Stuff You Should Know - Are Dogs Really Man's Best Friend?

Episode Date: May 20, 2008

Check out the story of Hachiko, a loyal Akita who waited for over ten years for his master to return. Learn more about Hachiko and loyalty in this HowStuffWorks podcast. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Welcome to the HowStuffWorks podcast. I'm editor Candice Gibson joined today by two of my best friends in the office, Ryder Josh Clark, and editor Crystal Colette. Hey there. Hello. So we're talking today about whether or not a dog is really a man's best friend. Or a woman's. True. The short answer to this is yes, of course, but illustrating this concept

was the story of a Japanese dog in a key to Inu named Hachiko. We're all big fans of Hachiko here at HowStuffWorks.com. A little background around the office. Candice wept openly when she read this article. It was amazing. It was an amazing site. And we now use it as a measuring stick to determine whether, well, how much humanity one of our co-workers has. And long story short, this one of our one of our poor co-workers is now considered a robot because she did not actually cry at this article. So we're all big fans of Hachiko. Somebody want to give some Hachiko background? Hachiko? I'd love to give some background on Hachiko. His nickname was Hachi. Essentially, he was a professor's dog at a Japanese university. And they were very close. So close,

in fact, that Hachiko would walk the professor to work every day at the train station and then wait for him at the train station when he came home at night. And this continued for, say, 10, 12 years. Is that right? Yeah, I'd say about that. And then one day, very tragically, the professor actually died while he was at school and never returned. But Hachiko, undaunted, waited for him at the train station. He continued to come every day and look for the professor even though he wasn't coming home. And it got to the point that people started to notice that the professor's dog clearly needed a human being to belong to. They gave the dog to another family, but he routinely escaped from home and returned every day to the train station in a very

sad Victorian orphan kind of way. He contracted all sorts of diseases. Yeah, he got the mange. He became a little street-worn, I guess you could possibly say. Although they cleaned him up pretty well. He's now stuffed at the Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo. Even what they did, he's white as a whistle here. They also made a snatch here. They buried his bones next to the grave of his owner. That's true. Yeah, so Hachiko's in two places at once. Here around the office, we actually had a pretty big debate over this article. When I wrote it, Chris actually edited it. Candace had nothing to do with it except for crying. Some of the wording got changed. Originally, I said that Hachiko waited patiently and we had something of a debate. Can a dog wait patiently

or was I just anthropogenizing it? Well, the thing is we have to say it with a hitch right after eyes to ink. Well, see, the thing is at HowStuffWorks, one of the big things that we strive for is to be as scientifically accurate as possible. We don't want to attribute these feelings to a dog, but this is one of those things that I'm actually glad that we had the debate about. Obviously, this can't be quantified scientifically, but if you look at Hachiko coming back day after day and fighting with other dogs and catching doggie diseases on his way to the train station, he could have been waiting for people to give him more treats. It could have been something very survivalistic, but it doesn't seem that way. It seems like he was loyal. It seems

like he was waiting patiently. He was doing this long before people started giving him treats as well. Also, there's been studies that have shown that dogs are capable of displaying or at least exhibiting secondary emotions like jealousy, shame, pride, guilt. I think any dog owner knows that a dog can feel emotions, can show emotions, including ones that are supposedly just relegated to humans and chimps. I don't think saying that he was waiting patiently was anthropomorphizing him. Well, I think it's just simply one of those situations where we were airing on the side of caution. I think it's up to everybody to make up their own minds. You can make up your own mind too, Candice, when they read. Is a dog really a man's best friend on HowStuffWorks.com?

Exactly. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast at HowStuffWorks.com. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff, stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. On the new podcast, The Turning Room of Mirrors, we look beneath the delicate veneer of American ballet and the culture formed by its most influential figure, George Balangene. He used to say, what are you looking at, dear? You can't see you, only I can see you. What you're doing is larger than yourself, almost like a religion. Like he was a god. Listen to The Turning Room of Mirrors on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.