Dog - Carnivore or Omnivore & Dog Terminology

 

The Dog is a canine carnivorous mammal that has been domesticated for at least 14,000 years and perhaps for as long as 150,000 years based on recent evidence. In this time, the dog has developed into hundreds of breeds with a great degree of variation.

 

For example, heights range from just a few inches (such as the Chihuahua) to nearly three feet (such as the Irish Wolfhound), and colors range from white to black with reds, grays, and browns also occurring in a tremendous variation of patterns. Dogs, like humans, are highly social animals and pack hunters; this similarity in their overall behavioral design accounts for their trainability, playfulness, and ability to fit into human households and social situations.

 

Dogs fill a variety of roles in human society. Working dogs of all kinds do traditional jobs such as herding and new jobs such as detecting contraband and helping the blind or disabled. For dogs that do not do their traditional jobs, a wide range of dog sports provide the opportunity to exhibit their natural skills. In many countries, the most common and perhaps most important role of dogs is as companions. Dogs have lived with and worked with humans in so many roles that their loyalty has earned them the sobriquet "man's best friend".

 

Carnivore or Omnivore

The classification as a carnivore does not necessarily mean that a dog's diet must be restricted to meat alone. Unlike a true obligate carnivore, such as a cat, a dog is able to healthily digest a variety of foods including vegetables and grains, and in fact requires a large proportion of these in its diet. Wild canines typically get such nutrients from the stomach contents of their herbivorous prey, which they consume eagerly.

 

This English Springer Spaniel is enjoying a bone.

 

 

Dogs can survive perfectly well on a reasonably carefully designed vegetarian diet, particularly if eggs and milk products are included. On the other hand, dogs are natural carnivores, and the experience of extremely stressful conditions such as the Iditarod race, as well as scientific studies of similar conditions, suggest that under such extreme stress, high protein diets (which implies a lot of meat consumption) help prevent damage to muscle tissue.

 

Terminology For Dogs

Dog, in common usage, refers to the domestic dog, Canis lupus familiaris (originally classified as Canis familiaris by Linnaeus in 1758, but reclassified as a subspecies of the wolf, Canis lupus, by the Smithsonian Institution and the American Society of Mammalogists in 1993). The word is sometimes used to refer collectively to any mammal belonging to the family Canidae (as in "the dog family"), such as wolves, foxes and coyotes.

 

Puppies engage in teething on almost anything.

 

 

Dog is also a term used by breeders to specifically denote a male domestic dog. The female is known as a bitch. A group of dogs is called a pack. A young dog is called a puppy. The words pooch and poochie are generic, generally affectionate terms for a dog, as is doggy (sometimes doggie), often used by children.

 

Many additional terms are used for dogs that are not purebred; see Terms for mixed-breed dogs. Toy dogs are so called because of their small size; similarly for Lap dogs, with the additional connotation of an affectionate attachment between human and dog.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Dog".