Dogs and Cats in Science and Art

I was fortunate to be in Vienna while the Museum of Natural History was having a little exhibition on dogs and cats in science and art.

Although a good part of the space was devoted to interactive displays aimed at children, there was lots to interest the adults in the room.

Since the exhibit was in the “natural history” museum, I shouldn’t have been shocked at finding the very first display featured dogs and cats who had been stuffed and mounted alongside their canine and feline skeletal counterparts.

I was though, a little. Eeew.

On a more scientific note, we were told that molecular genetic research has established that all domesticated cats descend from the African or Near East wildcat.

Or perhaps not – not all experts agree with the Museum’s assertion.

The European wildcat seems almost indistinguishable from a domestic tabby, but it is a separate breed.

At least for now. The European wildcat interbreeds with domestic cats and may therefore be in danger of extinction.

Crown Prince Rudolph’s hunting dog made an appearance.

Preserved since 1882, it has stood up quite well. I wondered if it was a Chocolate Lab or a Pointer. Either way, it is interesting to see how breed structures have changed over a hundred years. Our dogs are much more muscular. Of course, that could just be the effect of the taxidermy.

Crown Prince Rudolph was the only son and heir of that Emperor Franz Josef I who built this museum as well as the matching Museum of Fine Arts across the square. Rudolph killed himself in a suicide pact with his mistress.

Twelve years after Rudolph’s death, his mother the famous Empress “Sisi” was assassinated.

Rudolph’s death left Franz Josef with no heir but a nephew. That heir’s assassination in Sarajevo led directly to WW I. When Emperor Franz Josef died in the middle of the war, his throne devolved onto a grandnephew, who was a weak character and pretty speedily deposed, thus ending some 600 years of Hapsburg rule.

One could argue that this dog’s master was the beginning of the end of the Hapsburg monarchy in Austria.

Although it was not in the exhibition, the Papillon belonging to the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa held pride of place on one of the landings on the grand staircase leading up to the exhibition room.

I have seen ice mummies of men and women in the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin, but this was the first time I had seen ice age mummified puppies.

In 2011, the mummified body of one of these pupies was found in the permafrost of Yakutia in the far north of Russia, one of the coldest inhabited places on earth. The puppy had broken twigs in its mouth. Archaeologists theorized that the puppy had been caught in a landslide which buried it, but not before it had grabbed onto a bush or branch with its teeth to try to save itself. In 2015, a second mummified puppy was found a few meters away from the first. They were probably litter mates, about three months old and died together in the same calamity, about 12,000 years ago. Archaeologists and zoologists also reckon these puppies were domesticated. If so, they are fairly early examples. The earliest known undisputed dog remains buried alongside humans date back about 14,700 years ago.

It seems foolish to feel sad about these puppies. We do though, don’t we?

Even more startling were the ice mummies of two Cave Lion cubs curled around each other.

These were also found in Yakutia and are also about 12,000 years old. Cave Lions were already going extinct about the time these cubs were alive. Interestingly, the oldest known Cave Lion bone fragments are also found in Yakutia, and date back to about 62,400 BC.

Yakutia seems to be a death trap.

It gives one a strange feeling to look on the remains of animals which have not been seen alive by human eyes for thousands of years. I was incredibly lucky to be at the museum while these treasures were there on loan from the Zoological Institute, Russian Academy of Science, St. Petersburg.

Touching evidence of the human-animal bond is seen in skeletal remains of a dog, found in the grave of a neolithic child, excavated near Herzogenberg, Austria.

The two were buried together over 4500 years ago.

Although the exhibition was meant to be all scientific, they couldn’t resist putting in some artworks.

Some were modernist, like Jean Dubuffet’s, “Eating with Dog”.

It’s hard to say which is more elegant – poodle or gentleman – in Caillebotte’s Impressionist work, “Richard Gallo and His Dog Dick”.

I have to wonder at a man called Richard naming his dog Dick though.

Perhaps in French ‘Dick’ is not a short form of ‘Richard’. But if that is so, where did he get the name ‘Dick’ from? Perhaps, being French, he heard it somewhere, thought it was catchy and didn’t realise he had given his dog a version of his own name. Or maybe he did know, and he named the dog ironically?

I’m way overthinking this, aren’t I?

Goya’s 1786 work, “Cats Fighting” is a cartoon that Goya did for the dining room of the the Prince and Princess of the Asturias in the Prado Palace.

The original is still in the Prado.

Gerrit Greve’s “Green Cat” looks quite the fine fellow.

Francis Picabia’s cat is also sort of green, but this artist chose a much less mellow aspect for his “Cat”.

Indeed, you cannot go very far in any art museum without coming across dogs and cats. On another day, in another museum in Vienna, I took in an exhibition of the art of Keith Haring, who uses dogs in all kinds of ways.

That’s another Keith Haring dog, receiving the acclamation of the crowd, at the top of this post.

Picasso drew cats.

Dutch woodcarving masters sculpted dogs.

Ancient Romans adorned their villas with statues of them.

Both dogs and cats show up in the Garden of Eden. The dog and the fox both seem bemused by these new things called ‘humans’, while the cat and monkey clutch each other in fear of what will follow if Eve accepts the serpent’s invitation.

Dogs and cats: where art, religion, mythology and zoology intersect.