Dogs perceive any kind of other members they live together as a pack, right? So you are the head of the pack, aren't you?
Dogs and humans are both pack-social species and packs have hierarchies. The psychological adaptation that dogs have made since branching off as a subspecies of wolf,
Canis lupus familiaris, is to be comfortable in a multi-species pack. In addition to humans, dogs will bond with cats, parrots, monkeys, rabbits, pigs, goats, assorted rodents, and virtually any reasonably docile species that resides with them.
They also have a lower incidence of a strong alpha instinct than wolves--surely the result of our selective breeding as well as of the personality of the original individuals who chose to live with us instead of staying with the wolf pack. Most dogs will happliy submit to the authority of a human who appears able to kill a steer, a couple of pigs and several chickens every month.
Pit bulls are an exception, with a strong alpha instinct. So are the Lhasa Apsos we raise, originally bred to be unsupervised watchdogs around the Buddhist temples in Tibet. They don't understand the hierarchy thing, they think we're just really nice pack-mates who are out doing our job of hunting cows, while they do their job of protecting the house from burglars.
This "pointing out" thing is fascinating.
I also think it's a little overblown. You can spend years trying to teach the average dog to understand pointing, and he will still walk over and sniff your fingertip.
Yes there is pack signals, however, its interspecies communication, and dogs are just better at it than people are.
I beg to differ. Dogs are better at
non-verbal communication than we are, because (duh) that's all they have. You could say that about almost every animal! Since
Homo sapiens invented the technology of spoken language, that's what we have specialized in. Most of us haven't bothered to hone our skills with body language, facial expressions, etc. Actors do, as well as diplomats, con men, and various other professionals who find it handy.
For example, if they were a species of living alone, but contacted their own just to mate, their behavioral pattern would be different than another species live in a pack.
Social species, whether pack-social like humans, dogs, horses, etc., or herd-social like cattle, antelope, pigeons, etc., have to be able to communicate with their pack- or herd-mates, so they evolve the skill. Solitary species like bears and orangutans don't need it and don't develop it.
Like cats. They accept to live with other species, but get attached to the place they live in rather than the species they live with.
Not quite true.
Felis sylvestris in the wild is a solitary species. But in captivity a phenomenon known as
neoteny occurs. We treat cats the way a mother treats her kittens--feeding them, cleaning them, carrying them, disciplining them. This triggers a reversion to the instincts of kittenhood, when they were social, played with each other, and gave some (minimal) respect to their mother's authority.
Cats aren't attracted to humans generically as a species, but they love the people they live with. And they are bright enough to figure out that humans like cats, so even feral cats will hang around human habitation waiting for a handout.
Or to pick off the rodents that are also attracted to our habitation. That's probably how they came to join the human-dog pack in the first place. Evidence of the first domestic cats pops up in Egypt just about the time they were building the first granaries.
