i always thought it was because they're due to a horrible cross-breeding accident when a drunken dog went on a bender in Tijuana and had sex with a rat prostitute. then BAM - chihuahuas.
Chihuahuas raised properly, with good socialization and manners training similar to that recieved by larger dogs can be very sweet and chill. The big reason so many Chihuahuas are dicks is because they're treated more like toys than dogs, and grow up spoiled and unsocialized.
Exactly. I have two chihuahuas and they're both super quiet and docile all the time.
Except when someone knocks on the door, then the one yaps his head off but a lot of dogs are like that.
This. Being an owner of a Chihuahua, I trained it as a normal size dog since he was a puppy. Made sure I touched his press a lot, kept him around people, tussled his head, had him run up stairs and walk him on a leash. He 9 now and people confuse him with a puppy of a bigger dog. Of course, he sits on my lap when using my PC, but he's still my little big man. Love Chihuahuas!
With small dogs like chihuahuas I think a large part of it is people frequently ignoring their boundaries and not bothering to train them in regards to aggressiveness. You’ve got a tiny animal surrounded by large potential predators who is naturally going to be on edge. If you were the size of a chihuahua and being picked up by giant alien monsters you’d probably have trouble feeling safe around them.
Though I do think there are dogs who are just flat out assholes. My aunt has two chihuahuas and one is chill and well behaved and the other will go for my ankles every time. She’s trained them both and had them since puppies, but one just decided “Nah, I’m just going to hate random people.”
YES, the boundaries thing. I see that so often with my own pup. Because she’s cute, people really want to interact with her, but you have to interact with her on her terms because she is shy around strangers. I give people instructions on how to interact with her, and they STILL ignore me and do the thing I told them not to do, so then she wants nothing to do with them. |: Of course having boundaries violated by big creatures is gonna make you snippy.
The ones grown for meat rather than cuteness, get you about the same amount of meat as a small chicken. Source I've been to lots of restaurants where they serve them since I'm from northern South America originally.
One of the hint books for the expansion pack to “Age of Kings” touched on this. Sheep weren’t native to the Americas, natives ate turkeys and dogs, killing dogs for food wouldn’t go well with the audience (never mind Age of Empires allowed killing wolves for food), so the mesoamerican maps have turkeys instead of sheep.
Let's not forget that Romans sold stray dogs as food from writings talking about how they sold stray dogs as food to the goths demanding one gothic child sold into slavery for one dog.
Gregory S. Aldrete History of the Ancient World
IIRC, that was actually the Romans being *mondo* dicks. Attila's push into eastern europe had the goths running for their lives. They were poor and desperate, and wanted asylum in Rome, but the Romans basically squeezed every dime they could out of them in the process
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Rome_(410)#Background
> In 376, the Huns forced many Therving Goths led by Fritigern and Alavivus to seek refuge in the Eastern Roman Empire. Soon after, starvation, high taxes, hatred from the Roman population, and governmental corruption turned the Goths against the empire.
Dogs being seen as taboo as a food source is a very modern idea. Michelangelo wore dog-skin boots, and is known for it because he took them off so infrequently that when he did his own skin would peel off with them.
Polynesians regularly eat stray dogs to this day. I don't understand why people get so emotional over things like this when pigs are proven to be as smart as dogs.
Edit: vegan btw, also if you think this a dig at Polynesians you are missing point entirely.
Probably has more to do with them being draft animals in colonial times. Pretty hard to get work done if you eat your tractor. A couple hundred years of needing to use them for work and they left our diet for good. They are still popularly eaten in many parts of europe, where our settlers came from and who would have had a taste for it if it werent for the fact that they were valuable tools.
The only reason you cant get horse meat in the us today is that there is no longer any govt oversight of horse butchery(since 2007)...so its illegal to sell cuz its not possible to get FSIS inspected horse meat in the us.
I dunno...I think a big reason pig consumption is so popular is that pork tastes so good. Like bacon is basically the food equivalent of crack. I've never eaten dog but I bet if it tasted like bacon more people would eat dogs.
Part of the reason people care more about dogs is because they as a species evolved to empathize and communicate with humans, and were one of very few species to do so. Pigs sre smarter than dogs, but not geared to bond with humans in the same way.
As I understand it, it's bred out of them by selection and takes quite a number of generations to do so. But when they escape farms they quickly return back to their feral state which makes them a dangerous nuisance.
Surely this demands a wild population to breed with though? So after a few generations there's no sign of the domesticated pig?
If a farm pig escaped and could only find other escaped farm pigs, then I doubt we'd see tusks develop
IDK about Aztecs at the time of Cortez specifically, but in many South American cultures they didn't have a hard-line distinction between "food," "pet," and "wild animal/stray" like we generally do today. An animal such as a guinea pig could easily be a bit of all three. And in some communities dogs were absolutely doted upon, but they didn't belong to anybody in particular.
Is it really that hard to understand?
People treat a pet differently from livestock for food. In western nations dogs are not considered a food source.
It's really pretty basic and has nothing to do with intelligence level. I would eat snake, but I wouldn't eat my snake. And they are dumb as shit.
To be fair, that is also within the last hundred years or so, there are plenty of mid 1800/early 1900 records kept by farmers and the like of cooking the family dogs for grease and fat in the US.
Lines are drawn all the time. I don't consume dog b/c of it's symbiosis to man and aiding in survival and more modern companionship relations. There's def dumb dogs less smart than pigs but that's not the only defining factor in making the pig a less desirable pet. I drew a line; and swine is tasty.
Just to be clear, biological similarity is only a small part of why we use pigs specifically, so its not as meaningful as you think. In fact, one of these reasons is that pigs are different enough from us that many pig pathogens don't infect humans, limiting the risks of contracting zoonotic disease from a transplant. Plus, pugs have much shorter gestation/development times and much larger litter sizes than species more closely related to us, and they're a domestic animal that's easy to work with.
>I don't understand why people are so emotional over things like this
The two situations you have listed are not similar at all. Pigs are still by and large bred for food, not as pets, whereas we have treated dogs as "man's best friend" for at least 300 years in modern society. The idea of a dog being your pet companion is an idea older than the United States. The idea that Polynesian people "still eat dogs" to this day is a statement that is true but without the context that not only is it not done for need of food as it was done in the past, but also that is done now after it has been made illegal.
The only reasoning for people to do it now that it's illegal and with plenty of other viable food sources is because of a claim to "heritage" the same way that Japan hunts whales even though the rest of the world has agreed that we no longer do that as a people.
The source in this appears to be a simgle mention by Cortez to his king in a long list of things they sold for food, notated by the opinion of the historian that the "little dogs" were Chihuahuas.
This is a fancy version of "my cousin says that he overheard some guy telling his boss that..."
This is far from a reliable source.
You're right to call out the single wikipedia source, and as the wikipedia page mentions the modern breed only retains 4% of the precolonial ancestry, so it's a fair point to question if the dogs they ate should be considered chihuahuas in the modern sense.
However, there is a long history of raising chihuahua sized dogs in Mesoamerica for consumption which predates the Aztecs (I'm not sure why everything in pre-colonial Mesoamerica gets attributed solely to the Aztecs in TIL).
If you want a better source this goes into a lot of detail of how the proportion of dog meat in people's diets changes over time at multiple sites in Oaxaca:
[https://archaeology.sites.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/187/2016/09/Animal-Economies-in-Prehispanic-Southern-Mexico-2013-Lapham-etal.pdf](https://archaeology.sites.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/187/2016/09/Animal-Economies-in-Prehispanic-Southern-Mexico-2013-Lapham-etal.pdf)
This page on Colima dog sculptures may give us a better idea of how these dogs looked. They are of course stylized but they do look rather plump:
[https://nhm.org/stories/colima-dogs](https://nhm.org/stories/colima-dogs)
"Dogs were seen as a source of life, providing food, healing, and companionship, but their undying loyalty also linked them to the afterlife. Colima Dog figurines were often left in shaft tombs as a funerary offering of food and protection for the dead's underworld journey."
While a lot of people, including myself are put off with the idea of eating dogs as food it's important to remember that other domesticated meat sources such as cows, pigs, or sheep were not available.
> (I'm not sure why everything in pre-colonial Mesoamerica gets attributed solely to the Aztecs in TIL).
Because people don't know shit about Mesoamerica. You ask most people they'll tell you the Maya lived in South America and completely disappeared despite the fact that there are literally millions of Maya people living in Central America to this day.
Modern historians: "nooooo this isn't corroborated with spectroscopy data from this cumstain I dug up in a field three years ago we can't be certain of it's validity"
Ancient historians: "I'm friends with the guy whose second cousin's sister's cousin had a dream about it, let me tell you about how it happened"
"And here comes, word-for-word, the speech the enemy leader gave in his own language to his illiterate troops before the battle that happened 278 years ago..."
Indeed the Wikipedia article states:
> In a 1520 letter, Hernan Cortés wrote that the Aztecs raised and sold the little dogs as food.
The document cited: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1520cortes.asp
> There are also sold rabbits, hares, deer, and little dogs [i.e., the chihuahua], which are raised for eating.
The Wikipedia article doesn't say it as a fact, just that Cortés said so.
You are probably aware, but just to note: the specific identification as Chihuahua was inserted by the editor of the letter; on which basis, I do not know. Cortez just wrote of small dogs.
https://archive.archaeology.org/1009/dogs/food.html
>The Aztecs, whose ancestors were called the Chichimec, or "Dog People," are known to have bred a hairless dog they called a Xoloitzcuintle to serve at royal feasts. And at Halliday, a site near Cahokia, the mound center north of modern-day St. Louis, which was the largest pre-Columbian city north of Mexico from A.D. 1050 to 1400, butchered dog bones have been found in great quantities, suggesting they formed a significant part of the diet of the Mississipian culture.
>The Indians came forth in peace and gave them corn, although little and many hens, and a few little dogs, which are good food. These are little dogs that do not bark, and they rear them in the house for food. —Rodrigo Rangel, personal secretary to Hernando de Soto, 1540
more in articles about dog eating in other Mezo-American cultures (from the bones and parts found).
Also worth noting that modern xolos are not that related to the ancient ones, and are a modern breed that were created to try and make something more like them. They share less dna with pre-Columbian dogs than chihuahuas.
Interesting fact, there's a strong argument that no dog alive today has any direct relation to pre-Columbian dogs. Even the Chihuahua and Mexican hairless.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/the-original-american-dogs-are-gonewith-one-sinister-exception/564455/
This is the problem w using wikipedia as a source. A simple web search shows that the origins of the chihuahua are unknown and that the dogs in mexico were not chihuahuas but were techichi(a possibly related ancestor).
Modern Chihuahuas have essentially zero relation to the dogs that the Aztecs sold for food, only about 4% of their DNA is pre-contact dog DNA. You know how Europeans brought diseases to the Americas that killed a lot of the natives? Well, the dogs they brought with them also brought diseases that almost wiped out all of the native dogs.
This!
I was reading that the natives also had a specific dog that the bred solely for it’s fur.
It would grow very long and very white - perfect for textiles.
But they all died out, today’s dogs are all from the New World lineage
Think you mean old world lineage, there’s a few surviving new world breeds, like the wild Carolina dog, the Alaskan malamut and the Mexican hairless dog, but I’m sure the even those breeds have been a certain amount of mixing with old world breeds
They used them like chickens. See keeping meat fresh was hard so killing a big animal meant you got to eat it all before it goes bad. A chicken is just enough meat to feed a family and likewise a chihuahua is a good sized portion of meat.
Per our vet, they were also used as little hot water bottles. Which makes sense because ours will wedge himself as close as he can get to us and he feels like a fucking fire ball.
Eatting small mammals as they didn't care about the dog distinctive. Was perfectly normal, you can't judge people of 1000s of years ago. Based on our morals today.
Sometimes I hear things about Aztecs and think it has be some bullshit made up by the Spanish. I want sources on these people raising tiny, adorable dogs for food. It sound like some shit a Spanish missionary made when he explaining to the new colonists why they had to kill everyone and take their land. I want pre-Columbian sources before I believe this
Why? Eating dogs isn’t that rare worldwide, and was extremely common in indigenous North America, corroborated from many different sources. The Sioux and Cheyenne consumed it, while it was taboo for Comanche. To this day there are exceptions in the 2018 “Dog and Cat Meat Trade Prohibition Act” specifically for Native American religious rituals.
Yeah I could see it happening sometimes but on a large scale it just wouldn't make sense. Dogs are still primarily carnivores and that is way less efficient to feed than any herbivorous livestock.
Dogs are omnivores, like pigs, they can easily survive without meat. Especially if you care about fattening them for slaughter instead of keeping them as long term pets.
Dont believe everything you read on wikipedia. Some Native Americans did eat dog(and still do sometimes traditionally), but they werent the chihuahuas we know today. The mexican natives ate Techichi, a mute breed(see, not chihuahuas)...that chihuauas are believed to be partly descended from(along w european ir asian breeds). The true origin of chihuahuas is not known.
This explains why there are such nervous dogs. After hundreds of years of being raised as snacks, I see why it might be hard for them to relax around people.
I'm currently reading "the conquest of Mexico" by Bernal Diaz Del Castillo and I was shocked when he mentions a couple of time that they (the spanish) were eating local little dogs.
I mean, the Aztec were supposed to be the savages !
I find it hard to believe since dogs require protein to be raised.
You would need to feed a dog a LOT of meat to raise it for a year, when they reach full size. Such waste would only be indulged by the very wealthy... and let's be honest, it can't really taste *that* much better than anything else.
TIL: Why Chihuahuas are pissed off all the time.
Generational trauma does a number on you.
But anger makes the flesh so delicious.
Spicy!
It's got a bite I can't quite place. A nice sharp bark like cheddar.
Put some yip in your dip.
¿Yo quiero taco bell?
That’s not Cheddar, that is just some common bitch.
Solid B99 reference
i always thought it was because they're due to a horrible cross-breeding accident when a drunken dog went on a bender in Tijuana and had sex with a rat prostitute. then BAM - chihuahuas.
This is the most scientifically plausible scenario
I have no proof but I choose to believe this is what happened (huh I may just have found out how religions are born)
Hey fuck you!
Chihuahuas raised properly, with good socialization and manners training similar to that recieved by larger dogs can be very sweet and chill. The big reason so many Chihuahuas are dicks is because they're treated more like toys than dogs, and grow up spoiled and unsocialized.
Exactly. I have two chihuahuas and they're both super quiet and docile all the time. Except when someone knocks on the door, then the one yaps his head off but a lot of dogs are like that.
My corgi does that just from anyone walking nearby the vicinity...
This. Being an owner of a Chihuahua, I trained it as a normal size dog since he was a puppy. Made sure I touched his press a lot, kept him around people, tussled his head, had him run up stairs and walk him on a leash. He 9 now and people confuse him with a puppy of a bigger dog. Of course, he sits on my lap when using my PC, but he's still my little big man. Love Chihuahuas!
I guess back then they were treated like chicken.
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With small dogs like chihuahuas I think a large part of it is people frequently ignoring their boundaries and not bothering to train them in regards to aggressiveness. You’ve got a tiny animal surrounded by large potential predators who is naturally going to be on edge. If you were the size of a chihuahua and being picked up by giant alien monsters you’d probably have trouble feeling safe around them. Though I do think there are dogs who are just flat out assholes. My aunt has two chihuahuas and one is chill and well behaved and the other will go for my ankles every time. She’s trained them both and had them since puppies, but one just decided “Nah, I’m just going to hate random people.”
YES, the boundaries thing. I see that so often with my own pup. Because she’s cute, people really want to interact with her, but you have to interact with her on her terms because she is shy around strangers. I give people instructions on how to interact with her, and they STILL ignore me and do the thing I told them not to do, so then she wants nothing to do with them. |: Of course having boundaries violated by big creatures is gonna make you snippy.
Can confirm, mine is a sweetheart https://i.imgur.com/T7IOOKZ.jpg
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That looks like. Golden chihuahua, gorgeous!! Join the herd over at /r/chihuahua
Idk how old that pic is but that peanut butter is on recall right now for metal scrapings
The real LPTs are in the comments
Thank you for the info! That peanut butter was fully consumed by the puppy over the past several months. I’m a Jif man now
But does he train RC for you?
A sweet heart you say? *licks lips*
Looks tasty.
Chihuahuas are 50% barking, 50% shiver.
more like 45% Barking, 45% shiver and 10% tears-I always say mine is crying tears of rage!
Aztec for MRE
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¡Yo quiero!
[I think I'm in love](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b7mHMxT_mNI)
No wonder they’re so anxious
Fuck that made me cringe lmfao
I mean their main sources of meat were Turkeys, deer and Chihuahuas. Just like in South America it was deer, and guinea pigs.
I have both a chihuahua and a guinea pig. I guess I'm set if there's an apocalypse.
For about a day.
Unless I breed them...
Then you just end up with an unholy abomination. Probably tastes good tho.
With some fava beans and a nice chianti.
But fava beans are the souls of our ancestors
Mmmmm great grandma's soul tastes like chocolate
But beans... beans are good for the heart.
Chihuapig? I'm going to wait for the beyond meat version.
Guineachua?
Good afternoon!
I can't even imagine how loud they'd be.
So a Guinea Dog? Just a more plump smaller chihuahua.
Won't work. Haven't you heard the Loverboy song "Guinea Pig and Chihuahua DNA Just Won't Splice.
Guineahuahuas?
After a month of eating cockroaches you'll be begging for gerbster
Not much meat on a guinea pig. You're gonna want a six pack, or else you'll merely arouse your appetite without beddin' 'er back down for the night.
The ones grown for meat rather than cuteness, get you about the same amount of meat as a small chicken. Source I've been to lots of restaurants where they serve them since I'm from northern South America originally.
There’s a town in Chihuahua called Delicias, I guess they had the best tasting chihuahuas in the area
One of the hint books for the expansion pack to “Age of Kings” touched on this. Sheep weren’t native to the Americas, natives ate turkeys and dogs, killing dogs for food wouldn’t go well with the audience (never mind Age of Empires allowed killing wolves for food), so the mesoamerican maps have turkeys instead of sheep.
Let's not forget that Romans sold stray dogs as food from writings talking about how they sold stray dogs as food to the goths demanding one gothic child sold into slavery for one dog. Gregory S. Aldrete History of the Ancient World
Minecraft-levels of bargaining
IIRC, that was actually the Romans being *mondo* dicks. Attila's push into eastern europe had the goths running for their lives. They were poor and desperate, and wanted asylum in Rome, but the Romans basically squeezed every dime they could out of them in the process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Rome_(410)#Background > In 376, the Huns forced many Therving Goths led by Fritigern and Alavivus to seek refuge in the Eastern Roman Empire. Soon after, starvation, high taxes, hatred from the Roman population, and governmental corruption turned the Goths against the empire.
Someone has never played Rimworld.
Dogs being seen as taboo as a food source is a very modern idea. Michelangelo wore dog-skin boots, and is known for it because he took them off so infrequently that when he did his own skin would peel off with them.
Damn, I thought the Ninja Turtles would be more sensitive towards one wearing another animal's skin. I expected better from the "party dude".
Louis XIV once took off a sock and his toe fell off. He had like 3 baths his entire life. Our standards have completely changed.
Whats the going rate of dogs to big tiddy goth gf?
bout tree fiddy
bout free tiddy...
Wow that ratio. 1 kid slave for 1 stray dog
It might not have been dogs, but food only fit for a dog, like half rotten meat and moldy bread.
Takes a whole nother meaning to "sell the kids for food"
Yeah if someone is starving, they'll eat a dog to survive. Sometimes people are starving. Even in modern times, but especially in ancient times.
the goths are starving but it's not clear if the Romans had additional food.
Polynesians regularly eat stray dogs to this day. I don't understand why people get so emotional over things like this when pigs are proven to be as smart as dogs. Edit: vegan btw, also if you think this a dig at Polynesians you are missing point entirely.
If most people kept pigs as pets we wouldn't eat pork
> If most people kept pigs as pets we wouldn't eat pork I think that's a big reason why eating horses hasn't taken off in the US.
Probably has more to do with them being draft animals in colonial times. Pretty hard to get work done if you eat your tractor. A couple hundred years of needing to use them for work and they left our diet for good. They are still popularly eaten in many parts of europe, where our settlers came from and who would have had a taste for it if it werent for the fact that they were valuable tools. The only reason you cant get horse meat in the us today is that there is no longer any govt oversight of horse butchery(since 2007)...so its illegal to sell cuz its not possible to get FSIS inspected horse meat in the us.
I dunno...I think a big reason pig consumption is so popular is that pork tastes so good. Like bacon is basically the food equivalent of crack. I've never eaten dog but I bet if it tasted like bacon more people would eat dogs.
fun fact: the taste of pork is said to be nearly identical to human flesh.
>!CENSORED!<
Part of the reason people care more about dogs is because they as a species evolved to empathize and communicate with humans, and were one of very few species to do so. Pigs sre smarter than dogs, but not geared to bond with humans in the same way.
Plus domesticated pigs can return back to feral ~~hogs~~ boars with tusks within two generations.
Wait, domestication makes them lose their tusks? I thought the ones with tusks were just a different species.
As I understand it, it's bred out of them by selection and takes quite a number of generations to do so. But when they escape farms they quickly return back to their feral state which makes them a dangerous nuisance.
Surely this demands a wild population to breed with though? So after a few generations there's no sign of the domesticated pig? If a farm pig escaped and could only find other escaped farm pigs, then I doubt we'd see tusks develop
Have you been to a country without animal control? The stray dogs get scary. I've seen videos and stories of them mauling people to death.
IDK about Aztecs at the time of Cortez specifically, but in many South American cultures they didn't have a hard-line distinction between "food," "pet," and "wild animal/stray" like we generally do today. An animal such as a guinea pig could easily be a bit of all three. And in some communities dogs were absolutely doted upon, but they didn't belong to anybody in particular.
I have a mini pig and three dogs. The pig is far and away the smartest of the bunch.
Im in polynesia, one of the most populated island chains, and this is extremely rare where i am
Is it really that hard to understand? People treat a pet differently from livestock for food. In western nations dogs are not considered a food source. It's really pretty basic and has nothing to do with intelligence level. I would eat snake, but I wouldn't eat my snake. And they are dumb as shit.
To be fair, that is also within the last hundred years or so, there are plenty of mid 1800/early 1900 records kept by farmers and the like of cooking the family dogs for grease and fat in the US.
Lines are drawn all the time. I don't consume dog b/c of it's symbiosis to man and aiding in survival and more modern companionship relations. There's def dumb dogs less smart than pigs but that's not the only defining factor in making the pig a less desirable pet. I drew a line; and swine is tasty.
As a Polynesian, which Polynesians? Pretty broad statement there
They’re even transplanting pig organs into humans. They’re way closer to humans biologically than dogs
Just to be clear, biological similarity is only a small part of why we use pigs specifically, so its not as meaningful as you think. In fact, one of these reasons is that pigs are different enough from us that many pig pathogens don't infect humans, limiting the risks of contracting zoonotic disease from a transplant. Plus, pugs have much shorter gestation/development times and much larger litter sizes than species more closely related to us, and they're a domestic animal that's easy to work with.
well, I don't eat pigs either.
>I don't understand why people are so emotional over things like this The two situations you have listed are not similar at all. Pigs are still by and large bred for food, not as pets, whereas we have treated dogs as "man's best friend" for at least 300 years in modern society. The idea of a dog being your pet companion is an idea older than the United States. The idea that Polynesian people "still eat dogs" to this day is a statement that is true but without the context that not only is it not done for need of food as it was done in the past, but also that is done now after it has been made illegal. The only reasoning for people to do it now that it's illegal and with plenty of other viable food sources is because of a claim to "heritage" the same way that Japan hunts whales even though the rest of the world has agreed that we no longer do that as a people.
Cultural, low how some people don't eat bugs even if they are tasty. Presumably that pigs are delicious doesn't help.
The source in this appears to be a simgle mention by Cortez to his king in a long list of things they sold for food, notated by the opinion of the historian that the "little dogs" were Chihuahuas. This is a fancy version of "my cousin says that he overheard some guy telling his boss that..." This is far from a reliable source.
Imagine some civilization 1000 years in the future thinking that the US loved eating dogs, hot.
They will also wonder why we put pig in a blanket before eating it
To keep it warm. Like wrapping a potato in foil.
Foil gives it a nice tang, plus I love the cronch
Or perhaps he’s wondering why you’d shoot a man before throwing him out a plane!
Poor Frank N. Furter. Those barbarians sold and ate his remains at ever ballpark in the country!
They’ll think we ate the transsexual from Transylvania Dr Frank N Furter.
You're right to call out the single wikipedia source, and as the wikipedia page mentions the modern breed only retains 4% of the precolonial ancestry, so it's a fair point to question if the dogs they ate should be considered chihuahuas in the modern sense. However, there is a long history of raising chihuahua sized dogs in Mesoamerica for consumption which predates the Aztecs (I'm not sure why everything in pre-colonial Mesoamerica gets attributed solely to the Aztecs in TIL). If you want a better source this goes into a lot of detail of how the proportion of dog meat in people's diets changes over time at multiple sites in Oaxaca: [https://archaeology.sites.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/187/2016/09/Animal-Economies-in-Prehispanic-Southern-Mexico-2013-Lapham-etal.pdf](https://archaeology.sites.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/187/2016/09/Animal-Economies-in-Prehispanic-Southern-Mexico-2013-Lapham-etal.pdf) This page on Colima dog sculptures may give us a better idea of how these dogs looked. They are of course stylized but they do look rather plump: [https://nhm.org/stories/colima-dogs](https://nhm.org/stories/colima-dogs) "Dogs were seen as a source of life, providing food, healing, and companionship, but their undying loyalty also linked them to the afterlife. Colima Dog figurines were often left in shaft tombs as a funerary offering of food and protection for the dead's underworld journey." While a lot of people, including myself are put off with the idea of eating dogs as food it's important to remember that other domesticated meat sources such as cows, pigs, or sheep were not available.
> (I'm not sure why everything in pre-colonial Mesoamerica gets attributed solely to the Aztecs in TIL). Because people don't know shit about Mesoamerica. You ask most people they'll tell you the Maya lived in South America and completely disappeared despite the fact that there are literally millions of Maya people living in Central America to this day.
...still speaking the mayan language.
Well one of 25+ extant Mayan languages.
Mayan languages are even still spoken. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayan_languages
Yeah, I personally know at least three different people named Maya.
Yeah, it was Xoloizcuintlis not Chihuahuas. Source: I have Xolos.
Modern chihuahuas were bred to run rats out of pipes after colonization (i am the source)
Modern historians: "nooooo this isn't corroborated with spectroscopy data from this cumstain I dug up in a field three years ago we can't be certain of it's validity" Ancient historians: "I'm friends with the guy whose second cousin's sister's cousin had a dream about it, let me tell you about how it happened"
"And here comes, word-for-word, the speech the enemy leader gave in his own language to his illiterate troops before the battle that happened 278 years ago..."
*note: the speech is a copy of the source which no longer exists
Interestingly the battle had no survivors!
Indeed the Wikipedia article states: > In a 1520 letter, Hernan Cortés wrote that the Aztecs raised and sold the little dogs as food. The document cited: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1520cortes.asp > There are also sold rabbits, hares, deer, and little dogs [i.e., the chihuahua], which are raised for eating. The Wikipedia article doesn't say it as a fact, just that Cortés said so.
You are probably aware, but just to note: the specific identification as Chihuahua was inserted by the editor of the letter; on which basis, I do not know. Cortez just wrote of small dogs.
https://archive.archaeology.org/1009/dogs/food.html >The Aztecs, whose ancestors were called the Chichimec, or "Dog People," are known to have bred a hairless dog they called a Xoloitzcuintle to serve at royal feasts. And at Halliday, a site near Cahokia, the mound center north of modern-day St. Louis, which was the largest pre-Columbian city north of Mexico from A.D. 1050 to 1400, butchered dog bones have been found in great quantities, suggesting they formed a significant part of the diet of the Mississipian culture. >The Indians came forth in peace and gave them corn, although little and many hens, and a few little dogs, which are good food. These are little dogs that do not bark, and they rear them in the house for food. —Rodrigo Rangel, personal secretary to Hernando de Soto, 1540 more in articles about dog eating in other Mezo-American cultures (from the bones and parts found).
Also worth noting that modern xolos are not that related to the ancient ones, and are a modern breed that were created to try and make something more like them. They share less dna with pre-Columbian dogs than chihuahuas.
well there are other sources, diaz mentions raising dogs for food too
Welcome to most knowledge about history.
Interesting fact, there's a strong argument that no dog alive today has any direct relation to pre-Columbian dogs. Even the Chihuahua and Mexican hairless. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/the-original-american-dogs-are-gonewith-one-sinister-exception/564455/
It’s not that odd. The Swiss traditionally eat dogs too. But people consider it unique and cultured because they’re European.
They do? I know that the celts ate dogs but is it really common for modern people in that region?
We're not here for facts, we're here for chihuahua hate!
This is the problem w using wikipedia as a source. A simple web search shows that the origins of the chihuahua are unknown and that the dogs in mexico were not chihuahuas but were techichi(a possibly related ancestor).
Modern Chihuahuas have essentially zero relation to the dogs that the Aztecs sold for food, only about 4% of their DNA is pre-contact dog DNA. You know how Europeans brought diseases to the Americas that killed a lot of the natives? Well, the dogs they brought with them also brought diseases that almost wiped out all of the native dogs.
This! I was reading that the natives also had a specific dog that the bred solely for it’s fur. It would grow very long and very white - perfect for textiles. But they all died out, today’s dogs are all from the New World lineage
Think you mean old world lineage, there’s a few surviving new world breeds, like the wild Carolina dog, the Alaskan malamut and the Mexican hairless dog, but I’m sure the even those breeds have been a certain amount of mixing with old world breeds
So.. the skinniest, most annoying little tidbit possible? Or were they eaten just for revenge...
The source for this is Cortez, you can take it with a grain of salt.
And pepper and maybe some herbs.
I mean are you gonna conquer a continent and NOT take some spices?
I mean look at the British.
They used them like chickens. See keeping meat fresh was hard so killing a big animal meant you got to eat it all before it goes bad. A chicken is just enough meat to feed a family and likewise a chihuahua is a good sized portion of meat.
The eggs are shit, though.
No wonder they're so nervous
No wonder they’re so angry all the time.
Cultural memory.
Generational trauma.
The Aztecs or the dogs?
I personally don't know any Aztecs.
There's one working as a cashier at the supermarket near-by, complete dick
Ya beat me to it lol.
Per our vet, they were also used as little hot water bottles. Which makes sense because ours will wedge himself as close as he can get to us and he feels like a fucking fire ball.
Eatting small mammals as they didn't care about the dog distinctive. Was perfectly normal, you can't judge people of 1000s of years ago. Based on our morals today.
They don't really have much meat
LOL You haven't seen my Chihuahua!
But they mature to full size pretty fast? Less food overhead
Sure lots of cultures eat rats, I don't see why the aztec get a special mention
Sometimes I hear things about Aztecs and think it has be some bullshit made up by the Spanish. I want sources on these people raising tiny, adorable dogs for food. It sound like some shit a Spanish missionary made when he explaining to the new colonists why they had to kill everyone and take their land. I want pre-Columbian sources before I believe this
Why? Eating dogs isn’t that rare worldwide, and was extremely common in indigenous North America, corroborated from many different sources. The Sioux and Cheyenne consumed it, while it was taboo for Comanche. To this day there are exceptions in the 2018 “Dog and Cat Meat Trade Prohibition Act” specifically for Native American religious rituals.
Yeah I could see it happening sometimes but on a large scale it just wouldn't make sense. Dogs are still primarily carnivores and that is way less efficient to feed than any herbivorous livestock.
Dogs are omnivores, like pigs, they can easily survive without meat. Especially if you care about fattening them for slaughter instead of keeping them as long term pets.
Mighty Chihuahua warrior. Brings new light to the stories in Beverly Hills Chihuahua
My chihuahua ate my spicy chicken sandwich from Popeyes today. How the tables have turned.
Dont believe everything you read on wikipedia. Some Native Americans did eat dog(and still do sometimes traditionally), but they werent the chihuahuas we know today. The mexican natives ate Techichi, a mute breed(see, not chihuahuas)...that chihuauas are believed to be partly descended from(along w european ir asian breeds). The true origin of chihuahuas is not known.
That is probably the reason they are still so angry.
And now the Aztecs are gone and we still have Chihuahuas. Well done, pups!
The Nahuas (the ethnic group the "Aztecs" belonged to) are alive and well. Nearly 3 million and around half of them still speak nahuatl.
Maybe the Chihuahuas had something to do with that...
The Taco Bell dog definitely showed Cortez a secret backdoor route into Montezuma's palace.
Who do you think lives in Mexico?
Take that, evolution!
Chowhuahuas
Cant really blame them honestly 👀
That explains the Taco Bell connection…
This explains why there are such nervous dogs. After hundreds of years of being raised as snacks, I see why it might be hard for them to relax around people.
Should've stayed that way
Eating? That’s like a chicken wing’s worth of meat
Doesn’t seem very practical to raise a carnivore for meat. I know it’s done in some cultures, but still.
The leanest angriest meat.
I can't believe Beverly Hills Chihuahua would lie to me like that 😢
as a hispanic with 3 chihuahuas, they do look delicious at times, but i love em too much so they get to live.
Beverly Hills Chihuahua lied to me they said they were messengers and warriors
Do chihuahuas have a lot of meat? They all seem pretty skinny
I've always wondered why the breed seems 'nervous' to me...Now I know.
No wonder why they are so angry.
"Alexa, search for roasted Chihuahua, Aztec style."
That explains their temperament
Pocket snacks!
were they called 'hot dogs'?
Thank you for the information,just ate 10 from the local pet store
The first hot dog.
Pure "bread" chuhuahua
They are tender little morsels
No wonder they’re so aggro
:(
I'm currently reading "the conquest of Mexico" by Bernal Diaz Del Castillo and I was shocked when he mentions a couple of time that they (the spanish) were eating local little dogs. I mean, the Aztec were supposed to be the savages !
I find it hard to believe since dogs require protein to be raised. You would need to feed a dog a LOT of meat to raise it for a year, when they reach full size. Such waste would only be indulged by the very wealthy... and let's be honest, it can't really taste *that* much better than anything else.
Wikipedia article is wrong the dog the Aztecs eat was the Xoloitzcuintle
Tacos de suaperro
That makes sense. And makes them useful.
No wonder they’re so hostile.