Michelle and I have a sneaking suspicion that our dogs may not last very long if left on their own in the wild. There are three key contributing factors that lead to this:

1. Their idea of “hunting” amounts to staring intently as we fill their food bowls while adhering to our “out of the kitchen” rule. Paying attention to this rule alone would render them almost useless in the wild. For them, “kitchen” means any area that has a threshold between it and the room they’re in; they’ll stay in the living room until they get a release command from us that says “it’s OK to come into the kitchen”. You may have noticed that most forests don’t have a staff cleaning service, so there are a lot of dead trees and sticks laying around. Basically, any of these objects constitute a threshold in their minds. They would never go into any new part of the woods until they get a release command. Most of the smarter prey would simply never say “OK”. Boom. No hunting for them.
2. They are surprisingly clumsy. If anything exciting happens, they usually run into a wall, table, or tree. This will not work out well if they find themselves in a situation where they are being chased by something that can eat them. Which brings me to the last factor.
3. A running animal means one thing: play. This will be equally disadvantageous both while hunting or being hunted. If a bear comes after them, they’ll actually run towards it and do a little dive-duck-swirl-hop to let it know they’re on top of it and ready to play. If they miraculously figure out that they could eat a squirrel and get it on the run, they’ll immediately switch to play mode and chase it until it turns at them, at which point they’ll do a dive-duck-swirl-hop to let it know they’re on top of it and ready to play. But it’s unlikely the entire chase would happen without having to pass a threshold, so this example is strictly academic.

We have always held wild animals in high esteem, mostly because they know how to survive without the internet or instant rice. Sadly, there have been two reports this week that have cast our image of wild animals into question.

The first was the a report of monkeys who attacked the deputy mayor of Delhi in India. Looking for food, a bunch of monkeys jumped on his porch and knocked him over the edge, causing him to fall to his death. Even viruses know it’s better to have a symbiotic relationship with your host that to kill it. Stupid monkeys.

The second was one where a bunch of partying elephants in northeast India got hammered on rice beer and electrocuted themselves to death. I thought elephants never forget, so why didn’t they remember that you’re supposed to drink in moderation, and never, ever drink and go out electrical pole tipping. While I’m encouraged knowing that elephants and I share a passion, I’m disappointed by their lack of self-control and their failure to name a designated pole-tipper.