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Leaving the Wild: The Unnatural History of Dogs, Cats, Cows, and Horses
The domestication of animals changed the course of human history, but what about the animals who abandoned their wild existence in exchange for our care and protection? Domestication has proven to be a wildly successful survival strategy, but this success has not been without drawbacks. A modern dairy cow’s daily energy output equals that of a Tour de France rider. Feral cats overpopulate urban areas. And our methods of breeding horses and dogs have resulted in debilitating and sometimes lethal genetic diseases. But these problems and more can be addressed, if we have the will and the compassion.
Human values and choices determine an animal’s lot in life even before he or she is born. Just as a sculptor’s hands shape clay, so human values shape our animals—for good and for ill. The little-examined, yet omnipresent act of breeding lies at the core of Gavin Ehringer's eye-opening book. You’ll meet cows cloned from steaks, a Quarter horse stallion valued at $7.5 million, Chinese dogs that glow in the dark, and visit a Denver cat show featuring naked cats and other cuddly mutants. Is this what the animals bargained for all those millennia ago when they first joined us by the fire?
Human values and choices determine an animal’s lot in life even before he or she is born. Just as a sculptor’s hands shape clay, so human values shape our animals—for good and for ill. The little-examined, yet omnipresent act of breeding lies at the core of Gavin Ehringer's eye-opening book. You’ll meet cows cloned from steaks, a Quarter horse stallion valued at $7.5 million, Chinese dogs that glow in the dark, and visit a Denver cat show featuring naked cats and other cuddly mutants. Is this what the animals bargained for all those millennia ago when they first joined us by the fire?
336 pages, Hardcover
First published December 5, 2017
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March 10, 2018
Just as a sculptor's hands shape clay, human values shape animals. This has taken place for millenia, going back to our most ancient civilizations.
-Gavin Ehringer
4.5 stars -- Through careful line breeding and elimination of animals with undesirable traits, human beings created the range of domestic animals for a wide variety of functions, from hunting rabbits to pulling carts to possessing flavorful flesh. Books such as this illustrate why comparison of domestic animal breeds with human races is both ridiculous and offensive, if not already obvious to the reader.
This book stars four of our most recognizable companions in human history, and takes a subject that could potentially be dry as a musty textbook and turns it into an entertaining and enlightening pop-science read in the vein of Mary Roach.
DOGS
Dogs are by far humankind’s oldest animal companions. Because they go back so far, their exact point of origin is murky, and Ehringer traces the controversies and possibilities associated with this. Dogs are the animals who most strikingly illustrate the ability of humans to mold and shape animals through domestication. It’s pretty astonishing to think how we got from the wolf to the teacup Yorkie, and no other species exhibits such an incredible range of size and form.
And of course, the best place to see that variety is at a dog show. While some of the working breeds of dogs are quite ancient, the author quotes UCLA’s Dr. Robert Wayne’s estimate that “70 to 80 percent of the modern breeds were born in the period of parasols and bowler hats.” At the turn of the 20th century, England developed a madness for dog shows and pedigreed pooches that quickly spread to America and unfortunately dovetailed nicely with the era’s ideas about eugenics.
The bottleneck genetics of the purebreds created the highly distinct breeds every dog lover can identify, but it also resulted in the genetic disorders that cause pain and shortened lives for dogs and heartbreak for owners. In some cases, the extreme forms of today’s show dogs are problems within themselves, such as dogs whose noses are so short that their lives seem to be a constant struggle against overheating and suffocation. The author spends a bit of time discussing what some (including myself) see as the destruction of the German shepherd. Those people who think of Rin Tin Tin and police K-9s when they imagine this breed are often abashed when they see the show-ring version, which looks like an animal who has suffered a severe spinal injury.
The author thinks the industry can improve itself, however, and points to some gains being made in America and England. Most encouraging are the rigorous health tests mandated by Sweden’s national kennel club; vet tests showing good health and soundness are a condition of registration. However, the cultural differences and natural wariness of American dog breeders to any kind of regulation may make such sweeping reforms dead in the water over here.
The most refreshing chapter in LEAVING THE WILD is titled “Pity the Pit Bull.” I fully expected the same rehashing of fabrications (“nanny dogs!”) and pretending that each year’s sad parade of victims doesn’t exist that has been part and parcel of most dog and animal welfare media of the past decade. Instead, the author has taken a hard, clear-eyed look at the issues and found them to be much more complicated and troubling than the well-funded and well-amplified pit bull promotion machine lets on. And, like all people who publicly examine the darker side of these dogs’ heritage and popularity, I am sure Ehringer has already borne the brunt of the hordes of Internet “pit bullies” and their dime-a-dozen personal attacks, insults, and death threats.
The author calmly explains and refutes many of the arguments made by the pit bull fanciers. Despite spending millions defending and promoting this type of dog, one of odder claims made is that there’s actually no such thing as a pit bull (or no one is capable of recognizing one). So what is a pit bull, exactly?
A pit bull is less a breed of dog than a type of dog, just as scent hounds, shepherd dogs, and retrievers are types of dogs. All dogs referred to as pit bulls—including the American pit bull terrier, the Staffordshire terrier (England), the American Staffordshire terrier, and the American bulldog—trace their ancestry back to the bull & terrier dogs developed in England for pit fighting. Staffordshire, of course, refers to the mining area where interest in fighting dogs was especially keen.
And just as hounds, shepherds, and retrievers were created for specific jobs, and exhibit behaviors associated with these jobs whether or not the owner actually engages their pets in these tasks, so does the pit bull. Just as the name implies, pit bull-type dogs were created to battle other animals in the fighting pit. Their bodies are shaped and molded for gripping and holding in combat as much as the greyhound’s is for bursts of speed.
By far the man responsible the most for the spread of the hideous “sport” of dogfighting in America was pit bull fighter and breeder extraordinaire John P. Colby, who bred pits for over 50 years and whose family claims to raising over 5,000 dogs. (Colby bloodlines are still sought after by pit bull fanciers and command high prices.) Dogfighting was at one time legal throughout America and even many police officers at the beginning of the twentieth century were keen followers of dogfights. (Those historical photos you see of pits on bully breed enthusiast websites are frequently proud owners showing off their prized fighters.)
The author thankfully stops short of actually attending a dogfight, but he does interview a dogfighting enthusiast, who directly contradicts such claims as “man-biters are culled” and that pits must be forced to fight. They also tend to be willing to ignore serious injury, another trait desirable in the fighting pit. The author speaks to a vet who attests that pit bulls are “by far, the most pain-tolerant dogs I see in my practice. It’s not even close.”
Therein lies the tragedy of the pit bull—when he does the very thing he was bred for over a hundred years to want to do and do well—he creates tremendous tragedy for the victim and is very frequently shot or stabbed to death as a result. No other type of dog is expected to never exhibit breed-specific behaviors, or marketed to prospective owners as completely blank slates who will never exhibit these behaviors if “treated right.”
Pet disaster relief services worker Tracy Reis is quoted in the text:
“Unfortunately, what a lot of people don’t understand is, aggression is an inherited behavioral trait. People are seldom killed by Labradors or golden retrievers, although it has happened. But you won’t see a Lab breeder selecting for aggression….Pit owners tend to be the exact opposite. The most aggressive dogs are the ones they pick to breed, both dogfight professionals and backyard breeders. … Fear of these dogs is not necessarily unwarranted. With all of the bad bloodlines and breeding for aggression…you can’t tell if a dog comes from a fighting bloodline or fighting dog breeder.”
Yet pit advocates are often willing to throw every other breed under the bus and frequently cling to the illogical argument that the news media are “out to get” pit bulls and their owners. Pit attacks are so common, if anything, they are mundane news items. While people and other pets are suffering and dying from the explosion in fighting breeds, the largest class of victims is, conversely, pit bulls themselves.
Sadly, of all dogs euthanized in America, about two out of every three is a pit bull or pit mix. There is no other dog as promiscuously bred, frequently abused, or wantonly abandoned. No other breed as likely to be killed…or to kill.
This is the stuff you don’t see in all of the Facebook pages showing pit bulls in tutus or TV shows depicting them as misunderstood cuddlebugs. While Ehringer does acknowledge the cuter side of “pitties,” he is also willing to seriously discuss where all of this marketing has gotten us: more fatal dog attacks than ever before, and shelters across the nation crammed to the gills with pits:
It seems to me that for too long, the humane and shelter organizations have been eager to blame purebred dog breeders for the problems that beset shelters all over America, while failing to acknowledge…the profligate overbreeding of pit bulls by pit bull owners. By and large, the pit bull advocacy and animal rights communities both oppose common sense measures…that would reduce the number of unwanted, unadoptable pit bulls being euthanized in America every single year.
All of this isn’t about hating pit bulls. Hating an animal for doing what humans bred it to do is nonsensical. Protecting pit bulls, people, and other pets by passing legislation that mandates spay/neuter of these animals, or at the very least, placing tight restrictions on how they may be bred, should make sense to everyone but backyard pit breeders and dogfighters. Yet the people who make money from pit bulls currently have the power to steer the cultural discussion, and most “pet people” currently repeat their party line (as once did I).
Because the author participates in certain AKC dog events, he has a generally positive view of the kennel club, and defends them from animal rights critics. Yet, the AKC tends to take a “property rights” view of dog ownership and uses an NRA-style “slippery slope” argument to fight regulations on puppy mills and pit bulls. And although Ehringer has an immediate angry reaction to PETA, the fact is, for all of their faults, they are one of very few animal activist groups who support regulations on pit bull breeding.
CATS
One of the most fascinating sections of the book details the role of Disneyland in bringing the trap-neuter-return policy to America, a quieter way that Disney was decades ahead of its time. The author capably deconstructs the controversy surrounding feral cats and what should be done about the animal welfare and conservation issues they present, as well as if the merciless extermination of outdoor cats, as was advocated in the recent book “Cat Wars,” actually works. (Spoiler: it does not.)
COWS
Right out of the gate, the “Cows” section reinforced for me why I chose to eliminate dairy from my diet after being a lacto-vegetarian for many years:
What’s seldom remarked upon is the contribution of the dairy business to industrial meat production. …[O]nly about 40 percent of hamburger meat comes from “fed beef trimmings,” the leftovers you get when you butcher cattle for steaks. The remaining 60 percent comes from dairy cows.
The argument made by many vegetarians, and which I repeated for a long time, was that dairy was ethical because the animals didn’t need to be killed to access their milk. An omnivore, Ehringer puts that notion out to pasture when he notes dispassionately,
Due to the pressure to maintain peak production, American dairy farmers remove roughly one-quarter of the cows from their herds each year. This amounts to about 2.3 million former milkers going straight to meat processing plants. …Aged and spent dairy cows bring the lowest prices on the beef market, which helps keep fast-food prices low. …Regardless of when, virtually all dairy cows end up being slaughtered for the dinner table.
Not to say I’m condemning vegetarians, like some vegans do. I think any step a person takes in the direction of causing less animal suffering is a good one, and vegetarians are already doing better than 90% of the populace in that regard. In terms of deaths-per-calorie, a lacto-vegetarian is still leaps and bounds ahead of an omnivore who refuses dairy but still eats chicken.
Because, like every other mammal, a cow must have a baby in order to start making milk, a dairy cow’s life revolves around pregnancy, birth, and the milking cycle. The majority of cattle are artificially inseminated, and the whole business of ensuring the production of milk, cheese, and ice cream is enough to give the biggest dairy-lover pause. We read about America’s $225 million annual bull semen market, with sales conducted mainly over the Internet. (Ehringer describes one such website with its cartoon bull posed up in a pin-up fashion, just one more example if the weirdly sexualized world of farm animal production.) We read of the increasingly lucrative field of embryo transfer, where an embryo is flushed from the uterus of a genetically superior biological mother and implanted into a surrogate cow considered more expendable. Elsie the cow and a little red barn it is not.
Like all modern farming, today’s dairies look and operate differently than we’d like to imagine. When was the last time you saw a field of grazing Holsteins? Dairy cattle have disappeared from the landscape as the business has undergone a dramatic transformation. Because the profit margins are so tight, dairy farmers have to go big in order to keep their heads above water. Megadairies with 1,000 to 30,000 animals, who never see pasture, are fast becoming the rule. Small dairy farms, says the book, have become a “quaint anachronism,” catering mainly to wealthier milk buyers. Even organics have gone big. Organic companies like Horizon and Aurora feed their cattle pesticide-free food, but also keep them in intensive-farm conditions that would likely deflate many shoppers’ ideas about organic milk.
Today’s dairy cows are different, too. We read of the “vast increase in dairy cow productivity that’s occurred just since 1990, when the average [milk] yield per cow was 8,000 pounds less than today.” Part of this is owed to the use of rBST, bovine growth hormone, which, despite intense controversy “is still used in about one in six dairy cows, and it’s used in 42 percent of dairies with more than 500 cows—the fastest growing segment of the dairy industry.” The rest is just managed breeding:
It takes an almost unfathomable amount of metabolic energy to produce large volumes of milk while simultaneously carrying a calf (most milk cows are re-impregnated within four months of giving birth, and carry the calf for nine months.
A dairy vet quoted in the text compares the metabolism of a modern dairy cow to that of a Tour de France cyclist (who never stops.) It’s no wonder Holsteins crash and burn. Today’s milk cow rarely lives past the age of five. Many are spent after just three cycles. The ranks of “downed cattle”--animals who collapse at the slaughterhouse and can be subjected to so much cruelty as a result--are swelled by spent mother Holsteins.
In addition to downed cows, the plight of veal calves has been a high-profile animal welfare discussion surrounding dairy. There’s a reason why those sad-eyed crated veal calves are almost always black-and-white spotted--they’re the discarded male Holsteins born to dairy cow moms. (The many people who hate veal production are frequently unaware of how intimately the two industries are linked.) Could the veal industry be ended by eliminating the birth of unwanted males altogether? Probably not, at least in the foreseeable future.
Sexed semen is more expensive and less fertile than regular semen but cuts down on the birth of unproductive and undesired male calves. Many dairy farmers reserve it for their best cows to produce a high proportion of high-quality heifers to replace their spent, aging mothers.
The author looks at the trend toward cloning and genetically manipulating cattle. There are ag scientists working to genetically alter cows so they can be raised in parts of the world they previously could not, or create cattle whose milk is more palatable to lactose-intolerant people. (I facepalmed. Great! Let’s speed up climate change even more!) There are even GM cows being created that are supposed to survive better in a post-global warming world, which seems like painting flowers on the outside of a coal-fired factory.
So what can be done about the welfare of cows and other farm animals? After an incredible amount of red tape, Ehringer secures a visit to a CAFO-style farm. It’s a carefully vetted facility that is used as a model farm and teaching aid. When asked about the undercover footage shot inside industrial farms, this dairy’s owner says soberly, “Those of us in the industry initially thought they were staged. Nobody thinks that anymore….It’s just so disturbing and disappointing.”
Even though the author takes another broad swipe at animal activists for depicting farmers as evil people, I know that isn’t true. Although undercover footage and interviews confirm there are some true sadists who work as low-level farmhands and slaughter workers, I don’t think most in the animal ag industry are bad people. I think that the machine they’re caught up in, one in which sentient beings are cogs and production units, simply ensures that the animals are going to get a bad deal.
Thankfully, Ehringer devotes some of the cattle section to the brave new science of lab-grown meat and biohacked yeast that has been engineered to produce animal milk. This is what compassionate people dearly hope the future of animal-product production will look like someday. In the meantime, though, there’s no need to create GM cows who make lactose-free milk when there’s already a laughably wide range of plant-based milks out there, not to mention vegan burgers that actually bleed. The folks engineering new strains of cows are making history in the present day, but they’re on the wrong side of history in the long run.
HORSES
No animal has had more impact on human civilization than the horse. Interestingly, our equine friends originally evolved in North America, the fossil record providing a mute counterpoint to the idea that wild horses are incompatible with ranging in the American West.
Ehringer’s most compelling chapter in this section relates the sad recent history of an ancient breed, the graceful Arabian. In the United States in the 1980s, President Reagan turned horse breeding into a fantastic tax shelter, attracting people with money to burn to the flashy, exotic Arabian. Horse shows became osteneous shows of wealth, and speculative breeding boosted the prices paid for Arabian foals into the stratosphere. Then, as with all things, the bottom dropped out, and many of these former champion horses ended up with the same fate as the urban fad pet of the 1980s, the potbellied pig: a one-way ticket to the slaughterhouse. To this day, Arabians can still be counted among the doomed horses on killer buyers’ trucks.
The story of the Arabian in the 1980s is just one of the tragic elements in the horse world of today. The author also discusses, in wincing detail, the physical price paid by horses when breeders don’t behave ethically. Just as in the purebred dog world, we are seeing genetic bottlenecks where horses are suffering genetic disorders and shortened lives. In some cases, the horses’ plight may be even worse, owing to horse enthusiasts’ predisposition to “trade up” and sell their horses for new ones, much like car owners. But horses aren’t Fords and Toyotas.
Also like the dog breeding world, some other countries seem to have more of a handle on things in ensuring more ethical breeding practices. Ehringer points to German regulations on horse breeding, which better ensure an animal’s health and soundness before it is brought into the world. In the US, any breeder can breed, and the animal’s well-being is at the mercy of its owner’s ethical code.
-Gavin Ehringer
4.5 stars -- Through careful line breeding and elimination of animals with undesirable traits, human beings created the range of domestic animals for a wide variety of functions, from hunting rabbits to pulling carts to possessing flavorful flesh. Books such as this illustrate why comparison of domestic animal breeds with human races is both ridiculous and offensive, if not already obvious to the reader.
This book stars four of our most recognizable companions in human history, and takes a subject that could potentially be dry as a musty textbook and turns it into an entertaining and enlightening pop-science read in the vein of Mary Roach.
DOGS
Dogs are by far humankind’s oldest animal companions. Because they go back so far, their exact point of origin is murky, and Ehringer traces the controversies and possibilities associated with this. Dogs are the animals who most strikingly illustrate the ability of humans to mold and shape animals through domestication. It’s pretty astonishing to think how we got from the wolf to the teacup Yorkie, and no other species exhibits such an incredible range of size and form.
And of course, the best place to see that variety is at a dog show. While some of the working breeds of dogs are quite ancient, the author quotes UCLA’s Dr. Robert Wayne’s estimate that “70 to 80 percent of the modern breeds were born in the period of parasols and bowler hats.” At the turn of the 20th century, England developed a madness for dog shows and pedigreed pooches that quickly spread to America and unfortunately dovetailed nicely with the era’s ideas about eugenics.
The bottleneck genetics of the purebreds created the highly distinct breeds every dog lover can identify, but it also resulted in the genetic disorders that cause pain and shortened lives for dogs and heartbreak for owners. In some cases, the extreme forms of today’s show dogs are problems within themselves, such as dogs whose noses are so short that their lives seem to be a constant struggle against overheating and suffocation. The author spends a bit of time discussing what some (including myself) see as the destruction of the German shepherd. Those people who think of Rin Tin Tin and police K-9s when they imagine this breed are often abashed when they see the show-ring version, which looks like an animal who has suffered a severe spinal injury.
The author thinks the industry can improve itself, however, and points to some gains being made in America and England. Most encouraging are the rigorous health tests mandated by Sweden’s national kennel club; vet tests showing good health and soundness are a condition of registration. However, the cultural differences and natural wariness of American dog breeders to any kind of regulation may make such sweeping reforms dead in the water over here.
The most refreshing chapter in LEAVING THE WILD is titled “Pity the Pit Bull.” I fully expected the same rehashing of fabrications (“nanny dogs!”) and pretending that each year’s sad parade of victims doesn’t exist that has been part and parcel of most dog and animal welfare media of the past decade. Instead, the author has taken a hard, clear-eyed look at the issues and found them to be much more complicated and troubling than the well-funded and well-amplified pit bull promotion machine lets on. And, like all people who publicly examine the darker side of these dogs’ heritage and popularity, I am sure Ehringer has already borne the brunt of the hordes of Internet “pit bullies” and their dime-a-dozen personal attacks, insults, and death threats.
The author calmly explains and refutes many of the arguments made by the pit bull fanciers. Despite spending millions defending and promoting this type of dog, one of odder claims made is that there’s actually no such thing as a pit bull (or no one is capable of recognizing one). So what is a pit bull, exactly?
A pit bull is less a breed of dog than a type of dog, just as scent hounds, shepherd dogs, and retrievers are types of dogs. All dogs referred to as pit bulls—including the American pit bull terrier, the Staffordshire terrier (England), the American Staffordshire terrier, and the American bulldog—trace their ancestry back to the bull & terrier dogs developed in England for pit fighting. Staffordshire, of course, refers to the mining area where interest in fighting dogs was especially keen.
And just as hounds, shepherds, and retrievers were created for specific jobs, and exhibit behaviors associated with these jobs whether or not the owner actually engages their pets in these tasks, so does the pit bull. Just as the name implies, pit bull-type dogs were created to battle other animals in the fighting pit. Their bodies are shaped and molded for gripping and holding in combat as much as the greyhound’s is for bursts of speed.
By far the man responsible the most for the spread of the hideous “sport” of dogfighting in America was pit bull fighter and breeder extraordinaire John P. Colby, who bred pits for over 50 years and whose family claims to raising over 5,000 dogs. (Colby bloodlines are still sought after by pit bull fanciers and command high prices.) Dogfighting was at one time legal throughout America and even many police officers at the beginning of the twentieth century were keen followers of dogfights. (Those historical photos you see of pits on bully breed enthusiast websites are frequently proud owners showing off their prized fighters.)
The author thankfully stops short of actually attending a dogfight, but he does interview a dogfighting enthusiast, who directly contradicts such claims as “man-biters are culled” and that pits must be forced to fight. They also tend to be willing to ignore serious injury, another trait desirable in the fighting pit. The author speaks to a vet who attests that pit bulls are “by far, the most pain-tolerant dogs I see in my practice. It’s not even close.”
Therein lies the tragedy of the pit bull—when he does the very thing he was bred for over a hundred years to want to do and do well—he creates tremendous tragedy for the victim and is very frequently shot or stabbed to death as a result. No other type of dog is expected to never exhibit breed-specific behaviors, or marketed to prospective owners as completely blank slates who will never exhibit these behaviors if “treated right.”
Pet disaster relief services worker Tracy Reis is quoted in the text:
“Unfortunately, what a lot of people don’t understand is, aggression is an inherited behavioral trait. People are seldom killed by Labradors or golden retrievers, although it has happened. But you won’t see a Lab breeder selecting for aggression….Pit owners tend to be the exact opposite. The most aggressive dogs are the ones they pick to breed, both dogfight professionals and backyard breeders. … Fear of these dogs is not necessarily unwarranted. With all of the bad bloodlines and breeding for aggression…you can’t tell if a dog comes from a fighting bloodline or fighting dog breeder.”
Yet pit advocates are often willing to throw every other breed under the bus and frequently cling to the illogical argument that the news media are “out to get” pit bulls and their owners. Pit attacks are so common, if anything, they are mundane news items. While people and other pets are suffering and dying from the explosion in fighting breeds, the largest class of victims is, conversely, pit bulls themselves.
Sadly, of all dogs euthanized in America, about two out of every three is a pit bull or pit mix. There is no other dog as promiscuously bred, frequently abused, or wantonly abandoned. No other breed as likely to be killed…or to kill.
This is the stuff you don’t see in all of the Facebook pages showing pit bulls in tutus or TV shows depicting them as misunderstood cuddlebugs. While Ehringer does acknowledge the cuter side of “pitties,” he is also willing to seriously discuss where all of this marketing has gotten us: more fatal dog attacks than ever before, and shelters across the nation crammed to the gills with pits:
It seems to me that for too long, the humane and shelter organizations have been eager to blame purebred dog breeders for the problems that beset shelters all over America, while failing to acknowledge…the profligate overbreeding of pit bulls by pit bull owners. By and large, the pit bull advocacy and animal rights communities both oppose common sense measures…that would reduce the number of unwanted, unadoptable pit bulls being euthanized in America every single year.
All of this isn’t about hating pit bulls. Hating an animal for doing what humans bred it to do is nonsensical. Protecting pit bulls, people, and other pets by passing legislation that mandates spay/neuter of these animals, or at the very least, placing tight restrictions on how they may be bred, should make sense to everyone but backyard pit breeders and dogfighters. Yet the people who make money from pit bulls currently have the power to steer the cultural discussion, and most “pet people” currently repeat their party line (as once did I).
Because the author participates in certain AKC dog events, he has a generally positive view of the kennel club, and defends them from animal rights critics. Yet, the AKC tends to take a “property rights” view of dog ownership and uses an NRA-style “slippery slope” argument to fight regulations on puppy mills and pit bulls. And although Ehringer has an immediate angry reaction to PETA, the fact is, for all of their faults, they are one of very few animal activist groups who support regulations on pit bull breeding.
CATS
One of the most fascinating sections of the book details the role of Disneyland in bringing the trap-neuter-return policy to America, a quieter way that Disney was decades ahead of its time. The author capably deconstructs the controversy surrounding feral cats and what should be done about the animal welfare and conservation issues they present, as well as if the merciless extermination of outdoor cats, as was advocated in the recent book “Cat Wars,” actually works. (Spoiler: it does not.)
COWS
Right out of the gate, the “Cows” section reinforced for me why I chose to eliminate dairy from my diet after being a lacto-vegetarian for many years:
What’s seldom remarked upon is the contribution of the dairy business to industrial meat production. …[O]nly about 40 percent of hamburger meat comes from “fed beef trimmings,” the leftovers you get when you butcher cattle for steaks. The remaining 60 percent comes from dairy cows.
The argument made by many vegetarians, and which I repeated for a long time, was that dairy was ethical because the animals didn’t need to be killed to access their milk. An omnivore, Ehringer puts that notion out to pasture when he notes dispassionately,
Due to the pressure to maintain peak production, American dairy farmers remove roughly one-quarter of the cows from their herds each year. This amounts to about 2.3 million former milkers going straight to meat processing plants. …Aged and spent dairy cows bring the lowest prices on the beef market, which helps keep fast-food prices low. …Regardless of when, virtually all dairy cows end up being slaughtered for the dinner table.
Not to say I’m condemning vegetarians, like some vegans do. I think any step a person takes in the direction of causing less animal suffering is a good one, and vegetarians are already doing better than 90% of the populace in that regard. In terms of deaths-per-calorie, a lacto-vegetarian is still leaps and bounds ahead of an omnivore who refuses dairy but still eats chicken.
Because, like every other mammal, a cow must have a baby in order to start making milk, a dairy cow’s life revolves around pregnancy, birth, and the milking cycle. The majority of cattle are artificially inseminated, and the whole business of ensuring the production of milk, cheese, and ice cream is enough to give the biggest dairy-lover pause. We read about America’s $225 million annual bull semen market, with sales conducted mainly over the Internet. (Ehringer describes one such website with its cartoon bull posed up in a pin-up fashion, just one more example if the weirdly sexualized world of farm animal production.) We read of the increasingly lucrative field of embryo transfer, where an embryo is flushed from the uterus of a genetically superior biological mother and implanted into a surrogate cow considered more expendable. Elsie the cow and a little red barn it is not.
Like all modern farming, today’s dairies look and operate differently than we’d like to imagine. When was the last time you saw a field of grazing Holsteins? Dairy cattle have disappeared from the landscape as the business has undergone a dramatic transformation. Because the profit margins are so tight, dairy farmers have to go big in order to keep their heads above water. Megadairies with 1,000 to 30,000 animals, who never see pasture, are fast becoming the rule. Small dairy farms, says the book, have become a “quaint anachronism,” catering mainly to wealthier milk buyers. Even organics have gone big. Organic companies like Horizon and Aurora feed their cattle pesticide-free food, but also keep them in intensive-farm conditions that would likely deflate many shoppers’ ideas about organic milk.
Today’s dairy cows are different, too. We read of the “vast increase in dairy cow productivity that’s occurred just since 1990, when the average [milk] yield per cow was 8,000 pounds less than today.” Part of this is owed to the use of rBST, bovine growth hormone, which, despite intense controversy “is still used in about one in six dairy cows, and it’s used in 42 percent of dairies with more than 500 cows—the fastest growing segment of the dairy industry.” The rest is just managed breeding:
It takes an almost unfathomable amount of metabolic energy to produce large volumes of milk while simultaneously carrying a calf (most milk cows are re-impregnated within four months of giving birth, and carry the calf for nine months.
A dairy vet quoted in the text compares the metabolism of a modern dairy cow to that of a Tour de France cyclist (who never stops.) It’s no wonder Holsteins crash and burn. Today’s milk cow rarely lives past the age of five. Many are spent after just three cycles. The ranks of “downed cattle”--animals who collapse at the slaughterhouse and can be subjected to so much cruelty as a result--are swelled by spent mother Holsteins.
In addition to downed cows, the plight of veal calves has been a high-profile animal welfare discussion surrounding dairy. There’s a reason why those sad-eyed crated veal calves are almost always black-and-white spotted--they’re the discarded male Holsteins born to dairy cow moms. (The many people who hate veal production are frequently unaware of how intimately the two industries are linked.) Could the veal industry be ended by eliminating the birth of unwanted males altogether? Probably not, at least in the foreseeable future.
Sexed semen is more expensive and less fertile than regular semen but cuts down on the birth of unproductive and undesired male calves. Many dairy farmers reserve it for their best cows to produce a high proportion of high-quality heifers to replace their spent, aging mothers.
The author looks at the trend toward cloning and genetically manipulating cattle. There are ag scientists working to genetically alter cows so they can be raised in parts of the world they previously could not, or create cattle whose milk is more palatable to lactose-intolerant people. (I facepalmed. Great! Let’s speed up climate change even more!) There are even GM cows being created that are supposed to survive better in a post-global warming world, which seems like painting flowers on the outside of a coal-fired factory.
So what can be done about the welfare of cows and other farm animals? After an incredible amount of red tape, Ehringer secures a visit to a CAFO-style farm. It’s a carefully vetted facility that is used as a model farm and teaching aid. When asked about the undercover footage shot inside industrial farms, this dairy’s owner says soberly, “Those of us in the industry initially thought they were staged. Nobody thinks that anymore….It’s just so disturbing and disappointing.”
Even though the author takes another broad swipe at animal activists for depicting farmers as evil people, I know that isn’t true. Although undercover footage and interviews confirm there are some true sadists who work as low-level farmhands and slaughter workers, I don’t think most in the animal ag industry are bad people. I think that the machine they’re caught up in, one in which sentient beings are cogs and production units, simply ensures that the animals are going to get a bad deal.
Thankfully, Ehringer devotes some of the cattle section to the brave new science of lab-grown meat and biohacked yeast that has been engineered to produce animal milk. This is what compassionate people dearly hope the future of animal-product production will look like someday. In the meantime, though, there’s no need to create GM cows who make lactose-free milk when there’s already a laughably wide range of plant-based milks out there, not to mention vegan burgers that actually bleed. The folks engineering new strains of cows are making history in the present day, but they’re on the wrong side of history in the long run.
HORSES
No animal has had more impact on human civilization than the horse. Interestingly, our equine friends originally evolved in North America, the fossil record providing a mute counterpoint to the idea that wild horses are incompatible with ranging in the American West.
Ehringer’s most compelling chapter in this section relates the sad recent history of an ancient breed, the graceful Arabian. In the United States in the 1980s, President Reagan turned horse breeding into a fantastic tax shelter, attracting people with money to burn to the flashy, exotic Arabian. Horse shows became osteneous shows of wealth, and speculative breeding boosted the prices paid for Arabian foals into the stratosphere. Then, as with all things, the bottom dropped out, and many of these former champion horses ended up with the same fate as the urban fad pet of the 1980s, the potbellied pig: a one-way ticket to the slaughterhouse. To this day, Arabians can still be counted among the doomed horses on killer buyers’ trucks.
The story of the Arabian in the 1980s is just one of the tragic elements in the horse world of today. The author also discusses, in wincing detail, the physical price paid by horses when breeders don’t behave ethically. Just as in the purebred dog world, we are seeing genetic bottlenecks where horses are suffering genetic disorders and shortened lives. In some cases, the horses’ plight may be even worse, owing to horse enthusiasts’ predisposition to “trade up” and sell their horses for new ones, much like car owners. But horses aren’t Fords and Toyotas.
Also like the dog breeding world, some other countries seem to have more of a handle on things in ensuring more ethical breeding practices. Ehringer points to German regulations on horse breeding, which better ensure an animal’s health and soundness before it is brought into the world. In the US, any breeder can breed, and the animal’s well-being is at the mercy of its owner’s ethical code.
January 20, 2018
Disclosure: I won this via Goodreads Giveaway, and of course, I owe an honest review.
How much you enjoy this book will depend on what you’re looking for and what you’re interested in. Based on the title, I had expected more detail on the latest biologic, archeologic, historic, etc., evidence on the co-evolution of these domesticated species alongside our own. Although there are some chapters on this (more on dogs than cows, e.g.), the emphasis is much more on what has happened since they left the wild, in the very modern era, predominantly in the USA (and the UK in the dog section). There are chapters limited to specific breeds (e.g., pit bulls, Arabian horses) which may or may not interest the general reader. The section on cattle is narrowly focused on modern dairy practices (pretty much ignoring the beef industry), large and small, so of more interest to some readers than others.
Overall, this seemed more like a hodgepodge of related magazine articles (I think the author writes for one or more) rather than a unified history of humankind and our main domesticated mammals.
How much you enjoy this book will depend on what you’re looking for and what you’re interested in. Based on the title, I had expected more detail on the latest biologic, archeologic, historic, etc., evidence on the co-evolution of these domesticated species alongside our own. Although there are some chapters on this (more on dogs than cows, e.g.), the emphasis is much more on what has happened since they left the wild, in the very modern era, predominantly in the USA (and the UK in the dog section). There are chapters limited to specific breeds (e.g., pit bulls, Arabian horses) which may or may not interest the general reader. The section on cattle is narrowly focused on modern dairy practices (pretty much ignoring the beef industry), large and small, so of more interest to some readers than others.
Overall, this seemed more like a hodgepodge of related magazine articles (I think the author writes for one or more) rather than a unified history of humankind and our main domesticated mammals.
March 27, 2018
Animals that threw their lot in with us got a raw deal. Sad.
February 28, 2018
As the book is in four distinct sections, almost like four tiny books, my review will be in four pieces.
Dogs: This section started with a detailed explanation of how dogs came to be dogs, what they used to be, and why they chose us, and it's written in a way that even non-dog-nerds can understand. However, as the section goes further into modern dog politics, I found myself wondering if the author knew what he was talking about at all. He is very clearly anti-pit bull, and this is obvious during the entire chapter dedicated to bully breeds. I'm not a particular huge lover of bully breeds, but I find it tacky when people go out of their way to make passive-aggressive remarks about them, and there were a couple instances of him using data about dog bites that was completely incorrect. Overall, though, most of the information he presented was well-written and most of it was correct. I do commend the author for exploring the connection between certain pure breeds and severe health problems.
Cats: The cat section was much less biased than the dog section, and I enjoyed it. Again, there was a detailed history of the cat's origin, and some great information on how TNR programs affect feral cat populations.
Cows: The focus for cows was not really how they left the wild, but more so what people have done with them since their domestication. There was a lot of information on dairy farming, most of which I'd never heard of, and the author did a good job at showing the differences between a small dairy farm and the factory farming side.
Horses: Again, a brief domestication history, then it went into the politics and money surrounding horse sports, certain breeds, and health problems affecting those breeds. I knew nothing about horses anyway so I can't say if the information presented here was groundbreaking or not, but it was still fun to read.
I was really torn between a 3 star or 4 star rating overall. The bias presented in the dog section made me skeptical of the rest of the book, but the entire book was written in a way that presents serious issues -- feral cats, dairy farms, etc. -- in an easy-to-read way that can reach the general public easily.
Dogs: This section started with a detailed explanation of how dogs came to be dogs, what they used to be, and why they chose us, and it's written in a way that even non-dog-nerds can understand. However, as the section goes further into modern dog politics, I found myself wondering if the author knew what he was talking about at all. He is very clearly anti-pit bull, and this is obvious during the entire chapter dedicated to bully breeds. I'm not a particular huge lover of bully breeds, but I find it tacky when people go out of their way to make passive-aggressive remarks about them, and there were a couple instances of him using data about dog bites that was completely incorrect. Overall, though, most of the information he presented was well-written and most of it was correct. I do commend the author for exploring the connection between certain pure breeds and severe health problems.
Cats: The cat section was much less biased than the dog section, and I enjoyed it. Again, there was a detailed history of the cat's origin, and some great information on how TNR programs affect feral cat populations.
Cows: The focus for cows was not really how they left the wild, but more so what people have done with them since their domestication. There was a lot of information on dairy farming, most of which I'd never heard of, and the author did a good job at showing the differences between a small dairy farm and the factory farming side.
Horses: Again, a brief domestication history, then it went into the politics and money surrounding horse sports, certain breeds, and health problems affecting those breeds. I knew nothing about horses anyway so I can't say if the information presented here was groundbreaking or not, but it was still fun to read.
I was really torn between a 3 star or 4 star rating overall. The bias presented in the dog section made me skeptical of the rest of the book, but the entire book was written in a way that presents serious issues -- feral cats, dairy farms, etc. -- in an easy-to-read way that can reach the general public easily.
December 29, 2017
This is an amazing well researched book of the origins millions of years ago of these four species with an emphasis on one major event – when each one entered the lives of mankind (other than as dinner). When and how did this happen? Why did it happen? It is about domestication, but much much more than that. It is about how each of these species influenced each other. They had to benefit each other for it to have happened at all. Although I have read other books on the topic, this one was different. It is a bit more personal in the way the author takes on each subject, and something that always adds to a non fiction book - there is some humor.
The book is divided into four sections, one for each of the four species. I find it amazing that he packed so many interesting facts into a mere 377 pages. Each section was like an individual book. I have owned and bred dogs all of my adult life, always had cats, indoor pets and outdoor ones, and was deeply involved with horses and cattle for over half of my life. That said, I enjoyed the dog and cat ones most, and quite frankly did not find the cow one interesting at all. Somehow not handled the same way as the other sections. I am giving the book five stars and it deserves them, but the cow section I would probably give 1 star to, maybe 2. Let me tell a little about each one.
I have read the researcher, Coppinger’s book DOGS and this author agrees with Coppinger that the ancestor of all dogs, the wolf, was not domesticated by man. The wolf domesticated itself. How could man change the genetic traits of a wild wolf into a dog by taming a cub and breeding it to another tamed cub? How could he even control who it’s mate would be? He did not have a chain link pen in the back of his cave! He explains not only how wolves would be attracted to man’s garbage and scraps, but how only the least wild or spooky of them would dare to come that close. Those would be the poorer hunters also. As these wolves bred among each other they would produce offspring less afraid of man and more interested in scavenging than hunting. One part I found fascinating was when he explained this began happening at the end of the ice age. Why? Because that is when man became less of a nomad and could stay in one place and began to farm and build villages. Villages maintain more garbage in one place. Scavenging wolve would hang around these villages eventually over many generations becoming part of the village.
There is so much more in the dog section. I highly recommend reading it. The author does have my breed, the Australian Shepherd, and discusses several breeds in depth. One is the German Shepherd and depending on where the German Shepherd lover falls in the divide between those loving the older type of dog or the modern show type, they will probably love or hate his discussion of the breed. I am pretty sure the Pit Bull enthusiasts will very much dislike his discussion of their breed, but he does appear to have really done his research.
Okay, Cats. Wow, cats have had a tough time in their evolution with mankind. They have been revered as Gods, literally, pampered by royalty and they also have been persecuted and slaughtered by several of the major religions of the world as being satanic or the familiars of witches. In the time of the dark ages they were killed by the thousands in some countries after centuries of being valued for their ridding homes and grain storage places of mice and rats. The author does point out that in some way the cats got their revenge when the black plague came along and no telling how many millions of humans died because of the disease carried by rats and mice into the water and food supply. I had no idea all of this history of the felines who descended from wild cats.
In each section there are some interesting side stories such as one in the cat section about how a Navy Veteran after WWII decided a kiln dried clay his father sold to mechanics to soak up oil would be good for absorbing chicken manure. That did not go over well but when a neighbor was looking for something for her cats he gave her a bag of the stuff and soon people were referring to it as Kitty Litter. Kitty Litter revolutionized the house cat world where previously people keeping an indoor cat had to deal with the odor and problems of using dirt. In 1990 when he sold the business they were selling an estimated two hundred million dollars worth of Tidy Cat Kitty litter per year. Cats had become treasured house pets and millions had moved indoors.
I am not going to go into the cow section other than it is a great deal about Dairy Cows and all the technology of today.
The horse section was very interesting. Most of us know that the original ancestor of the horse was about the size of a dog, did not have hooves and looked far different than horses now. That original ancestor was in North America for fifty million years of evolution and then disappeared, probably because of climate change and human hunting. They would not return to the American continent for five thousand years which was with the Spanish explorers in 1519. I am not going to go into the history of the horse after it went extinct here other than to say if you are interested in horses it is amazing. The book quotes a scientist from the Dept of Zoology at the National Museum in London as saying, “the most important change in social and cultural behavior to have occurred throughout the history of the human species is the transition from hunting to the keeping of tamed livestock”. The section on the horse really illustrates this. I loved the details of the Mongolian horsemen and Genghis Khan whose incredible conquests were possible through horsemanship and horses. The more modern history of some of the breeds did not interest me as much but the past evolution of horses was all new to me and excellent.
Very very interesting read.
The book is divided into four sections, one for each of the four species. I find it amazing that he packed so many interesting facts into a mere 377 pages. Each section was like an individual book. I have owned and bred dogs all of my adult life, always had cats, indoor pets and outdoor ones, and was deeply involved with horses and cattle for over half of my life. That said, I enjoyed the dog and cat ones most, and quite frankly did not find the cow one interesting at all. Somehow not handled the same way as the other sections. I am giving the book five stars and it deserves them, but the cow section I would probably give 1 star to, maybe 2. Let me tell a little about each one.
I have read the researcher, Coppinger’s book DOGS and this author agrees with Coppinger that the ancestor of all dogs, the wolf, was not domesticated by man. The wolf domesticated itself. How could man change the genetic traits of a wild wolf into a dog by taming a cub and breeding it to another tamed cub? How could he even control who it’s mate would be? He did not have a chain link pen in the back of his cave! He explains not only how wolves would be attracted to man’s garbage and scraps, but how only the least wild or spooky of them would dare to come that close. Those would be the poorer hunters also. As these wolves bred among each other they would produce offspring less afraid of man and more interested in scavenging than hunting. One part I found fascinating was when he explained this began happening at the end of the ice age. Why? Because that is when man became less of a nomad and could stay in one place and began to farm and build villages. Villages maintain more garbage in one place. Scavenging wolve would hang around these villages eventually over many generations becoming part of the village.
There is so much more in the dog section. I highly recommend reading it. The author does have my breed, the Australian Shepherd, and discusses several breeds in depth. One is the German Shepherd and depending on where the German Shepherd lover falls in the divide between those loving the older type of dog or the modern show type, they will probably love or hate his discussion of the breed. I am pretty sure the Pit Bull enthusiasts will very much dislike his discussion of their breed, but he does appear to have really done his research.
Okay, Cats. Wow, cats have had a tough time in their evolution with mankind. They have been revered as Gods, literally, pampered by royalty and they also have been persecuted and slaughtered by several of the major religions of the world as being satanic or the familiars of witches. In the time of the dark ages they were killed by the thousands in some countries after centuries of being valued for their ridding homes and grain storage places of mice and rats. The author does point out that in some way the cats got their revenge when the black plague came along and no telling how many millions of humans died because of the disease carried by rats and mice into the water and food supply. I had no idea all of this history of the felines who descended from wild cats.
In each section there are some interesting side stories such as one in the cat section about how a Navy Veteran after WWII decided a kiln dried clay his father sold to mechanics to soak up oil would be good for absorbing chicken manure. That did not go over well but when a neighbor was looking for something for her cats he gave her a bag of the stuff and soon people were referring to it as Kitty Litter. Kitty Litter revolutionized the house cat world where previously people keeping an indoor cat had to deal with the odor and problems of using dirt. In 1990 when he sold the business they were selling an estimated two hundred million dollars worth of Tidy Cat Kitty litter per year. Cats had become treasured house pets and millions had moved indoors.
I am not going to go into the cow section other than it is a great deal about Dairy Cows and all the technology of today.
The horse section was very interesting. Most of us know that the original ancestor of the horse was about the size of a dog, did not have hooves and looked far different than horses now. That original ancestor was in North America for fifty million years of evolution and then disappeared, probably because of climate change and human hunting. They would not return to the American continent for five thousand years which was with the Spanish explorers in 1519. I am not going to go into the history of the horse after it went extinct here other than to say if you are interested in horses it is amazing. The book quotes a scientist from the Dept of Zoology at the National Museum in London as saying, “the most important change in social and cultural behavior to have occurred throughout the history of the human species is the transition from hunting to the keeping of tamed livestock”. The section on the horse really illustrates this. I loved the details of the Mongolian horsemen and Genghis Khan whose incredible conquests were possible through horsemanship and horses. The more modern history of some of the breeds did not interest me as much but the past evolution of horses was all new to me and excellent.
Very very interesting read.
August 23, 2018
Interesting, but I would have liked more time spent on the progression from wild to domesticated, rather than focusing on what happened after domestication.
May 16, 2018
Gavin Ehringer's book, divided into four unequal sections, examines the relationship of humans to four specific domesticated animals: dogs, cats, cows and horses. Beginning with the history of mankind's interaction with the animals, each section moves to an examination of the use and abuse of the animals in the modern day. The dog section answers questions about how wolves left the wild and were adopted by humans. The development of individual breeds is discussed, followed by the founding of the AKC. He does not shy away from controversy, devoting several pages to how AKC judges and breeders have damaged the German Shepherd and to the overpopulation of pit bulls in animal shelters. With cats, he keys the invention of kitty litter to the rise in house cats across America. The dairy industry comes under scrutiny, revealing that all organic dairy products are not created equal. My only complaint is that the horse section was so short, approximately twelve percent of the total book. Although he examined inbreeding in Quarter Horses, he missed several topics that could have improved this final section of the book. Who was Wild Horse Annie, and what have been the results of her defense of the American mustang?
October 10, 2019
I didn’t find this book interesting or well written at all. It doesn’t contain any original ideas, all his ideas are from other theorists. He just rehashes what others have come up with. The title is ridiculous, he just lists the animals, couldn’t he find a better title to cover the disjointed chapters? This is a writer who will never have any interesting or original ideas. Reading this book is the equivalent of eating a bowl of macaroni and cheese that’s gone green from fungus in the back of the fridge.
December 31, 2024
I expected this to be a little more about domestication of animals and less about the author's personal views, which I didn't always agree with. I don't necessarily have an issue with reading opinions contrary to mine, but this dude spent like a chapter and a half talking about how awful pitbulls are and that we should force the breed to go extinct. I almost stopped reading after that. Overall it just kind of felt unfocused. Unsure what the actual purpose of the book was.
August 7, 2018
This book provided an interesting history of the domestication of some of our most common pets and farm animals. It was great to get the long view, and enjoy another perspective on dogs, cats, cows and horses. A pleasant and informative read.
March 5, 2023
impressing
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January 4, 2018As heard on the Science podcast: http://traffic.libsyn.com/sciencemag/...
August 10, 2018
Every animal lover should read this book!
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews