Feral and Stray Dogs

Feral dogs are not reproductively self-sustaining, suffer from high rates of juvenile mortality, and depend indirectly on humans for their food, their space, and the supply of co-optable individuals.

In 2011, a media article on the stray dog population by the US National Animal Interest Alliance said that there are 200 million stray dogs worldwide and that a “rabies epidemic” was causing a global public health issue. In 2013, the World Health Organization reports that dogs are responsible for the vast majority of human rabies deaths, contributing up to 99% of all rabies transmissions to humans. Rabies causes tens of thousands of deaths every year, mainly in Asia and Africa. More than 15 million people receive post-bite rabies vaccines to prevent the disease.

Another point of view regards domestication as a process that is difficult to define. It regards dogs as being either socialized and able to exist with humans, or unsocialized. There exist dogs that live with their human families but are unsocialized and will treat strangers aggressively and defensively as might a wild wolf. There also exists a number of cases where wild wolves have approached people in remote places, attempting to get them to play and to form companionship