Why do puppies shake their heads furiously when playing with toys?
That’s a good question. It seems to be a “hard-wired” response, not something they have to learn but maybe something they discover. It’s obviously some form of kill mechanism in the genetic code–but that doesn’t totally explain it from the dog’s point of view. My guess is that they like the way it feels when it jiggles in their mouth, especially the flappy toys that beat against their muzzles when they shake. Incidentally, most people think that dogs evolved more as scavengers than hunters–so the kill mechanism must come from a time before the dogs were really dogs. Which is not to say that dogs don’t kill, but that their survival depends more on scavenging than hunting.
