RE: legend of Greyfriar's Bobby

From: Price, Ilfryn (I.Price@shu.ac.uk)
Date: Thu 26 Jan 2006 - 14:23:34 GMT

  • Next message: Price, Ilfryn: "RE: legend of Greyfriar's Bobby"

    > I tried snopes with no luck using "greyfriar", "greyfriar's", and "skye"
    > as
    > keywords. "terrier" produces some hits but not anything to do with the
    > "Greyfriar's Bobby" legend. I wonder how much truth is in the legend. Was
    > there anything to the story that got it started and perhaps embellished a
    > bit?

    466 for "Greyfriars Bobby" snopes

    > Beyond the truth status, my main concern is the emotional impact of such
    > stories, regardless of veracity. After reading MacLean's Triune stuff, I'm
    > still not fond of his oversimplified general theory, but he did get me
    > thinking more deeply about emotion and its neural correlates. Why did I
    > get
    > choked up seeing a dog depicted sitting at its master's gravesite?

    Three thoughts

    1. Does it tie into the early programming ideas. As a young kid food that my father shot, flushed out and retrieved by the family dog was a source of protein. I like dogs but do not get 'choked up' by that particular image.

    2. More generations of dog human collaborative co-evolution than for any other animal ?

    3. I read somewhere recently that breeding for tameness has produced a transition from a wolf to a recognisable dog in 12 or 15 generations (sorry no time to search for the reference) with a significant change in Serotonin levels. Is the image triggering some sort of neuro chemical reaction?

    If

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