David Ian Howe
speaker
136 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
David Ian Howe’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I get sent like, is this a dog bone? And it's like probably just like a chicken wing, but they'll send it to me. But yeah, so this is a soapbox of mine is that species is a spectrum. It's not a cut and dry thing. Evolution is not Pokemon, right? You don't just evolve into the next thing 10 seconds later. It takes thousands of years.
So coyotes, dogs, dingoes, wolves, and some jackals are all in the genus Canis, which means they can all interbreed. And there can be dogs that are mixed with coyotes, coyotes that are mixed with wolves. All of it is just they're all like a dog is a subspecies of the wolf to me, as is the dingo. They're all wolves that can interbreed.
So when you're looking at coyotes and stuff, it could be very similar to a small dog or a large dog, depending on. So the answer would be you just have to have enough of a comparative collection of dogs and coyotes to kind of match it up. But there are certain markers that you can tell, okay, this is a coyote. It's more slender than say a lab.
And then wolves are going to be way more robust, especially in the Americas. So it's hard to tell. And now you can do it with chemical tests and things like that too.
An ex of mine called it puppy crack. Because like it's just such an addicting smell. Apparently it's like a fungus or like something that like some kind of chemical that's emitted. But yeah, the corn, like the Frito feet, it just, I love that smell. And then the inside of their ears too is like a very distinct smell.
Yeah, exactly. And then everyone loves their own dog's smell, but then other people are like, your dog stinks, dude. And I'm like, no, he does not. He smells amazing.
Yeah, wolves make a den. Coyotes make dens as well. I think that's what it comes from. I did see a study that dogs always turn a specific way because they want to face a certain direction, like cardinal direction, like a pigeon, I guess. They can home in a certain sense.
But I mean, my dog will spin three to six times on the bed and then decide he doesn't want to sleep on the bed and leaves it. Like, it's just so odd. Yeah.
I have heard... That is correct. Yeah. I can't think if it was a scientific study or like a Snapplecap fact, but I've heard that before, that they do enjoy music and like they can tell when, like I leave NPR on for my dog when I'm gone. So there's something going on, which has music and talking to calm them down.
Dogs, to me, are like... A wolf adapted to life among Homo sapiens. So like that would be how I define a dog. And in that sense, whatever life they have with a Homo sapien, like their sole existence is to interact and be close and social with humans. So yeah, I would think so. I don't know how to quantify it, but yeah, like my dog loves me 86.72% repeating.
So like, I don't know, but I would imagine so. Yeah.
Yes.
In the same sense, the suckiest thing about archaeology is I will never know exactly what happened or how dogs came to be without a time machine. And another thing, too, is we worked on a mammoth site last year where a mammoth got killed Then there was a camp built around it where they were butchering it and tanning all the hides and stuff. This was in Wyoming.
And there's a big carcass of a mammoth right there. They probably either kicked the dogs out of camp or chained them up somewhere maybe. But you're never going to see...
evidence of dogs in the middle of like the activity area so i would have to just dig shovel tests all the way around the site just hoping i found the dog bone because they usually hang out on the outskirts of site so the thing that sucks the most is like dogs are very hard to find archaeologically unless you just stumble upon like a burial where you see their bones and like a trash heap from being eaten like the later you go into history the more dogs you're going to see but way back in time not sure and that does i guess suck i guess to answer the question
My absolute pipe dream of a site would be like a human gourd on a mammoth tusk. So knowing they were going at it and then like his dog also near it. So just to confirm that all of that was going on at the same time or her dog, you know. But yes, I do. Like everyone has their dream find, like just to find a really, even if it wasn't like groundbreaking, just a very nice place. ornately buried dog.
And you can get that connection with those people from like 14,000 years ago, like how much they clearly cared for this animal as well, which is kind of humbling to me.
Yeah, I think we all do. I accidentally broke a mammoth bone on accident on a dig because I was trying to get the sand out from under it before we put the cast over it. And for whatever reason, I just yanked and I just split it in half and I was like... Which is fine because you glue it and bring it back to the lab anyway.
But yeah, just dreams like that where I broke something and I can't bring my dog to sight anymore because he's just so special where he like... will run into the big pit of bones and take one or lay in it. He just doesn't get it. But the other dogs leave it alone.
But yeah, in terms of nightmares, I'd say that... And I also have nightmares of giving a conference presentation and everyone's like, you're wrong.
Showing 101–120 of 136 · page 6 of 7
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