, the unbroken wildness and subtle grace shared with the panther, jaguar, and tiger.
Those who have known an African wild cat intimately will doubt that much effort would be needed to domesticate it—it is “a born domestic animal.” Captive adult European wild cats (Felis silvestris) are completely untameable, and even those caught young remain permanently wild. However, even adult African wild cats become tame quickly without particular effort, so that a cage soon seems unnecessary cruelty. In many zoological gardens, a captive African cat later became a keeper’s favourite and “took on the job” of house cat. Lorenz knows of no really wild or shy African cat, nor any really tame European wild cat.
The ancient Egyptians put the cat under legislative protection—imposing the death penalty for killing one. Consequently, sacred cats lost all fear of man within a few generations and became as obtrusively tame as the sacred cows of Hindus today. If humped cattle are so sure of invulnerability that they invade street stalls and devour fruit, the far cleverer sacred cats must have exploited Egypt’s “flesh pots” even more quickly, though hopefully not neglecting mouse-catching duties. The cat’s independence connects to the slow appearance of physical domestication signs. Though the cat was proclaimed a sacred temple animal in about the fifth or sixth dynasty, only in feline mummies of the twelfth and thirteenth dynasties do slight signs of domestication mutations appear: appreciable ear structure alterations and colour changes. The skull began showing doming of temporal parts and shortening of nasal regions—features that had typified the turf-dog tens of thousands of years earlier. Even today, cats not bred to a particular ideal show little progress in domestication mutations; thin, long-legged, short-haired cats with tiger markings, found in Central Europe, bear amazing resemblance to Falbkatze cats.
Though widely distributed in Egypt since early times, the cat took incredibly long to reach other lands. Most ancient European writers knew next to nothing about it. Plutarch first tells us, in the first century A.D., of the cat’s advent to Europe—curiously mentioning the weasel alongside it as a useful animal kept exclusively for destroying mice. The weasel had evidently not yet been supplanted by the more easily kept household cat. Distribution proceeded extraordinarily slowly: in the laws of Howell Dhu of Wales (about A.D. 1000), regulations set cat prices and buyer’s rights.
Choosing the Right Spot for “Lie Down”
Lorenz begins with practical advice on the command “lie down,” emphasizing that the master must first consider where the dog itself would naturally choose to rest. Forcing a dog to lie in the middle of a crowded footpath, exposed and without cover, causes genuine mental suffering, because the dog perceives such a place as entirely unsuitable for rest. A quiet corner, preferably sheltered beneath a seat, is far better. This seemingly minor detail matters because “lying down” is not a trivial act but a strenuous task requiring considerable mental effort from the animal. Lorenz insists that strict training is not cruelty; on the contrary, it enriches the dog’s life by allowing it to accompany its master almost anywhere.
For very intelligent dogs, the strict laws of training may be relaxed over time. Lorenz’s own dog Stasi, a “past master” at lying down, understood that he did not expect her to maintain her rigid “sphinx-like pose” indefinitely when guarding his bicycle. She would lie down on command initially, but if Lorenz watched her secretly through a window, he would see her later moving about within a small radius of a few yards. However, when they were visiting and she was told to lie in a room’s corner, she never moved an inch. She understood the reason behind each command. A compromise developed between them: without his bicycle or briefcase present, she would wait about ten minutes and then simply go home without him; but with his belongings present, she would have waited “till the day of judgment.”
Stasi’s Self-Appointed Duty
Stasi attained such perfection in her training that she would put herself on duty without being asked. While in Posen, she had puppies sired by the Dingo at the Königsberg Zoo, her earlier union with a Siberian wolf having proved fruitless. A doctor friend lent her the kennel of his Alsatian, which had been stolen. Stasi stayed with her puppies for three days. On the fourth day, Lorenz found her at the hospital where he worked, lying calmly beside his bicycle. His attempts to return her to her puppies failed completely; she insisted on “going on duty.” Twice daily she ran several streets back to feed her puppies, returning within half an hour to resume her post by the bicycle.
The “Basket” Command
The “basket” command is the indoor equivalent of “lying down.” Lorenz notes that the command “Go away” cannot be understood by even the cleverest dog, because “away” is an abstract concept. One must indicate concretely where the dog should go. The basket need not be a real object—it simply means a fixed place to which the dog retires on order and from which it must not leave without permission. One should choose a corner the dog already prefers. Dogs, like children, can disturb adult conversation, and a dog trained to leave people alone when told earns general approval from all present.
Walking to Heel
The third drill, walking to heel, makes a dog a pleasanter companion and can make a lead superfluous. It is harder to achieve than the previous two commands and requires frequent repetition. Training consists of making the dog walk on the lead close beside the master’s left or right side, always the same side, with its head level with the master’s legs, matching the master’s pace. Few dogs hold back; most run too far forward and require correction by a jerk on the lead or a tap on the nose. When the master turns, the dog must turn too, best achieved by stooping and pressing the dog to one’s side with the free hand. Lorenz quotes a German verse: “Not art and science alone, / Patience must be with the work.”
Two orders must be complied with: calling the dog to heel and releasing it. The release is the harder of the two. For “Lie down,” the release “Come here” is easily understood, but “Go on” releasing from heel is not. One should stand still, say “Go on,” and wait. The dog must never stray from heel on its own initiative. A clever dog notices whether it is on the lead and may ignore commands when the lead is first removed, so a thin, light lead is advisable. Stasi early in her training responded to “Heel” with a lead on, whether held or not, regardless of distance; without the lead she felt “free” and ignored the command entirely. Even trained dogs need occasional “refresher” sessions on the lead. Stasi soon forgot the command’s meaning, but it became unnecessary: in emergencies she kept perfectly to heel, coming voluntarily in dense traffic and following the author’s every step through wartime station crowds, her neck’s right side pressed against his left knee.
When tempted—as in farmyards with clacking hens and bleating lambs frightened by “the red wolf”—she pressed against his left knee, quivering, nostrils extended, ears cocked, straining against an “invisible lead.” Lorenz notes she could not have discovered this use without mastering the practice’s rules in youth, but he is pleased that a lesson can be executed not only with slavish exactitude but with “creative” variation.
Canine Customs: An Introduction
The chapter “Canine Customs” opens with a Burns epigraph: “Wi’ social nose whyles snuff’d and snowkit.” Lorenz explains that animal communication differs completely from human word language, referencing his earlier book King Solomon’s Ring and its chapter on the “Language of animals.” Animal signals are not individually acquired conventions but innate instinctive norms. Animal “language” is more conservative, fixed, and binding than human customs. Canine ceremonial laws—determining the behavior of stronger and weaker, dogs and bitches—are firmly anchored in hereditary behavior patterns and resemble transmitted human customs. The chapter heading refers to this analogy. Lorenz avoids abstract enunciation of laws, instead depicting living effects through everyday examples, turning first to ranking order behavior.
Wolf and Rolf’s Encounter
Wolf I visits his wife Senta and their grown-up children on the terrace. He greets Senta—both wag their tails, and she licks the corners of his mouth and pushes him fondly with her nose. Wolf then approaches one of his sons, who approaches gladly, shoves him with his nose, but blocks Wolf’s attempts to sniff his hindquarters by drawing his wagging tail between his legs. The young dog’s back is arched, bearing a servile posture, yet he shows no fear, importuning his father with nuzzling and attempts to lick his mouth corners. The old dog adopts no self-assertive attitude but holds himself stiffly and dignified, almost embarrassed: he turns his head away from the licking pup and raises his nose high. As the pup becomes more persistent, a slight crease of disapproval crosses the father’s face. The young dog’s forehead is smooth and widely stretched, making the retracted eye angles appear slit-like and depressed. The pup’s expressions match those of a very obedient dog greeting its master—anthropomorphically, a compromise between fear and loving approach to a superior.
Susi Mistaken for Wolf
In the village, Susi meets a year-old cross-bred Collie-Alsatian, son of Rolf. He mistakes her for Wolf, of whom he is terrified, and takes fright. Dogs have poor eyesight and distinguish only rough outlines at distance; since Wolf is the only Chow in the district, Susi is often mistaken for him. Her early-developed impertinence stems from the deference she inspires by this error, which she ascribes to her own ferocity. Dogs have little color sense—Wolf is red, Susi blue-grey, yet they are confused.
The young dog flees but Susi overtakes him. He stands humbly with lowered ears and distended forehead; the eight-month-old bitch wags her tail superciliously, tries sniffing his hind parts, but he draws his tail between his legs and turns, presenting only breast and head. He then realizes she is not the dreaded male but a pleasant female. He stretches his neck, raises his tail, and advances with dancing fore-paws. His face still shows deference, but this subsides into the “politeness look”—differing from the “deference look” in ear position and mouth corners: ears laid back and flattened, sometimes pressed so tightly the points touch; mouth corners drawn back but tilted upward, producing a laughing expression. This look precedes an invitation to play; slightly opened jaws revealing tongue and tilted mouth corners stretching almost ear to ear strengthen the laughing impression. This “laughing” appears in dogs playing with adored masters, becoming excited until panting starts—possibly preliminary signs of panting. Erotically tinged play often produces “laughing” and heavy panting.
The dog laughs more, dances harder, springs against Susi, pushes her breast with fore-paws, then twists and dashes off—back arched deferentially, hindquarters drawn in, tail pressed between legs, yet executing friendly playful leaps with wagging tail. He stops, turns, stands with a broad grin, raises his tail high enough for joyful wagging involving the back half of his body.
The Truce at Home
The author begins by contrasting his own dog, Ali—a tousled creature with a scarred, askew ear—with the well-trimmed show dogs of Vienna. While these show beauties would win prizes, they cringe before dogs that would flee from Ali. He laments that few Scotties remain that do not fear a St Bernard and would attack a man threatening their owner. He questions breeders about whether it is worth breeding from a faithful, courageous dog even if it fares poorly in physical points compared to “well-proportioned triumphs of modern hairdressing.”
He observes that it is remarkably easy to teach dogs, even confirmed hunters, not to touch other animals in the same house. He introduces new animals to his dogs within his study, noting that a dog’s hunting lust, not fighting lust, is diminished at home, as his dogs were aggressive toward strange dogs entering their rooms. He never takes his dogs to others’ homes out of consideration, partly because a strange dog triggers leg-lifting, which marks territory, warning off intruders via scent. A well-trained dog abstains from this marking at home, but a strange dog’s presence dispels inhibitions, causing the dog to lift his leg against furniture, to the owner’s disgust.
This pacifism at home applies only to prey, not the dog’s own kind. The author suggests an age-old inhibition exists, citing hawks not hunting near their eyries, wood-pigeons nesting near hawk’s eyries, sheldrake nesting in fox earths, and wolves allowing young roe-deer to grow up near their dens. He believes this “cease-fire” law makes house-dogs peaceable toward other species at home.
Bully and Thomas I
The inhibition is not absolute. The author recalls bringing home his first kitten, Thomas I, and teaching his dog, Bully, a French bulldog and keen cat-hunter, that the kitten was tabu. Bully rushed up, whining and wagging his tail, expecting to shake the kitten to death, as the author had previously given him stuffed toys. The author repeated “No-o-o-o,” and Bully, sighing, ignored the kitten. Bully’s longing persisted, shown by excited trampling when the author picked up the kitten. The author realized that killing in a beast of prey is free from hatred, comparing it to his own feelings toward boiled ham. He notes prey is not a “friend” to the killer, and only beings unaware that prey are like themselves can kill without blame.
He references Jack London’s Arctic novel, describing wolves with “innocent face of greed” as they circle a helpless hero, their threatening expressions replaced by friendly, anticipatory faces with pricked ears, signaling they see him as a meal. The author says his own features would look benevolent from the boiled ham’s viewpoint.
Bully never killed the cat but defended it against other dogs, likely thinking, “If I am not allowed to kill this wretched cat in my own house, then certainly no other dog is going to!” The kitten showed no fear of Bully, indicating cats lack instinctive understanding of dog facial expressions. The kitten provoked Bully by approaching and fleeing, causing shivers in the dog. Cats friendly with dogs may show trust toward strange dogs, leading to ruin. Similarly, cat-friendly dogs rarely understand an angry cat’s threats, despite similar growling.
The author took his seven-month-old Chow bitch, Susi, to visit a large Persian cat, which growled and arched its back. Susi approached friendly, received a cuff and a box on the nose, sneezed, and turned away. After weeks, Bully’s attitude changed. One day, Thomas approached and fled; Bully chased him under the sofa. The author notes tail-wagging does not always mean friendliness, as Bully wagged when biting enemies. Thomas then attacked Bully, digging claws into his neck and face, mimicking a lion killing a buffalo, as in a Wilhelm Kuhnert painting. Bully played along, collapsing and emitting a death-rattle, then shook the kitten off. The author watched a delightful game, noting the contrast between the dog’s black body and the cat’s tiger-like form. He explains these movements concern killing prey, not fighting, and are never executed in battle. The cat’s actions—digging claws into a larger prey’s neck—are a genealogically ancient set of movements, retained hereditarily but manifested only in play.
Years later, after Thomas I’s death, the author watched a silver-tabby tom-cat perform “buffalo-killing movements” with his daughter, Dagmar. The cat tolerated the child carrying him, though his tail was trodden on. He never bit or scratched her but made her act as buffalo, ambushing and pouncing on her, never in earnest. The child yelled, also not in earnest. The author sees this as corroborating his theory that these movements are relics of former hunting habits, preceded by realistic stalking. Bully and Thomas’s friendship surpassed typical tolerance, greeting each other outdoors with lip sounds and tail-wags, though the author notes house-friendliness to cats does not guarantee the same outdoors.
Varying Relations Out of Doors
The author observes varying behavior of his dogs toward his cat in different settings. In his room, the dogs tolerate the lethargic cat, and the dog Susi plays with her charmingly; the cat shows no fear, steals their food, and plays “mouse” with the tips of their tails, though she is not vivacious enough for the “buffalo-killing game.” In other rooms, the cat is warier and avoids the dogs, tantalizing them from beneath low or atop high furniture. Out of doors, the cat shows definite fear, justifiably, as the dog Wolf shows unmistakable signs of wanting a cat hunt. Relations were even more strained between the dog Stasi and Dagmar’s wild silver-tabby tom-cat; Stasi ignored him indoors but hunted him outside so assiduously that when the cat disappeared, the author suspected Stasi.
The difficulty of controlling a dog’s hunting desires varies by species. Teaching a dog not to kill tame birds is easy, as illustrated by a poem quoted from “Beau’s reply” to his master Cowper, where Beau refrains from harming a linnet. However, imparting the same feeling for small mammals is extremely difficult. The most seductive small game is the rabbit. The author’s own dog Susi shows no interest in golden hamsters but craves the Jerboa that leaps about his room, which she is under strict orders not to touch. Years ago, the author introduced a tame young badger to his savage Alsatians, expecting it to release their hunting instincts. The opposite occurred: the badger approached them fearlessly, and the dogs, though sniffing it with caution, did not regard it as game but as an unusual member of their own kind. Within hours they played intimately, though the badger’s antics were too rough for his thinner-skinned playmates, who yelped. The dogs trusted the badger’s social inhibitions, allowing him to roll them, seize them by the throat, and “throttle” them as a friendly dog would.
Maxi the Lemur
The dogs’ behavior toward monkeys was peculiar. The author had to protect his lemurs, especially the attractive little Maxi, whom the dogs would hunt in the garden. This amused Maxi, whose favorite joke was to tweak a dog’s tail and swing into a tree, dangling her tail out of reach. Maxi’s relations with cats were equivocal, particularly with Bussy, mother of countless kittens. Maxi was a childless spinster (her first mate went blind, the second met with an accident) and envied Bussy’s motherhood. Maxi developed a tender affection for the kittens, like the author’s mother’s unmarried sister (Aunt Hedwig) had for the children. Bussy was mistrustful, so Maxi adopted a strategy to abduct a single kitten, holding it like a lemur mother presses her young. With three legs she could outrun and outclimb the cat. The hunt usually ended in a tree where Maxi indulged in an “orgy of child-nursing,” combing the kitten, which enjoyed it. The author tried to remove the kitten, fearing Maxi might drop it, though this never happened. An interesting question was how Maxi recognized a “baby”; it was not size, as she ignored adult mammals of similar dimensions. When the bitch Tito produced a litter, Maxi showed the same feeling for the puppies, even when they grew to twice her size. Tito allowed Maxi to work off her brood-tending instincts. When the author’s eldest son Thomas was born, Maxi sat beside his pram for hours. To the uninitiated, lemurs appear ghostly—with black face, protruding ears, pointed nose, projecting canines, and enormous amber-yellow nocturnal eyes. Old zoologists called them “the ghostly lemurs.”
The Dog’s Understanding of Human Speech
The narrator reflects on his dogs’ remarkable comprehension of human language, noting that while his Alsatian dogs possess a wide ability to understand and communicate, this faculty is even better developed in certain domesticated “jackal dogs.” He ranks the Poodle first for sagacity, followed by the Alsatian, certain Pinschers, and large Schnauzers. However, for his personal taste, these cleverer breeds have lost too much of the primitive nature of the beast of prey, lacking the wild charm that his more wolf-like dogs possess.
He firmly refutes the common fallacy that dogs understand only tone of voice, not articulation. He cites the animal psychologist Sarris, who proved with three Alsatians named Harris, Aris, and Paris that only the dog whose name was addressed would obey the command “Go to your basket,” even when the command was issued from another room, precluding any involuntary visual signals. The narrator suggests that word recognition may extend to whole sentences. Saying “I must go now” would bring his dogs Tito and Stasi to their feet regardless of his intonation, while the same words spoken in other contexts elicited no response whatsoever.
The record for understanding words was held by Affi, a large Schnauzer bitch belonging to the book’s co-illustrator. Affi reacted distinctly and appropriately to the words “Katzi” (kitten), “Spatzi” (sparrow), “Nazi” (the owner’s pet hedgehog, with no political meaning attached in those days), and “Eichkatzi” (squirrel). On hearing “Katzi,” her hackles rose and she sniffed the floor in anticipation of prey. She only chased sparrows in her youth. On “Nazi,” she would rush to a rubbish heap where another hedgehog lived, rummaging and giving a furious high-pitched yap. On “Eichkatzi,” she looked upward and dashed from tree to tree. She also understood hand signals and knew the names of at least nine people, never making a mistake.
The narrator argues that such feats seem incredible to laboratory psychologists because confined experimental animals have far fewer qualitatively differentiable experiences than a free dog accompanying its master through varied life. Linking a word to an uninteresting training feat is much harder than linking it to stimulating prey. The necessary “valencies” are simply absent in the laboratory setting. He describes a common dog behavior that any owner will recognize: if the owner says without special intonation, “I don’t know whether I’ll take him or not,” the dog dances with excitement. “I suppose I must take him out now” brings a resigned get-up. “I don’t think I’ll take him, after all” drops the ears. “I’ll leave him at home” makes the dog turn away dejectedly.
He admits he has never had a real friendship with a large anthropoid ape, but Mrs. Hayes has shown that such close social contact is possible. He believes the dog would prove better at understanding human talk than apes, despite the ape’s other intellectual feats. The dog is more “human” than the cleverest monkeys because, like man, it is domesticated, owing to this two properties: liberation from fixed instinctive behaviour, and persistent youthfulness—the root of the dog’s longing for affection and of man’s open-mindedness, which he illustrates with a Wordsworth quotation.
The Moral Responsibility of Dog Ownership
The narrator then discusses the moral responsibility that dog ownership entails, referencing a satirical story from “Snowshoe Al’s Bedtime Stories” in which a hero’s friend is shot after his feet freeze from saving him. He compares this to people who boast of their dogs but then casually admit they “had to get rid of him” due to moving house or changing jobs, seeing no disgrace in such betrayal. He states firmly that the fidelity of a dog demands binding moral responsibilities equal to those of human friendship.
He recounts acquiring the Hanoverian Schweisshund, Hirschmann, during a ski tour. The dog, owned by a head forester who preferred his old Deutscher Rauhaar, attached itself to the narrator. Finding the dog sleeping outside his door, he realized a great canine love was germinating. On his departure, the dog refused to be caught, communicating clearly “I’ll do anything at all for you—except leave you!” The narrator bought him for ten shillings. The dog then joyfully knocked him over on the icy road.
He risked his life to save his Alsatian, Bingo, who fell into the Danube at minus twenty-eight degrees Celsius. The narrator lay on the ice to pull the dog out, but the ice broke and he slid head-first into the water. Bingo reached firmer ice, and the narrator, using his hands, managed to escape.
He reflects on Nietzsche’s words about always loving more than the other, admitting that with a faithful dog, he is always the second. He finds this a strange, unique social relationship: man, with his reason and moral responsibility, falls short of carnivores in this respect. He is not sentimentalizing; even noble human love arises from deep instinctive feeling, not reason. He quotes Elizabeth Browning: “If thou must love me, let it be for nought / Except for love’s sake only.” His dogs would unhesitatingly fight a lion or tiger to protect him, and he feels shame that his dog loves him more than he loves it.
Finally, he discusses “dog days,” noting the North German synonym “Sauregurkenzeit” (sour cucumber time). For him, dog days are spent in exclusive company with his dog. He describes achieving an “animal nirvana”—a state of shutting off higher thinking powers, achieving at-oneness with nature while swimming in the Danube, a panacea for mental strain. He needs a dog with a wild exterior that does not spoil the landscape. He describes a morning expedition with his dog Susi, who recognizes the signs of a “dog day.” She trots proudly, flirts briefly with the grocer’s dog, and leads the way.
Susi’s Mousing Meadow
The passage opens with the narrator walking barefoot through a village street still in shade, then onto a warm dusty path toward a river. Crickets, cicadas, a golden oriole, and a black-cap sing, indicating that summer is still young. The narrator’s dog, Susi, a Chow bitch described as resembling “a rather too fat blue Arctic fox,” leaves the path at a special “mousing” meadow. Her trot changes to a stiff-legged slink with head held high, tail stretched low behind her. She performs her characteristic mouse jumps—semicircular leaps about a yard high and two yards forward—landing on stiffly outstretched forepaws and biting into the grass. When she misses, she looks questioningly at the narrator with wagging tail, showing shame; when successful, she shows pride. Voles prove quick and agile, evading several leaps.
Susi finally catches a vole, producing a high-pitched squeak. She shakes it, drops it, then seizes it again with only her incisors. She shows the “big, fat, distorted fieldmouse” to the narrator, who praises her as “a most terrifying, awe-inspiring animal.” The narrator admits sorrow for the vole but feels bound to share his friend’s triumphs. His conscience eases when Susi eats the vole, as eating “vindicates” the killing. She chews it to a formless mass, then swallows it whole, after which she suggests they proceed.
Crossing the Danube
The narrator undresses and hides his clothes and fishing tackle near the river. They follow an overgrown tow-path through golden rod, nettles, and blackberry bushes. The damp heat is unbearable; Susi pants at his heels, indifferent to hunting. At a shingle bank, Susi plunges into the water, lying down breast-high with only her head visible. The narrator wades out; Susi, never having crossed the Danube, whines nervously. When she must swim, she is carried downstream. The narrator swims too, though the water is shallow for him. He notes that a dog swimming alongside its master shows intelligence—many dogs fail to grasp that a man swims horizontally and scratch their master’s back trying to stay behind his head. Susi understands immediately and avoids approaching from behind.
Susi’s anxiety peaks as she rears up to look back at the departing bank. She nearly turns back but settles, swimming beside the narrator. She swims faster than he can maintain, repeatedly outstripping him and turning back. The narrator fears she might return to the home shore, since “for an animal in a state of apprehension the direction of home exerts a much stronger pull than any other.” Dogs also find it hard to alter course while swimming. He persuades her to continue, and her understanding of his encouragement proves her intelligence “well above the average.”
Landing on a steeper sandbank, Susi sways noticeably to and fro—a disturbance of balance the narrator has observed in himself after long swims and in other dogs, but never so markedly.
The Cat’s Defensive Display
Lorenz opens this section by examining the cat’s threat display when confronted by a dog or other dangerous predator. The cat does not merely cower; it stands on straight, stiff legs, making itself as tall as possible while ruffling the hair along its back and tail, holding the tail slightly to one side to increase its apparent size—a tactic Lorenz compares to the self-display of certain fishes. The ears flatten, the mouth corners pull backward, the nose wrinkles, and a low, metallic growl rises from the chest, culminating in a “spit”—a forced expiration through a wide-open throat that exposes the incisors. This is a purely defensive gesture, employed when the cat has no time to withdraw. If the dog ignores the warning and approaches, the cat attacks the moment the dog crosses a definite “critical distance,” hurling itself at the dog’s face and targeting the eyes and nose. If the dog flinches, the cat seizes the moment to flee. The attack is never meant to be a prolonged fight; it merely buys time for escape.
Maternal Defense and Tom-Cat Combat
There is one striking exception to this rule of defensive attack: a mother cat defending her young. She makes a prolonged, earnest attack, approaching from a distance with a peculiar galloping motion—up, down, and sideways—continually presenting her broadside to the enemy. This “broadsides gallop” with a laterally held tail appears in earnest only rarely, though it is common in the play of young cats; Lorenz has never seen it in mature tom-cats except in play. Suckling females display an absolute, unconditional readiness for self-sacrifice, making even the gentlest cat almost invincible. Large, notorious cat-killing dogs have capitulated before such attacks. Lorenz cites Ernest Seton Thompson’s account of a mother cat in Yellowstone Park who put a bear to flight, pursuing it until it climbed a tree in terror.
Male cat battles are entirely different. The opponents stand stiff-legged but without the hunched-back broadside posture, positioned head to head, growling and screaming, with swishing tails. They stand like statues for many minutes, each trying to break the other’s morale—a contest of “who can stick it out the longest.” Movement occurs in slow motion, with the dominant cat advancing fractionally while screaming threats. Hostilities eventually erupt explosively, too fast for the human eye to follow. Seton Thompson described tom-cat fights in Wild Animals I Have Known so vividly that Lorenz declines to repeat the description.
Submissive Threat and the Question of “Cattiness”
A third type of threatening involves humiliation gestures, seen when humans tease cats beyond endurance or at cat shows. A frightened cat shrinks down until it is flat against the floor, ears laid back, tail tip moving angrily. It may growl softly and seeks cover desperately—behind cupboards, central heating pipes, or up chimneys in veterinary surgeries. Without cover, it presses its back against the wall, lying half on one side, portending a fore-paw strike. Increasing fear increases the sideways position until one paw raises with unsheathed claws. Ultimate fear triggers rolling onto the back, turning all weapons toward the aggressor. Experienced judges at cat shows touch such threatening animals complacently. Though the cat sings the tom-cat song from a widely opened throat, clearly saying “Don’t touch me or I will bite and scratch in earnest,” it rarely acts, or only half-heartedly. The acquired inhibitions of the “good,” tamed animal withstand even this trial. The cat does not feign friendliness then attack; it threatens but cannot execute its threat.
Lorenz cannot discover what is “catty” about cats, as no animal shows its feelings more clearly. He attributes the undeserved reputation to something unflattering about humans, particularly women. The soft grace of feline movement resembles the grace of certain women—inscrutable to men, attractive, and therefore dangerous. Carmen represents this type purely, earning masculine complaints of falseness in world literature. Cats seem false because similarly graceful women deserve those epithets.
The Animal with a Conscience
A new chapter begins with an epigraph from Shakespeare’s Richard II: “The guilt of conscience take thou for thy labour.” Lorenz reflects that wild animals in their natural environment enjoy a paradise that man has lost. Every instinctive urge in a wild animal is “good,” contributing to individual and species welfare; no conflict exists between natural inclinations and duty. Man’s higher mental capacities brought cultural development, speech, conceptual thought, and accumulated traditional knowledge, causing historical evolution hundreds of times faster than organic development. Human instincts remain tied to slower organic rates and cannot keep pace. Natural inclinations no longer fit cultural conditions. Man is not born “bad,” but he is not good enough for the demands of cultivated society. Cultivated humans cannot blindly trust their instincts, as many oppose society’s demands. The voice of instinct, which wild animals obey safely, has become for humans a destructive whispering, dangerous because it resembles impulses one should and must obey. Humans must test every impulse through conscious thought, asking whether yielding to it damages cultural values. The tree of knowledge compelled humans to relinquish a safe instinctive existence but enabled worldwide environmental extension and the responsible question of whether yielding to impulses imperils society’s highest values. Conscious thought forced the realization that humans are parts of a whole; from this knowledge conscience sprang, asking: what would happen if I did everything my impulses urge? This is the biological version of Kant’s categorical question about raising action maxims to general law.
The Baby Rats Incident
True morality presupposes a mental capacity no animal possesses; human responsibility requires a foundation of sentiment. Even in humans, responsibility roots in deep instinctive layers; one may not with impunity do all that cold reason affirms. Inner feeling may rebel against ethically justified actions. Lorenz recounts a personal story from the Zoological Institute. He cared for young giant snakes fed on dead mice and rats. Each python needed a certain number of rats, and one day he found himself obliged to kill a litter of young rats. He performed the deed with logical justification—they were needed as food—but the act left him with a profound psychological shock. He compares his state of mind to that of two dogs he observed which had never bitten anyone and thus had never been punished for such an offense. They could not have known their inadvertent actions constituted a crime. They had violated a deep, instinctive inhibition, and the accidental nature of the deed did not prevent a psychological shock, just as his logical justifications did not ease his own conscience.
Wolf I and the Peacocks
Lorenz then distinguishes a second type of bad conscience, found in intelligent dogs that have done something natural to their innate social inhibitions but forbidden by an acquired “taboo” from training. These dogs, like children, display an expression of false innocence and exaggerated virtue, which dog lovers know hides a guilty conscience. Lorenz finds it hard to chastise a dog for a first offence committed with a clear conscience. He introduces Wolf I, an older cross-bred Chow-Alsatian, a bloodthirsty hunter reliable with poultry he knew belonged to Lorenz. However, Wolf killed one of four new half-grown peacocks given to Lorenz’s wife at Christmas, breaking down their pen door. After punishment, Wolf never looked at the remaining birds, as these were the first gallinaceous birds in his lifetime and did not enter his conception of the inviolable. Wolf’s inhibitions showed his ability to distinguish between bird breeds, almost abstractly. All ducks were invulnerable to him, but when Lorenz got bantam Wyandottes, Wolf killed all seven without eating one. After a mild chastisement, he never sinned against new hens. When Lorenz received gold and silver pheasants, he gave Wolf a prophylactic treatment, pushing his nose against them with light slaps and threats, which proved effective. Later, Lorenz saw Wolf standing with a wild pheasant in his mouth, not maltreating it. Wolf showed no bad conscience and came when called. Lorenz realized the dog was unsure if the trespassing bird was “untouchable,” having caught it as game but desisting due to its scent. The uninjured cock pheasant lived for years and bred with a hand-reared hen.
The Altenberg Geese and Bubi’s Tragedy
The Altenberg research animals were treated respectfully by the dogs. The grey-lag ganders were fearless, attributing the dogs’ avoidance to their own prowess. Lorenz watched three dogs race and leap over a huddled group of six wild geese. One old gander, a despot, teased the dogs by sitting on a step they had to cross to bark at the gate, tweaking their tails. The sensitive dog Bubi, son of Tito and grandfather of Wolf I, suffered most. Bubi would yelp premonitorily before crossing the step. The gander was found dead with a minimal skull fracture from a dog’s tooth. Bubi was missing, found in a nervous breakdown in a wash-house loft.
Main Arguments
A central argument of the book concerns the dual origins of the dog’s attachment to humans. Lorenz contends that the domestic dog’s bond with its master is not a single phenomenon but the product of two distinct instinctive systems. The first is the tendency of young canines to maintain lifelong ties to their mothers, a trait that in domestic dogs persists into adulthood as a form of arrested development. The second is pack loyalty, the bond that binds wild wolves to their pack-leader and to one another. Lorenz argues that these two roots of attachment are present in different proportions in different dogs, depending largely on whether their ancestry is primarily jackal or primarily wolf.
Jackal-derived dogs, Lorenz suggests, tend to treat their masters as parent figures. Their devotion has a childish, submissive quality, and they are often more indiscriminately friendly. Wolf-derived dogs, by contrast, treat their masters as pack-leaders. Their loyalty is prouder and less submissive, but it is also stronger and less transferable. Lorenz illustrates this distinction through his portraits of individual dogs: the dachshund Kroki, who loved everyone indiscriminately, and the Chow Wolf, who acknowledged Lorenz as master but maintained a fierce independence and showed little obedience.
A related argument concerns the process of domestication itself. Lorenz reconstructs a plausible sequence by which jackals might have become attached to human bands, emphasizing that this was a gradual process of association built up over many generations. He stresses the importance of the first feeding of a jackal by humans as an epoch-making event, and he traces the subsequent steps by which jackals became tamer, accompanied humans on hunts, and eventually became house-dogs. He argues that the dog was domesticated tens of thousands of years ago, far earlier than the cat, and that the earliest domestic dogs were jackal-derived, with wolf blood entering the mix later and in specific northern regions.
Lorenz also argues for the fundamental importance of understanding animal behavior on its own terms. He repeatedly cautions against anthropomorphism, the tendency to attribute human motives and feelings to animals, while also acknowledging the dangers of the opposite error, a sterile behaviorism that refuses to recognize the genuine complexity of animal mental life. He insists that careful observation of individual animals, in all their particularity, is essential to understanding the general principles of behavior.
On the subject of training, Lorenz argues that reward is more efficacious than punishment, and that punishment must be administered in a way that the dog can understand. He contends that beating a dog for running away, after the fact, is worse than useless, because the dog connects the punishment with returning, not with running away. He also argues that corporal punishment, when necessary, should be administered only by someone fond of the culprit, and that its effectiveness depends less on pain than on revealing the administrator’s power.
A further argument concerns the harm done by fashionable breeding practices. Lorenz contends that breeding to strict physical standards is incompatible with maintaining mental qualities, and that the pursuit of exaggerated breed points has led to the mental deterioration of many popular breeds. He contrasts the natural dogs depicted in old paintings with the “evil caricatures” produced by modern breeding, and he appeals to breeders to value courage, intelligence, and fidelity as highly as physical appearance.
Key Concepts
One of the key concepts in the book is the distinction between jackal-derived and wolf-derived dogs. Lorenz uses this distinction to explain a wide range of differences in temperament and behavior. Jackal dogs, he argues, are more childish in their attachment to humans, treating their masters as parents, while wolf dogs treat their masters as pack-leaders. This distinction also explains differences in chivalry toward females and puppies, in the strength and transferability of loyalty, and in the enmity that exists between the two types.
Another important concept is the “impressionable period” during which a young dog forms its primary attachment to a human. Lorenz describes how a Chow bitch acquired as a birthday present for his wife became permanently attached to his cousin, who kept her for only a week before the gift was given. He also describes how his dog Wolf, born during a period of scarcity and uncertainty, had nobody to attach to during this critical window and consequently developed a more independent, pack-leader-oriented relationship with Lorenz later in life.
Lorenz introduces the concept of the “Angstbeisser,” or biter from fear, to describe animals that snap savagely without warning when approached by strangers. He applies this term to young wolves and to dogs that have not formed a proper attachment to a human during the impressionable period. The concept is part of his broader analysis of the role of fear in canine behavior.
The book also develops the idea of the “truce” or “cease-fire” that exists between domestic animals of different species within a household. Lorenz observes that his dogs, though fierce hunters of prey outdoors, could be taught to tolerate and even befriend cats and other animals within the home. He connects this to an age-old inhibition, citing examples of predators that do not hunt near their own dens, and he describes the process by which he introduced kittens and other animals to his dogs.
Related to this is the concept of “critical distance,” which Lorenz attributes to Professor Hediger. This is the distance within which an animal will fight rather than flee when approached by a superior rival. Lorenz uses this concept to explain a variety of behaviors, from the dog that barks ferociously behind a fence but retreats when the gate is opened, to the zoo animal that attacks anyone who enters its cage. He also describes his own careful use of this knowledge when visiting a tame wolf in its enclosure.
Lorenz also discusses the “power of the eye,” the hostile significance of a direct fixed gaze in the animal world. He explains that most animals do not fix their gaze directly except in moments of stress, and that a prolonged stare signifies fear or hostile intent. This concept underlies his advice on how to win the confidence of shy animals: one should not stare directly at them but look beyond them.
Themes
A recurring theme in the book is the tension between wildness and domestication. Lorenz is fascinated by the ways in which domestic animals retain traces of their wild ancestors, and he explores how the process of domestication has shaped both the bodies and the minds of dogs and cats. He is attentive to the differences between species and breeds that remain closer to their wild origins and those that have been more thoroughly domesticated, and he reflects on what is gained and lost in the process.
The theme of fidelity and loyalty runs throughout the book. Lorenz examines the different forms that canine devotion can take, from the childish dependence of the jackal dog to the proud allegiance of the wolf dog. He describes the profound grief of his bitch Stasi when separated from him, her refusal to eat, her restless roaming, and her eventual recovery when reunited with her master. He also reflects on the nature of the bond between master and dog more generally, suggesting that it can be instructive for understanding human relationships.
Another theme is the importance of understanding animals on their own terms. Lorenz repeatedly emphasizes that animals are not small humans in fur coats, and that their behavior must be understood in the context of their own instincts and evolutionary history. At the same time, he resists a purely mechanistic view of animal behavior, insisting that dogs and other animals have rich inner lives and are capable of genuine emotion and attachment.
The book also reflects on the relationship between humans and the natural world more broadly. Lorenz’s accounts of his animals are suffused with a sense of wonder at the complexity and beauty of their behavior, and he is critical of the ways in which modern life and modern breeding practices have alienated people from the natural qualities of animals. His advocacy for working strains and mixed breeds, and his criticism of show breeding, can be read as a broader argument for valuing substance over appearance and function over fashion.
The theme of childhood and the importance of early experience appears in several contexts. Lorenz discusses the value of dogs for children, and the value of children for dogs, suggesting that the two can educate one another in important ways. He also emphasizes the critical importance of early experience in shaping a dog’s character and attachments, and he reflects on his own dogless childhood with regret.
Finally, the book is animated by a deep affection for individual animals. Lorenz’s portraits of his dogs—Stasi, Wolf, Susi, Bully, Tito, and others—are not merely illustrations of scientific points but tributes to creatures he loved and admired. This personal warmth gives the book its distinctive character, making it at once a work of science and a memoir of a life lived in close company with animals.
The Author’s Conclusions
Lorenz concludes that the relationship between humans and dogs is one of the most remarkable in the natural world, a bond that has been forged over tens of thousands of years of shared life. He argues that this bond rests on the dog’s unique capacity to transfer its social instincts from its own kind to humans, treating its master as a parent or as a pack-leader. The dog’s fidelity, he suggests, is not a learned behavior but the expression of deep-seated instincts that have been redirected toward a new object.
He concludes that the two distinct origins of canine attachment—the preservation of youthful dependence and the loyalty of the pack member—produce a finely graded scale of canine characters, and that understanding these origins is essential to understanding any individual dog. He also concludes that the differences between jackal-derived and wolf-derived dogs are so profound that they amount to a difference in species, a conclusion he supports both by behavioral observation and by the enmity that exists between the two types.
On the practical question of training, Lorenz concludes that the key to success is understanding the dog’s point of view and working with its instincts rather than against them. He emphasizes the importance of reward over punishment, the need for punishment to be immediate and intelligible, and the value of patience and consistency. He also concludes that a well-trained dog is a happier dog, because training allows it to accompany its master and participate more fully in human life.
On the subject of breeding, Lorenz concludes that the modern obsession with physical perfection has done serious harm to the mental qualities of many breeds. He argues that courage, intelligence, and fidelity are more important than conformity to breed standards, and he appeals to breeders to reconsider their priorities. He suggests that the solution lies in separating show and working strains, as has been done with carrier pigeons, so that the mental qualities of working dogs are not sacrificed to fashion.
The book ends with Lorenz’s reflections on the deeper meaning of the human-animal bond. He suggests that the relationship between master and dog is not merely a matter of utility or companionship but touches on something fundamental in human nature. The dog, he implies, connects us to our own wild past and to the natural world from which we have emerged. In a civilization that increasingly separates humans from nature, the dog serves as a living link to a more ancient way of being.
Significance
Man Meets Dog is significant both as a work of popular science and as a document of the development of ethology. Lorenz was one of the founders of the modern study of animal behavior, and this book made his ideas accessible to a wide audience. It helped to establish the view that animal behavior is a proper subject for scientific study, shaped by evolution and instinct, while also demonstrating that rigorous observation and deep affection for animals are not incompatible.
The book is also significant for its contribution to the understanding of domestication. Lorenz’s reconstruction of the process by which jackals became dogs, and his analysis of the dual origins of canine attachment, have been influential in subsequent thinking about the relationship between humans and domestic animals. His distinction between jackal-derived and wolf-derived dogs, while not universally accepted, has shaped the way many people think about breed differences and the history of domestication.
Lorenz’s observations on training and behavior remain valuable for dog owners and trainers. His emphasis on understanding the dog’s point of view, on reward over punishment, and on the importance of early experience anticipated many later developments in animal training and welfare. His criticisms of fashionable breeding practices, and his advocacy for the mental qualities of working dogs, have also proven prescient, as concerns about the health and temperament of purebred dogs have become increasingly widespread.
The book is also significant as a work of literature. Lorenz writes with warmth, humor, and a gift for vivid description, and his portraits of individual animals are memorable and moving. The book belongs to a tradition of writing about animals that combines scientific observation with personal memoir, and it stands as one of the finest examples of that tradition. It has introduced generations of readers to the idea that animals are not merely objects of study but fellow creatures with their own inner lives, deserving of our attention, our respect, and our affection.
