Caninetocanine

Caninetocanine is a neologistic concept used in speculative fiction, worldbuilding, and simulation design to describe the spread of canine behaviors, signals, or cultural knowledge through a social group. The term blends canine with the notion of transfer, signaling directional or bilateral propagation of traits via social learning rather than genetics. It is not an established scientific term but is employed to analyze how behaviors such as cooperative hunting, scent-marking, affiliative greeting rituals, or threat responses become common within packs or populations in imagined ecosystems or models.

Mechanisms of caninetocanine include imitation, social facilitation, and interpretation of signals across individuals—vocalizations, body language, and olfactory cues—within a pack network. The emphasis is on influential individuals and network structure in accelerating spread, akin to social contagion but constrained to canine-appropriate channels. The concept can also appear in discussions of domestication narratives, where human interactions shape canine behavior, though caninetocanine refers to social transfer rather than genetic change.

Applications: used to guide storyworlds, game design, or agent-based models that simulate canine social dynamics. It provides vocabulary for describing how a tactic or ritual propagates, how norms emerge, and how disruptions affect propagation patterns.

Critique: as a fictional construct, it lacks empirical support and may lead to confusion with real terms like social contagion or imitation. Related concepts include social contagion, imitation, canine domestication, and agent-based modeling.