B.C. by Mastroianni and Hart for January 18, 2010

Be kind to him! He’ll help you hunt down your dinner with a little encouragement! My Norwegian Elkhounds are supposed to be able to scent a moose at five miles and tell at three miles whether the moose knows he’s being pursued or not. And consequently how to go about hunting him down – the chase or the stalk. The Elkhounds have had this ability for over five thousand years in cooperation with the human hunters. You can’t even begin to find a moose that well by yourself!!

Hi Joe,

Yeah, one of the latest theories is that some segments of the wolf population domesticated themselves by hanging around human encampments so they could scavenge the scraps of meat and bones that the humans threw on the garbage piles.

The northern husky is as close to the wolf as it gets.

I like this wolf.

\\//_

He’s so cute! :)

Better be nice to the wolf.

Uh, doesn’t Wiley have a wooden leg? or am I thinking of one of the other seldom-seen characters?

Forget the silly book. It’s time to play!!!

I read that dogs are the only animals that instinctively (without being trained) understand what you mean when you point. (Not sure about primates, though.)

Yes, Wiley DOES have a wooden leg. But not here.

Wow, too many cartoonists are getting careless these days. Either that or they’re messing with our minds, but Hanlon’s Razor applies here:

”Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.”

Yeah, RayC, my westie knows what I mean when I point at a squirrel. He goes bananas and runs off in the direction I’ve pointed!

Wolfie just had to put his paw mark on that dictionary. Good thing it wasn’t another kind of marking!

Hey for not having an opposable thumb I think “Wolf” did a fair job at making a self-portrait…

Yup, that sounds about right. Wonder what the definition of “cat” looks like?

LOVE THE WOLF

What favor did Wiley do to get that kind of a greeting from a wolf? Another question, how did Wiley get down on the ground with his ‘peg leg’?

reminds me of my cat

I think, maybe, JoeAllen is more right than he knows. Must be a pre-panel going all the way back before Wiley lost his leg.

Silly theory, I know. But hey, it works.

WILEY GOT LEGS!!!

I can picture Mastroianni at his drawing board, working on today’s strip:

“Oh God, the only way to make this work is to have Wiley kneeling on the ground, but how do I draw that if he’s got that friggin’ peg leg?!? Well, I can either fudge the leg, or else change the book to ‘Thor’s Dictionary’. Which one would generate fewer snarky comments on the Internet?”

Wiley’s such an anti-social, misanthropic crank that he’s probably a cat person anyway…

RayC, Yes, dogs are experts at reading our body language and facial expressions. They have at least 15,000 years (probably over 50,000) of experience dealing with humans, and they communicate to us with body language and facial expressions of their own. Ears up, big eyes, happy face, wagging tail = “Take me with you in the car!”

Several experiments have shown that chimps and other primates don’t get it when you point.

Thanks for the information, whitecarabao. I believe cats have had far less time with humans, which is why they are not quite as domesticated. But I wouldn’t trade my three cats for anything, in spite of the Siamese being a royal pain in the bohuncus most of the time. Being a triple threat: female, a cat, and a Siamese, makes for some interesting interaction.

Because in Norwegian what we would call a moose is called an “Elg” so that’s what it got translated to in English.

In Norwegian it’s “Norsk Elghund”, “hund ” is typical Germanic language for dog.

Wiley looks much younger altogether (brown hair, even.) How long has he been working on his dictionary? Perhaps “wolf” was one of his earlier entries.

chubbygirlcomics.com - “Wonder what the definition of “cat” looks like?”

From Baldrick in Black Adder Season 3 - “Not a Dog”

My father lost his right leg below the knee in Korea and I’ve seen him kneeing many time and if you were looking at him from the left side his stump would be out of sight and out of mind… What someone needs to do is find a picture of Wiley standing to see which leg is missing as for me I don’t recall for the life of me… If it is in fact his left leg then this whole peg leg question is a moot point.

Wiley’s wooden leg is shown going all the way to his hip, when he’s standing. I think it’s on his left, but I could be mistaken. (Not worth looking it up…)

I agree that he seems to look younger here as well, but that might be mostly poor coloring. Either that, or Wiley’s invented Pre-Hellenic Formula…

A Møøse once bit my sister…

Mynd you, møøse bites Kan be pretty nasti…