03 March 2016
Going to the dogs with canine doppelgangers
by Princess Lottie of Islington (with help from Frank O’Nomics)
The world seems to be awash with people who are obsessed by animals and two recent books highlight the fact that some men are taking this obsession to the extreme by, at least temporarily, changing their species. Dogs like me don’t really get this sort of human insecurity but, while I would have a real issue with any human trying to pull up a bowl next to mine, I do not see why, if they have to try being something else, they don’t opt for being a dog. After all, look where the call of the wild has led them.
Start with Charles Foster. Charles is a very well educated vet and barrister, yet he decided that he wanted to discover his inner beast. As a result he has spent a great deal of time being a badger, a deer, an otter, a fox and he even tried for a time to be a swift. He does seem to have learnt a lot about his senses, particularly when living in a sett as a badger with his son, where they would sleep by day and forage by night. It seems that for a badger smell is everything, sight is almost irrelevant and apparently worms taste better if you cook them with nettles and garlic. Mr Foster found little affinity with otters (I could have saved him the trouble if he had asked) and seems to have found trying to be a swift a much tougher prospect – they travel 30,000 miles a year without perching, and sleep and mate in the air. Beyond some paragliding and dietary adjustment he does not seem to have got close.
Another recent, and perhaps more extreme, example is Thomas Thwaities. Mr Thwaites decided that he would try to live as a goat (no, I’m not “kidding”), and went so far as to have prosthetics made for his arms and legs. He even considered having an artificial rumen that would digest grass for him to consume, using the gut bacteria found in goats. “My goal was to take a holiday from the pain and worry of being a self-conscious being, able to regret the past and worry about the future,” he has said. Surely there are simpler ways of doing that. He found a friendly Swiss goat-farmer who would allow him to live with his herd. Keeping up with them seems to have proved very demanding, and negotiating downhill sections downright frightening. Nevertheless, he was able to get the Wellcome Trust to help fund his experiment, so presumably there is something that could benefit science to come out of this.
My advice to all of these people is to try life as a dog. Eat simply (the same meal twice a day), bags of exercise (chase a ball for the sheer enjoyment of it rather than getting wound up about hitting it with a stick) and lie around for the rest of the day in philosophical contemplation. And now for the good news. Thanks to those clever people at Microsoft you can even work out what kind of dog you are.
I’m sure we have all at some stage felt the need to remark on the similarity between dogs and their owners, whether it be leggy blondes skipping along with their afghan hounds (usually wearing an afghan coat, which always makes a labrador like me somewhat nervous), or pugilistic young men out with bulldogs or staffies (actually they make me even more nervous). So then it is not surprising that Microsoft have seen the need to develop an app that uses facial recognition software to categorise humans by dog breeds – rather lamely called “fetch!”. Frankly, I think there is a danger that such an app can only produce disappointment. Most humans are likely to have a strong idea of the dog they most resemble (modesty forbids me suggesting that they would aspire to look like me) and I am guessing that they will not respond well to be told that they are a chihuahua, shih tzu or a pug. Of greater interest might be to combine the app with websites that assess what breed of dog you resemble by asking a series questions – personality traits are surely more interesting than looks. Similarly, there is much more fun to be had in deciding what kind of dog you think that many celebrities resemble, rather than having an app to tell you – the exercise is a very good way of countering over-inflated profiles and egos.
There is, of course, a good commercial use of the app for those looking to buy a dog. The software can analyse a picture of a dog to tell you what breed it is – which could be very useful if you are in danger of being sold a “pup’, or a Heinz 57 instead of a pedigree chum. Nevertheless, I do think that the whole basis of the app is the wrong way round. Surely it would be better to take a picture of a dog and then find out whom it most resembles. A simply description of me will lead you to the obvious celebrity doppelganger in both looks and intellect: tall, leggy, slim, dark, ardent campaigner for social justice, with a fondest for grey hair. Got her yet? Come on – its obvious! Amal Clooney!….For those looking to learn more about the exploits of Mr Foster please check out his book “Being a beast” and for Mr Thwaites “Goatman – How I took a holiday from being a human”. As for me…time for some sniffing and a long snooze.
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