[HN Gopher] Remains of Chihuahua-Sized Dog Unearthed at Roman Br...
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Remains of Chihuahua-Sized Dog Unearthed at Roman Britain Villa
Author : diodorus
Score : 57 points
Date : 2023-08-02 04:52 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| tokai wrote:
| I don't get saying that is has legs and body like a dachshund and
| then conclude that its not the body of a hunting dog. Dachhunds
| whole layout is how it is to facilitate hunting.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| I don't get saying it has the legs and body like a dachshund
| and then saying it's "Chihuahua-sized"
|
| Why not just say "Dachshund-like"?
| bch wrote:
| A large boulder the size of a small boulder...
| joker_minmax wrote:
| The picture absolutely looks Dachsund-like. Why it would be
| compared to a Chihuahua is beyond me. Maybe Chihuahua in Rome
| is better clickbait because everyone knows Dachshunds are
| from Europe already.
| PNewling wrote:
| Huh, I had no idea they were originally a hunting dog.
|
| From this very bias source, but has a decent amount of
| information: https://www.dachshundstation.com/hunting-
| dachshunds/
| dnstalk wrote:
| > Dachshunds are extremely intelligent dogs who are brave and
| tough in the face of danger. They had to be, in order to win
| a battle with a fierce badger.
|
| You need a several Dachshunds to take out a badger. Some will
| probably die during the hunt. Badgers are larger and have
| much bigger teeth and huge claws. What is that tiny dog's
| face going to be able to do?
|
| They also used to arrange fights to bet on called Badger
| Baiting...
| timbit42 wrote:
| Many of the small dog breeds were bred for killing rodents
| and other small critters around homes, castles, factories,
| etc.
| Morizero wrote:
| Yeah, have these people never heard of ratting? Perfect size
| dog for that.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| So a puppy?
|
| >This, along with the fact that she might have even been buried
| with her owner, makes it far more likely that she was kept as a
| house dog
|
| Based on certain details we're lacking, this is either
| heartwarming or disturbing.
| huthuthike wrote:
| I would have liked to see the article address this. I think it
| is pretty easy for an osteologist to tell if a mammal is mature
| based on the fusion of the long bones, but I'd be interested to
| hear more.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| > Breeding tiny dogs as pets "seems to be a Roman phenomenon that
| I suspect ties in with conspicuous consumption by the elite and
| other attempts at wealth and showiness," ...
|
| I am not sure this is the only path for dogs to be "tiny". In
| nature, animal divergence based on environment can and does occur
| quite frequently. I can easily see dogs specialize in hunting for
| specific food sources and over generations adjust to be better
| hunters.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Yeah that seems like a politically motivated conclusion. Most
| of the modern small dog breeds were originally bred to do
| things like hunt badgers in small burrows. It was probably so
| in the past as well, even if those reasons have been lost to
| time.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > politically motivated conclusion
|
| I... think the relevant politics are a bit obsolete.
| [deleted]
| kragen wrote:
| smithsonian on this discovery:
|
| > _The tiny pup was likely a beloved pet, not an animal bred for
| hunting or herding_
|
| uhh those aren't the only three possibilities tho
|
| wikipedia on the history of actual chihuahuas:
|
| > _In a letter written in 1520, Hernan Cortes wrote that the
| Aztecs raised and sold little dogs as food._
|
| and in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xoloitzcuintle:
|
| > _Sixteenth-century Spanish accounts tell of large numbers of
| dogs being served at banquets.[5] Aztec merchant feasts could
| have 80-100 turkeys and 20-40 dogs served as food.[6]_
|
| how would you distinguish beloved pets from food animals? well,
| plausibly by quantity, or by the form of burial. perhaps the
| villa only had one or two lap dogs?
|
| > _The pint-sized pup is one of 15 small- to medium-sized dogs
| discovered at the villa._
|
| uhh eww
| civilitty wrote:
| _> how would you distinguish beloved pets from food animals?
| well, plausibly by quantity, or by the form of burial. perhaps
| the villa only had one or two lap dogs?_
|
| The context of the burial is always important. The bones from
| cooked animals would most often end up in huge quantities in a
| midden rather than buried alone or with their owners. Any
| objects found with the remains like a collar or harness are
| also useful details.
|
| The condition of the skeleton itself usually tells the story:
| pets are generally in the best shape. Beasts of burden have
| signs of repetitive stress while animals that were eaten most
| often have cut marks on their bones where tools were used to
| clean the carcass and prepare the meat. An animal like a dog
| might be prepared bone-in so the chemistry of the bones
| themselves can also indicate whether they were cooked or not.
| kragen wrote:
| yeah, presumably the animal found wasn't cooked, but you
| don't eat livestock that died from illness unless you're
| starving
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| Romans simply didn't eat dogs if there were other sources
| of food around.
|
| If they would have, chances are we still would do it today.
| whythre wrote:
| Eww? Lots of nobles kept kennels.
| tokai wrote:
| I think kragen is joking that with amount of dogs found one
| could just as well argue that the dogs were livestock and not
| pets.
| tekla wrote:
| They can be both
| kragen wrote:
| right, and typically nobles kept kennels of hunting dogs
|
| (as the article points out, though, conspicuous consumption
| with show dogs is also a possibility)
|
| in any case once you have a kennel full of dogs, they
| mostly aren't beloved pets anymore
| notjulianjaynes wrote:
| The illustration in the article looks a bit like a turnspit dog
| too.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnspit_dog
| TylerE wrote:
| That's fascinating, especially this bit at the end:
|
| The gene for chondrodysplasia in various short-legged breeds
| has been confirmed to trace back to a single ancestral
| mutation [presumably from Egypt, as the Egyptians since short
| legged dogs had been found in Egyptian households dating back
| thousands of years.
|
| Egypt was also thousands of years in advance of modern pet
| keeping by quasi-domesticating Ball Pythons.
| zgluck wrote:
| Seems like this is a rewrite of
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/22/oxfordshire-roma...
| (which, to be fair was linked to towards the end, although not as
| prominently as it should have been) with some added color and
| removed details.
|
| It was not a puppy according to this quote from the Telegraph
| article:
|
| _Maiya Pina-Dacier, an archaeologist with DigVentures, said that
| this dog was fully grown when it died and so tiny, it must have
| been "adorable": "In previous periods, you don't get evidence of
| pets like this. But, when the Romans arrive, you start finding
| signs of smaller dogs."_
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(page generated 2023-08-03 23:02 UTC)