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Ethnographic Observations on the Role of Domestic Dogs in the Lowland Tropics of Belize with Emphasis on Crop Protection and Subsistence Hunting

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Abstract

We report functional relationships between humans and canines based on observations in the village of Santa Cruz (Toledo District, Belize), emphasizing the cultural ecology of dogs in this lowland tropical rainforest setting and milpa agriculture subsistence system. Dogs pursue animals threatening field crops; they deter forest herbivores by leaving their scent along the myriad trails from the village to the milpa field plots; and they guard the homestead and foods stored there. Dogs also aid in daytime hunts for species that can be cornered. They are less useful in pursuits of fast species like deer and are protected from pursuing especially dangerous species like anteater or warri. Litter survival rates are low, and the lifespan of hunting dogs is significantly shorter than that of guard dogs due to hazards of forest pursuit. Explicit training for hunting is limited and maintenance costs are low as dogs are fed a partial ration of tortillas and otherwise scavenge for their diet. The village population of dogs appears not to be under genetic selection for hunting skills. Our results advance the comparative ethnographic study of this important domesticate; they should aid in the formulation and assessment of hypotheses about dog domestication and co-evolution with human society.

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source HDS; we omit from the sample ten outliers for which households reported life expectancies above 12 and up to 25 years, as dogs rarely live that long (see SM, Sect. 5). Eliminating these unusually high estimates has no effect on the general magnitude of the difference between guard and hunting dog lifespan

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Notes

  1. Maize intercropped with Mucuna spp. beans.

  2. In the SM, “Sect. 7: Prey-Specific Tactics, and Prey,” we briefly describe techniques used for individual species, the attenuated contemporary use of traps, and practices regarding animals that are considered inedible or too dangerous to hunt, including the warri, collared anteater, eleven banded armadillo, white-nosed coati, spider monkey, and jaguar.

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Acknowledgements

We extend heartfelt appreciation to Santa Cruz’s hunters and their families for sharing with us knowledge, adventures, and wild food, and to Mark N. Grote for his early advice on data, statistical, and computational organization. Sheryl Gerety, Estrella Chévez and Cody Ross provided encouragement and editing with great skill.

Funding

This work was supported by the NSF (Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences), Human Systems Dynamics, Collaborative Research. Development and Resilience of Complex Socioeconomic Systems: A Theoretical Model and Case Study from the Maya Lowlands [Proposal# 0827277]. Further support was provided by CONACyT (Repatriación 203604) Apoyos Complementarios para la Consolidación Institucional de Grupos de Investigación, and Secretaría Académica at Universidad Veracruzana.

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  1. Facultad de Biología –Xalapa & Cuerpo Académico Biología Y Ecología del Comportamiento, Universidad Veracruzana, Xalapa, Mexico

    Luis Pacheco-Cobos

  2. Department of Anthropology & Graduate Group in Ecology, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA

    Bruce Winterhalder

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Correspondence to Luis Pacheco-Cobos.

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Pacheco-Cobos, L., Winterhalder, B. Ethnographic Observations on the Role of Domestic Dogs in the Lowland Tropics of Belize with Emphasis on Crop Protection and Subsistence Hunting. Hum Ecol 49, 779–794 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-021-00261-w

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