Pros And Cons Of Sneezing

According to Science News, wild dog packs in Africa are now voting on when their pack should move and hunt by sneezing. Dr Neil Jordan states, “African dogs exhibit highly energetic greeting ceremonies…” These greeting ceremonies are called social rallies; at the rallies Dr Jordan says that he heard relatively a lot of sneezing while the dogs were preparing to go. Jordan’s research team has recorded details from over 60 social rallies from five different African wild dog packs in Botswana. Neil also states that the more sneezing that occurred during the social rallies, the more likely the packs were to move and start hunting. “The sneeze acts like a type of voting system,” he says. Study first author Reena Walker a key part of Dr Jordan’s research team noticed that when the alpha male and female are involved in the ceremony, they only have to sneeze a few times before the pack would move. But, if the dominant pair is not in the rally then more sneezes were needed in order to move the pack. Co-author Dr Andrew King believes that the sneezes are some form of a “quorum”, and there needs to be a minimum of sneezes before the pack moves. Dr King thinks that the quorum number of sneezes varies according to who is involved in the rally

Most animals don’t have the ability to have reasonable or rational thinking, they solely rely on instinct. However; what’s special about these dogs is that they do have the ability to think reasonably and rationally, because they can decide as a group whether to move and hunt or not. The wild dogs in Africa are practicing democracy within their packs. Democracy is a system of government where the entire population, as a whole or through elected representatives, decides on issues by voting. Dog packs in Africa are now using modern day civics to basically govern their pack; all by simply just