@ProfExistence This is cool! Wait for the coexistence take from us, Tim... using the pet scenarios from Harry Potter. Perhaps it could make things simpler for layperson, and make casual dog feeders more responsible.
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THINKPAWS
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THINKPAWS
@ThinkpawsOrg
Pioneering the Science of Coexistence Within People, Animals & Waste Systems | A Think Tank hosted @NCBS_Bangalore & @OxfordBiology | PI @_NishantK
Delhi | Bengaluru | Oxford Entrou em Ekim 2021
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I enjoyed the ecosystems depicted in the AVATAR movies, but there were a couple of things that bothered me. The evolutionary history of the Na'vi was a little bewildering. so I wrote an article about it for the Sloan Museum of the Moving Image
scienceandfilm.org/articles/3728/…
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Would you be able to walk through these #dogged streets, even if the #dogs were neutered? This begets the Q: Why deliberate feeding can increase territorial aggression in free-ranging street #dogs: After my recent The Conversation article (doi.org/10.64628/AB.4f…) on India’s street dogs, I’ve seen strong reactions—especially to the proposition that deliberate feeding can fuel aggression, like we found in Black Kites of Delhi that attack people on head during nesting season. This deserves a clear, scientific explanation.
1) This is not about blaming compassion. It is about understanding how dogs respond to resources in space. Here is what decades of behavioural ecology tell us:
▶️ Food that is predictable and localised becomes defendable.
When dogs are fed repeatedly at the same spot (shops, houses, temples), food shifts from diffuse waste to a fixed resource. Fixed resources trigger territorial behaviour in social carnivores.
▶️ Territories emerge around feeding points, quite often in streets.
Free-ranging dogs are not randomly aggressive. Barking, chasing, and blocking movement are most intense near feeding locations and along access routes to them.
▶️ More food ≠ calmer dogs. It often means more dogs.
Increased food availability raises pup survival and pack density. More dogs in less space leads to competition, vigilance, and defensive behaviour—especially towards unfamiliar humans.
▶️ Dogs learn who “belongs” and who does not.
Regular feeders are tolerated; passers-by are not. What humans perceive as “unprovoked aggression” is often context-specific territorial defence.
▶️ Urban infrastructure amplifies the problem.
Narrow streets, parked vehicles, and high human traffic compress dog movement, forcing encounters that escalate defensive responses.
Importantly, this pattern is seen repeatedly in cities, and less so in villages, where food is dispersed, territories are larger, and dog movement is less constrained.
Compassion without population control, waste management, and spatial planning creates an ecological trap—for dogs and for people. If we genuinely care about animal welfare and public safety, we must move beyond emotion-driven debates and engage with how behaviour actually works.
📽️ I’m attaching a short field video that illustrates how aggression switches on and off with feeding contexts.
📄 For those interested, the article is here:
theconversation.com/indias-60-mill…
Coexistence is not kindness alone. It is ecology, space, and systems. #Thinkpaws
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🚨 #Cowpolis in metropolis: 🚨 ~740 Tonnes waste/day. That isn't a landfill capacity. That is what Delhi's street cows eat every day.
Calculations based on the fieldwork (road transects @25 locations in Delhi) of Akhilesh Singh & Sahul Kumar with THINKPAWS team [more sampling replicates are underway] suggest that ~50% of Delhi's cow population (~37,000 animals) are subsisting on our refuse.
Your productive cows (NOT Strays) are removing 10% of the capital's daily wet waste. We often ask: "Why are there so many animals on the road?" The data gives the answer: Because roads (as urban commons) are spaces where waste based food-subsidies are dumped.
To put that in perspective: That is equivalent to the payload of 150 fully loaded garbage trucks—removed from our streets, processed biologically, and returned to the ecosystem, every 24 hours.
🚨 But at what price?
1) For the City: It masks the failure of our waste collection systems.
2) For the Cows: It lures them into traffic corridors and exposes them to plastic impaction (ruminal disorders).
3) For Us: It creates a false sense of "balance" that is actually a public health and safety ticking clock.
Kindness without systems is just cruelty in slow motion. We need to stop "thinking" about the problem and start engineering the solution: 100% Segregation at Source. Wait for a research paper on this topic, likely to be out in 2-3 months.
DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance funded project based at National Centre for Biological Sciences & Department of Biology, University of Oxford.
As long as our streets serve as open-air buffets of unsegregated waste, we are literally farming conflict. We are creating an ecosystem where cows must be on the tarmac to survive.
#Policy #OneHealth #UrbanPlanning #India #Conservation #NatureCities
Swipe to see the data breakdown ➡️
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The issue of casual feeding of streets dogs takes new dimensions in Delhi’s streets. Dogs have enough that they discard milk in bowl.
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🚨Fire "hawks" in Delhi.🚨 It is widely speculated that kites deliberately start fires in Australia (@LucyMAplin: we discussed this last April). At least the opportunistic responses to fires converge.
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What Delhi sees and what it misses! ... did you wonder what and how the city suffices you protein requirement?
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Dogs, afterall, have to use their faculties to process the environment. Based on what, when how and where, they bark, chase, bite, wag tail, etc.... a saga >20k years long extended game about sharing spaces. We are not sure how "wolves in streets" deal with the urban-its benefits and threats, etc. Extending the confidence about a few dogs in your locality as a silver bullet for all dog issues is not right, as you can see below. People and dogs are both adjusting to executing friendship in a new place. Do you think we can go on, like the old times? Read our research and popular items to explore on our website: thinkpaws.org/publications/
NCMIndia Council For Men Affairs@NCMIndiaa
For those who give long lectures that feed biscuits to Dogs and they will never bite you. Aunty Jee was a Dog Lover and she was feeding #StrayDogs as a daily routine. But even that did not save her from Dog bite. Now she has to take Rabies Injection.
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@sonu150319 @NCMIndiaa If you really want to know, check out x.com/_NishantK?s=20
and this article: theconversation.com/indias-60-mill…
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@NCMIndiaa Important points here is they are operating in gang , whenever one dog is biting others also come to bite , strange !!! What exactly is happening here ?
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For those who give long lectures that feed biscuits to Dogs and they will never bite you.
Aunty Jee was a Dog Lover and she was feeding #StrayDogs as a daily routine. But even that did not save her from Dog bite. Now she has to take Rabies Injection.
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🚨 Do you wish to read one comprehensive article on #Dog crisis 🚨 in India that conveys: The #Chaos and Scale → The #Biology → The Evolutionary Trap → The Social Inequity → The #Behavioural Mechanism → The Legal Deadlock → The Solution. (Link to pre-print: doi.org/10.32942/X25921).
I have just submitted my updated perspective, "The Indian Street #Dog Crisis and Multispecies Coexistence in Tropical Urban Futures". This manuscript comes at a critical juncture, as the #SupremeCourt of India navigates a deadlock between public safety and animal welfare.
Our argument is simple but uncomfortable: Kindness, when divorced from ecology, becomes a trap.
Here are the four pillars of our argument:
1). The Social Justice Imperative We explicitly argue that "kindness" is not economically neutral. In Indian cities, wealthy residents often "outsource" the risk of feeding—provisioning #dogs in public spaces while commuting in private vehicles. Meanwhile, blue-collar workers, pedestrians, and cyclists face the disproportionate consequences of territorial aggression. This is not just an animal issue; it is an issue of urban equity.
2). The Evolutionary Trap We move beyond the "nuisance" debate to define this as a biological failure. By creating resource hotspots near high-traffic zones, we have created an "ecological trap". We are literally luring 60 million animals into conflict zones, turning the act of feeding into a trigger for vehicular trauma and aggression.
3). The Irony of Bureaucracy We highlight the paradox of well-intentioned policy. As seen in Figure 3 of the manuscript (a legal feeding board in a green zone), we are attempting to legislate ecology. Bureaucracy creates "feeding spots," but Biology dictates that these spots become territorial flashpoints that crowd-out native wildlife and endanger the #dogs themselves.
4). Filling the #Scientific Void The current judicial deadlock exists because we are operating in an "empirical vacuum". We cannot solve a 21st-century ecological crisis with sentiment alone. This paper offers the missing framework: linking Robert Trivers’ evolutionary theory to modern urban planning to show why our current "feed and forget" model is failing both #humans and #dogs.
It is time to move from reactive management to anticipatory urban ecology.
DBT/Wellcome Trust @India_Alliance funded project hosted at @NCBS_Bangalore and @OxfordBiology.
#UrbanEcology #NatureCities #PublicHealth #StreetDogs #SciencePolicy #India #NCBS #Oxford
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#COWPolis vs. #METROPolis: Are we farming milk or manufacturing suffering? Look closely at this video from #Delhi. This is what "care" often looks like in the world’s largest dairy-producing nation. These animals are in a shelter (Gaushala). The intentions here are pure—to protect the sacred—but the ecological reality is a congested, resource-starved struggle for survival.
We need to ask the uncomfortable question: Can the COWPolis survive inside the METROPolis?
India holds the world’s largest livestock population. But in our rapidly densifying cities, the "pastures" have disappeared. They have been replaced by waste piles and landfills.
The Urban Diet: Instead of grazing on grass, urban cattle graze on "pastures of waste"—mixed organic refuse and plastic in our garbage dumps.
The Model: The current Gaushala model is breaking under the sheer weight of numbers. It is an agrarian solution trying to plug a gap in an industrial urban economy.
The Result: A welfare crisis disguised as reverence.
We cannot solve this with sentiment alone. As long as urban cattle are treated as "cultural symbols" rather than biological entities requiring specific caloric and spatial resources, we are failing them.
At #Thinkpaws, we are looking at this not only as a religious issue, but as a critical challenge of Urban Ecology. We are working to design systems where cows, marginalised owners, and public health can coexist without turning our cities into ecological traps. It is time to move from "saving" cows to sustaining systems.
Stay tuned to this @India_Alliance funded fellowship project, based at @NCBS_Bangalore and @OxfordBiology.
#OneHealth #UrbanEcology #India #Sustainability #AnimalWelfare #Thinkpaws #WasteManagement
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To people who do not understand free-ranging dogs' life history goals, this is a clear exemplar: Visit the work of @ThinkpawsOrg at Thinkpaws.org for details
Roshan Rai@RoshanKrRaii
Condition of GTB Hospital Dogs not only roaming freely but peeing and pooping in hospital wards Location : India’s national capital Ruled by : Triple Engine BJP Gov Aukaat of a common Indian is less than an animal in its gov’s eyes.
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@Sharvani Deoghare, a UG student at IISc, interviewed a bunch of urban ecologists from India. Her discussion with us focused on resident and migratory black kites, and rhesus macaques. It is a nice, coffee time read.
kernel.iisc.ac.in/country-mice-a…
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For everyone, everywhere who showed concerns about Indian stray dogs and humans, this is a must-know!
While the courts, administration, activists & citizens are busy with their duties, Thinkpaws is prepping the scientific bedrock to crack open the dynamics of this national crisis
Nishant Kumar@_NishantK
Would you be able to walk through these #dogged streets, even if the #dogs were neutered? This begets the Q: Why deliberate feeding can increase territorial aggression in free-ranging street #dogs: After my recent The Conversation article (doi.org/10.64628/AB.4f…) on India’s street dogs, I’ve seen strong reactions—especially to the proposition that deliberate feeding can fuel aggression, like we found in Black Kites of Delhi that attack people on head during nesting season. This deserves a clear, scientific explanation. 1) This is not about blaming compassion. It is about understanding how dogs respond to resources in space. Here is what decades of behavioural ecology tell us: ▶️ Food that is predictable and localised becomes defendable. When dogs are fed repeatedly at the same spot (shops, houses, temples), food shifts from diffuse waste to a fixed resource. Fixed resources trigger territorial behaviour in social carnivores. ▶️ Territories emerge around feeding points, quite often in streets. Free-ranging dogs are not randomly aggressive. Barking, chasing, and blocking movement are most intense near feeding locations and along access routes to them. ▶️ More food ≠ calmer dogs. It often means more dogs. Increased food availability raises pup survival and pack density. More dogs in less space leads to competition, vigilance, and defensive behaviour—especially towards unfamiliar humans. ▶️ Dogs learn who “belongs” and who does not. Regular feeders are tolerated; passers-by are not. What humans perceive as “unprovoked aggression” is often context-specific territorial defence. ▶️ Urban infrastructure amplifies the problem. Narrow streets, parked vehicles, and high human traffic compress dog movement, forcing encounters that escalate defensive responses. Importantly, this pattern is seen repeatedly in cities, and less so in villages, where food is dispersed, territories are larger, and dog movement is less constrained. Compassion without population control, waste management, and spatial planning creates an ecological trap—for dogs and for people. If we genuinely care about animal welfare and public safety, we must move beyond emotion-driven debates and engage with how behaviour actually works. 📽️ I’m attaching a short field video that illustrates how aggression switches on and off with feeding contexts. 📄 For those interested, the article is here: theconversation.com/indias-60-mill… Coexistence is not kindness alone. It is ecology, space, and systems. #Thinkpaws
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🚨 Are you scared of #dogs chasing 🚨 you in streets? In many lower- and middle-income neighbourhoods, the threat from aggressive street-#dog chasing is not occasional—it is 24×7 lived reality.
Two explanations are often offered:
1) Feeding and affection keep dogs calm, and
2) Aggression is a response to past abuse or vehicle injuries.
But field observations complicate this narrative.
▶️ Aggressive barking and chasing are frequently observed even in areas where dogs are not beaten or harassed.
▶️ In contrast, in several smaller towns and villages—where people are more casual and even routinely chase dogs—persistent chasing behaviour is noticeably less common.
3) Most strikingly, aggression often appears context-dependent.
In Kirti Nagar, for example, certain dogs display intense barking and chasing only when specific shops that feed them are open. Once the shutters come down, the aggression subsides dramatically—an observation reported independently by multiple residents.
4) This raises an uncomfortable but important scientific question:
Are some aggressive displays by street dogs intentional, communicative signals—behaviours that generate foraging benefits by shaping human responses?
Feeders may not consciously link feeding with this “service,” but from a behavioural ecology perspective, the association is worth investigating.
As Indian cities rapidly urbanise, understanding how animal communication, human provisioning, and conflict co-evolve will be central to designing policies that enable coexistence, not just compassion or control.
I’m attaching a short field video that accompanies this observation. Would welcome insights—from behaviourists, urban planners, and public-health researchers alike.
#Thinkpaws
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How we get the risks of predators on the landscape all wrong:
the-european.eu/story-55524/wh…
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🚨 A short letter to the editor 🚨 about #millions of street #dogs in India is out today in Nature, before the #Supreme Court hears the case tomorrow (28.01.26), again. @ProfExistence, Tim Coulson, and I feel that a clear-headed look at the causes of the crisis is needed to find workable solutions.
India’s widespread, non-violence philosophy of Ahimsa means that culling dogs or removing feeding stations entirely could cause public outrage. However, reducing the number of feeding stations might be palatable. To be effective, this must be paired with major improvements in waste collection and processing, and with vaccination and neutering programmes.
Now that we have your #attention:
1) Link to the #letter to the editor in Nature Portfolio: nature.com/articles/d4158…
2) Detailed policy-perspective preprint: ecoevorxiv.org/repository/vie…
3) A short essay on The Conversation (#English): read by #425000 people across the world (did you miss it?): doi.org/10.64628/AB.4f…
4) Above essay in #French: doi.org/10.64628/AAK.7…
Our ongoing research at @ThinkpawsOrg is funded by @India_Alliance (DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance), based at @NCBS_Bangalore: National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore (Host) and @OxfordBiology , @UniofOxford (overseas host).
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Birds and People: If you are in the UK, please register & join (Early Bird until 16 Feb): bou.org.uk/event/birds-an…
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Black-eared kites (Milvus migrans lineatus) departing Asia’s largest landfill at dusk and commuting to communal roosts in nearby eucalyptus patches. GPS telemetry from the Central Asian Flyway shows that predictable anthropogenic food subsidies structure daily movement, roost fidelity, and spatial coupling between feeding and resting habitats.
For details, check this paper:- nature.com/articles/s4159…
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