To release themselves.

The traditional interpretation is that dogs investigate other dogs’ eliminations because they are assaying status and relative ranks. But the real reason has to do with the nature of emotion and animal consciousness. Because animal consciousness is composed of a two brain makeup with each brain compelled by its own separate and divergent agenda (the Big-Brain is consumed with balance and output, whereas the Little-Brain is consumed with arousal and input), the front-end-isn’t-connected-to-the-hind-end, and this means that animal consciousness is characterized by a constant state of tension. Subsequently, that which connects the front-end-to-the-hind-end generates a sense of release in the body/mind and this is what we experience as emotion.

Nature is not random. The animal mind perceives the natural realm as being divided into things that either conducts emotion (preyful essences) versus things that resist the movement of emotion (predatory aspects). But this doesn’t mean that things are fixed and predetermined. Rather, this is infinitely scalable and malleable due to what I call the “supermarket theory of consciousness”. For example, every item on a grocery shelf (excluding cleaning products, etc.) is a nutrient, and yet some of the items are only nutritious when in combination with certain other items and then only in a proper proportion and after a specific process. So eating a can of baking soda is wholly noxious if not lethal (as for that matter is ten pieces of chocolate cake), but a pinch of baking soda in a slice of chocolate cake is delicious and (fortunately) nutritious. Furthermore, some shoppers only consider a limited range of items in the market conductive: anything that requires too much preparation is “too much fuss” (too high a resistance value) and so they walk past such items without feeling any arousal of their hunger circuitry. Whereas accomplished chefs find potential in a far greater range of items and they find themselves aroused on every aisle and even in regards to certain foodstuffs others find disgusting.

So the interplay between nature and the animal mind is dynamic, not static, and can render an infinite variability in perception and behavior. That which in one context might not be conductive: one wolf relative to one moose, might become conductive in another context: ten wolves relative to a weakened moose.

As mentioned above, pure conductive aspects are “preyful essences” (readily ingested and easily digested) and are universal features of every animal’s perception no matter the species, just as an open logic gate that conducts the flow of electrons is universal to all computers no matter the make or model. And whatever a dog smells is a pure preyful essence, which turns out to be anything that is of the earth (freshly disturbed dirt, fresh snow or dew) or is of a physical body (scents, urine, blood, feces, flesh, musk, carrion). These emotional conductors, “ground” the Big-Brain into the Little-Brain and completes all internal physiological and neurological circuitry so that the animal feels just as if there is a “current” of energy connecting its front-end-to-its-hind-end and thereby draining its emotional battery to a neutral rather than a “charged” (tense) state.

Since emotion is a release from the tension created by organs in dynamic conflict with each other (as Joseph Campbell once explained in an interview), therefore any byproduct of the physical body (urine, blood, musk scent, hormones, feces, saliva, flesh, etc.) constitutes a resolution of that internal conflict, given that these are the physical precipitates of how energies have successfully moved within the body. Any product of organ function is a statement of an internal resolution and so their chemical constitution means they will be perceived as emotional “grounds” by animals. (Interestingly, Chinese medicine considers each organ as a site of emotional experience more so than it is performing a specific function. For example, the liver is the site for anger more than it is an organ that filters blood.) So it is incorrect to think of a waste product of the body as a nonessential commodity that the body is just getting rid of, rather it is the substrate of network communication in animal consciousness just as the deposits of pheromones are how ants find and follow the trails of other ants.

The physical body as the source of emotional conductors that release body tension is why dogs rush over to investigate each other’s eliminations; akin to motorists on the L.I.E. rushing from their cars to grab $20 bills flying out of the back of an armored truck, even at risk of their survival – it is free energy, an emotional conductor, the universal motive to animal consciousness.

This is also why dogs like to eat and roll in you-know-what. They aren’t trying to mask their scent; rather they are feeling a release and returning to a state of wholeness. The signature of this can be found all the way up the phylogenetic tree in human beings as in the propensity of children, (and unfortunately to my taste, some adults) to be grossly entertained by scatological humor. However, this is also why on a more rarified plane people crave the smell of those they love. We ingest the essences of a loved one because it satisfies the most primal circuit of consciousness. Emotional grounding reduces the sense of internal tension that is the substrate of animal consciousness.

Related posts:

1. Definitions
2. Why Do Good Dogs Do Bad Things?
3. Why Do Dogs Do Everything in a Circle?

This will make more sense once one understands what hunting for an animal feels like. In our mind hunting means stalking, chasing and killing prey in order to obtain food, but in the animal mind a hunt is a state of “emotional suspension” whereby the predator when highly aroused, projects its “self” (i.e. its “emotional center-of-gravity) into its prey—and if—the prey acts like prey, then whatever the prey does the predator mirrors by feel the equal and opposite movement in order to counterbalance it. This in fact is how a predator “knows” how to catch its prey. (Best visual example of this is watching a cheetah take down a gazelle on a nature show wherein the cat by virtue of “being in drive” has projected an emotional calculus onto its movements so that at some point in time its own trajectory intersects with the gazelle at a common point in time and space.) And in such a state an animal feels weightless. Feeling weightless is what hunting feels like.

Cars are perfect vehicles for arousing an emotional state of suspension because the feeling of weightlessness can be induced by the phenomenon of physical synchronization. (This allows wolves to pool their collective energies onto a midpoint so that as a group they can take on prey animals in a coordinated manner that they cannot physically overpower even when in numbers.) Because a dog projects its “self” into the forms of things toward which it is strongly attracted or bonded with (for example people in a car), and because everyone in the car is 1) facing the same direction, 2) swaying in unison to the dips and bends in the road, 3) accelerating and de-accelerating perfectly in sync with the momentum and change of direction of the car, the dog is induced by all this synchronized physical movement into a state of emotional suspension and therefore the dog feels as if it is part of a group that is on the hunt. The more the car moves and the faster stimuli whiz by the more the physical energy is channeled into the feeling of suspension. The question now becomes how much sensory input, i.e. energy, can this feeling of weightlessness sustain and here we can see different temperaments of dogs begin to precipitate out so that they respond in various things.

For some dogs the feeling can grow so strong that when their emotional or carrying capacity is exceeded, they strike at things going past. This is when the prey instinct, an automatic, hardwired reflex, takes over in order to make the kill. (We need to remember that it’s only in our mind that a dog on a sidewalk is motionless relative to the dog in the moving car. For the dog in the car, the dog on the sidewalk is moving 30, 40 or 50 mph and that’s a pretty fast prey animal.) Some dogs have a higher carrying capacity and can retain a feeling of arousal for the potential moment in the future when they will be let out of the car so as to express the internalized energy in a concrete way, such as running around, rolling on the ground, playing Frisbee or going for a hike with their owner.

Cats on the other hand (as well as all other animals) have a far more limited emotional capacity than dogs and so the phenomenon of induction by virtue of physical synchronization is not as likely to get going. For example, a lower emotional capacity is why when cats have their bellies rubbed and they start to get excited, they quickly hit an overload circuit breaker and then the reflex to claw and pounce comes up and, since the owner’s hand as prey-isn’t-acting-like-prey, they have to run away. Whereas dogs of course can have their bellies rubbed all day and simply wallow in higher and higher states of ecstasy, i.e. weightlessness.

Related posts:

1. Why Do Dogs Chew Up Squeaky Toys?
2. Why Do Dogs Chew Up Squeaky Toys?
3. Isn’t Encouraging Prey-making urges dangerous?