Dogs would be better off without people in some ways. Looking into the adoring eyes of our spoiled pups, it’s easy to believe they’d be completely helpless without us. Even the thought of a pet dog living in the wild causes some owners to despair. But imagine if humans suddenly vanished and dogs were left to fend for themselves. Could dogs survive in a world without humans in such an apocalyptic scenario?
“I have no doubt that dogs would survive without us,” said Jessica Pierce(opens in new tab), a faculty affiliate with the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and author of “A Dog’s World: Imagining the Lives of Dogs in a World Without Humans” (Princeton University Press, 2021). “Dogs are descended from wolves, and they retain much of wolves’ and other wild canids’ behavioral repertoire, so they know how to hunt and scavenge.”
Without humans, our former pets would most likely reverse their domestication and live as wild species. However, not all dogs would be able to make the transition. There are many different dog breeds available today, and some are better suited to life in the wild than others. Flat-faced dogs, such as pugs and bulldogs, are prone to a variety of health issues, including those that restrict their breathing, limiting their ability to hunt. They are also bred with short tails, which would be detrimental to their social interactions with wild dogs.
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“Tails are an important tool in the communicative toolbox,” Pierce explained. “Even if you’re slightly less skilled at communicating something like an aggressive or submissive feeling, you’re more likely to get into a fight than if you can send clear signals.”
Dogs who are prone to getting into fights are more likely to be injured and less likely to survive. Fortunately for our canine companions, humans would no longer be around to dictate the canines’ reproductive habits. As a result, various breeds would mix, allowing natural selection to produce the fittest mutts.
These doomsday dogs would also breed with wolves to produce hybrids in areas where their ranges overlapped. According to a 2017 study published in the journal Global Ecology and Conservation, stray dogs and wolves already mix in countries such as Italy (opens in new tab). Friederike Range, an associate professor at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna who studies both dogs and wolves, told Live Science that the main difference between the two is us.
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“While wolves are primarily hunters and dogs are primarily scavengers,” Range explained. “And wolves can scavenge, and dogs can hunt.” For example, wolves, like stray dogs, can be found living in human garbage dumps, and stray dogs, like wolves, can be found hunting wild prey.
Even if dogs could survive in a world without humans, wouldn’t they be unhappy without their morning fetch and evening fuss? Pierce and Range do not believe the dogs are suffering psychologically as a result of their separation from their owners.
Pierce observed that humans suppress many dog behaviors in the home, such as roaming, digging, and peeing, because we find them annoying. Ownerless dogs do not face these constraints, and while they do not have the same home comforts as pet dogs, they may be psychologically better off. “What they do have that pet dogs do not,” Pierce said.
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Range has observed dogs forming their own social groups while living independently from humans and believes that food is a more important consideration than human companionship in these canines’ well-being.
“If we were to disappear, the dogs’ main problem would be food, not losing the human as a social partner,” Range explained. “They’d be perfectly happy without us as long as they could find food.”
A Dog’s World: Imagining the Lives of Dogs in a World without Humans
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What would happen to dogs if humans suddenly vanished? Would the dogs be able to survive without us? A Dog’s World imagines a posthuman future for dogs, revealing how they would survive—and possibly thrive—as well as explaining how this new and revolutionary viewpoint can guide how we interact with dogs now.
Jessica Pierce and Marc Bekoff—two of today’s most innovative thinkers about dogs—explore who dogs might become without direct human intervention in breeding, arranged playdates at the dog park, regular feedings, and veterinary care, drawing on biology, ecology, and the most recent findings on the lives and behavior of dogs and their wild relatives. Pierce and Bekoff demonstrate how dogs are quick learners who are highly adaptable and opportunistic, and they provide compelling evidence that dogs can already survive on their own in a world without us.
A Dog’s World challenges the notion that dogs would be helpless without their human companions, allowing us to understand these independent and remarkably intelligent animals on their own terms.
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