Common Myths About Animal Behavior

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  Phrases like “fighting like cats and dogs” or “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” are most often used to describe human traits.

  But that they are couched in terms of animal behavior means that people think they know some basic truths about how animals view the world and act. However, there are a lot of commonly held beliefs about animal behavior that are actually myths.

  There are few more iconic images in cartoons and popular culture in general than a cat and a dog fighting, like, well cats and dogs. But, two certified applied animal behaviorists would disagree. Suzanne Hetts and Dan Estep are with Animal Behavior Associates Inc. in Littleton, Colo. Estep said that it’s a fiction that dogs and cats are natural enemies.

  “It had been assumed for a long time that this was an instinctive thing,” Estep said, “that dogs and cats being predators would automatically recognize their prey. That they didn’t have to learn it.”

  But Estep went on to say that research in the early part of the 20th Century showed that neither dogs nor cats “were born knowing who their ‘food items’ are, or even who their friends are.” Instead, they learn those associations during an early stage of development called socialization.

  Estep said that the easiest time to acclimate dogs and cats to each other is during that early period.

  “If you raise dogs with cats,” he said, “then what happens is that they’ll tend to think of each other more as friends and will tend to develop more amicable relationships than if they hadn’t had that earlier exposure.”

  Hetts recommended if a cat owner is thinking of bringing a dog into the household, it would be good to ask whether the dogs has been raised with cats, or at least has a track record of getting along with them.

  “If he hasn’t, that’s the kind of situation most likely to cause problems,” she warned. “If he hasn’t been socialized to cats, then he might see them as something to eat instead of something to play with.”

  Of course, bringing in a puppy offers the opportunity to have him go through that socialization stage with the same cat they’ll be sharing a home with. Hetts said that at that age, “they tend to look at everybody as friends, unless proven otherwise. They’re much more readily able to learn that ‘oh, cats are just another thing to play with!’ instead of something to harm or hurt.”

  The Animal Behavior Associates website has many good resources, and more on myths about animal behavior as well.