Can Dogs Pee Out of Spite?
My friend has a dog who will pee on the carpet whenever people don’t pay attention to her. But normally she knows how to ask how to go outside. So I got to wondering if dogs can have an emotion like spite or revenge.
I searched around and everyone says absolutely not. Dogs do not have complex emotions like that and also probably don’t have the planning capacity do carry out a revenge act.
Here are some of the web sites I found that try to explain this. Generally they say that the dog may just be getting scared or lonely and thus confused.
However I still have my doubts. Dogs obviously descended from wolves which had to live in small packs and I’d think that the concept of revenge might be useful for social animals to have evolved. It would encourage cooperation by punishing those who don’t cooperate. You know a “You didn’t help us hunt, so you can’t have my bison” type of deal.
[tags]spite, pee, dogs, emotions, dog emotions, anxiety, wolves, evolution[/tags]