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Canines

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Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science
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Synonyms

Coyotes; Dogs; Foxes; Jackals; Wolves

Definition

Family Canidae, a family within Carnivora with multiple species, including dogs, wolves, foxes, jackals, coyotes, and other dog-like mammals.

Introduction

Canines are an extremely large and varied family, including domestic dogs, but also wolves and foxes. The domestic dog is humankind’s closest animal companion, having been domesticated for at least 15,000 years and possibly longer. Because of their close association with humans, whether they share our moral attributes is of high interest to researchers. Humans have the tendency to attribute many human mental states to dogs, including “secondary” emotions such as jealousy, embarrassment, guilt, shame, pride, empathy, and grief (Konok et al. 2015). Some of these are overly anthropomorphic and do not reflect the underlying psychology of dogs. For example, owners often report that their dog feels guilt over disobedience, whereas research suggests that dogs are actually displaying...

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Correspondence to Zoe Johnson-Ulrich .

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© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

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Johnson-Ulrich, Z. (2017). Canines. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_499-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_499-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

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