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Comment by albertgoeswoof | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I fully agree with the article's takeaway that dogs are only in it for the food. It's a bit of a crude summary. In addition to food, humans provide shelter, protection, love, attention, play time, and companionship - I don't think food is the only driver of the relationship.

My dog will hide behind me if he's scared, and enjoys attention from people he doesn't know - irrespective of whether they provide food for him or not. And he'll cry and ignore food from others for hours if I'm separated from him. Maybe this is just anecdotal data, but seems doubtful.

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Any trainer can tell you some breeds just care more about food than others.

My German Shepherd would do anything for a piece of chicken. He would suddenly seem to understand English. My boxer couldn’t care less for treats as a motivator - positive attention was the absolute only way to mold behavior. Having had the GSD first, it took some adjustment for me to learn to train a dog that just didn’t care about food. The breeder later told me that was entirely typical of boxers.

Some dogs care more about food than others. There are lots of counterexamples.

I grew up with a boxer that was almost completely food motivated. The neighbor's GSD was almost completely play motivated, and would skip meals in the hopes that someone would just. throw. the. ball.

Your breeder's statement is like stereotyping human personalities by ethnicity or gender - something may show up strongly in the statistics, but it's a poor tool to apply when interacting with individuals.

The existence of counterexamples isn’t that notable here. OPs position is “dogs are only in it for the food.”

Dogs that are not only in it for the food are a useful counterexample, because it trumps the sweeping “only.”

That -some- dogs are in it for the food doesn’t move the needle in the debate one way or the other.

I was responding to the GP's comment that it was delineated by breed.

What you're saying is also confirmed by research recently cited in the excellent book The Domestic Dog (and may also be driven by in-breed variance): https://www.amazon.com/Domestic-Dog-Evolution-Behavior-Inter...

Great read for people looking for a more rigorous treatment of dog behavior and psychology.

I think you're right. They massively over simplified the relationship between humans and dogs imo. Yeah, food is a huge part of it, but dogs even in my limited experience bond on way more levels than just that. Silly premise.

I agree with you: if we are going to be so reductive, we could make the case that any animal species, humans included, is only in it for the food.

    only in it for the food.

Reproduction.

Or, going one step further, universal optimization by means of more efficient use of energy. The end game is the heat death of the universe (maximum entropy, no more energy differentials), after all ;)

I've heard the quote that says, paraphrased: "the main reason we do anything is to have sex, and to feel great amongst our peers."

Which is very reductionist yet has a shadow of truth behind it.

I'm no expert either but my girlfriend works at a vet clinic (and is applying to animal behaviour PhD programs) and my impression from talking to the vets is that most dogs are very food motivated but they are also highly social. If you ignore the social aspects and view them as only food motivated their behaviour doesn't make as much sense (as you pointed out).

I completely disagree with the "motivated by food" theory. In my experience, dogs only want you to throw the ball.

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