O, MY PAPA

Above you see the African wild dog (Canis pictus), an animal you cannot tame.  Why not? I hear you ask in a voice tinged with wonder.  

With your ordinary domestic dog he fits into the family setting because he considers the family or the group to which he belongs as his pack.  If he were in the wild, he would be in a pack of which the strongest dog is the Alpha male.  In the family setting, he regards the strongest human as the Alpha male.  (My dog, Sashy, seems to regard my wife as the Alpha male in our family, but that's another story).

However, among African wild dogs, when the Alpha male dies, he is succeeded by his son.  Someone else will not do.  In a human family there would, of course, be no human who was the son of a previous Alpha male African wild dog.  Believe me, it just doesn't happen.  Therefore, if you try to tame a Canis pictus, it won't obey you.  Therefore, it cannot be absorbed into a domestic situation.

Bearing in mind that primitive human societies do not work out that babies have a father as well as a mother for a long time, one wonders how the wild dogs know.  I suspect it has something to do with smell.

It is said that Princess Michael of Kent, when told of this, commented that it showed hereditary rulership to be part of nature.  However, that may be just a story.

The African wild dog, by the way, is also known as the Cape hunting dog and it has various other names.