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Book Review, © Copyright 2002, Jim Loy
There seems to be a legend that King Solomon had a magical ring which allowed him to understand the languages of animals. Konrad Lorenz is a man who has striven mightily to understand animals. He won the Nobel Prize for his studies of animal behavior, in particular for his discovery of the phenomenon of imprinting. You may have seen Dr. Lorenz or his students, on PBS, being followed by a string of baby geese, or as the geese grow up, teaching them to fly, and watching them fly south for the winter. When tourists are shocked to see and hear him squatting in the grass and quacking like a mother duck (his baby ducks are down here somewhere), he tells us, "It is only my reputation for harmlessness, shared with the other village idiot, which has kept me from the mental home."
King Solomon's Ring (which I am currently rereading7) is a wonderful collection of stories and advice about animals. These are the chapters:
Chapter 10, on dogs, says that dogs are mostly descended from jackals. I understand that DNA analysis has recently shown that all domestic dogs are descended from wolves. Dr. Lorenz is also the author of the classic, On Aggression.
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