A complex relationship by Joseph D. McInerney Sometimes lessons in biology some unexpectedly, as when a rottweiler appeared over my right shoulder while I was kneeling to trim some rose bushes early this summer. I turned to face him as an archive of rottweiler news stories came up from long-term memory, none of them happy, all of them populated by mutilated people and by dogs destroyed at the direction of the authorities. He certainly wasn't behaving in a menacing manner, but maybe he was waiting for the right moment to express his breed's well-known, vicious disposition. I extended my hand slowly, and he licked it. The dog worked his way up to my face with a tongue as broad and soggy as a kitchen sponge, and, as his owner appeared, I expressed my relief at seeing such friendly behavior from a representative of so notorious a breed.
People say they're born mean.
Look at Caesar, here. Ain't no dog born mean. You got to teach them to be mean. In their different ways, Caesar and his human friend raised long-standing questions about the roots of animal behavior, including behavior in our own species. Nonetheless, the debate flares anew every few years, reigniting in response to genetic analyses of traits such as intelligence, criminality, or homosexuality, characteristics freighted with social, political, and legal meaning.