It’s hard to find an urban area that does not have a significant homeless population. Be it New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, or Madrid, you’re likely to encounter someone for whom life has dealt a bad hand. Some homeless have taken creative measures to adapt, finding ways to persevere in the concrete and asphalt wilderness around them. In one city, this will to survive is not solely in the domain of the human homeless.
Meet the homeless, subway-riding dogs of Moscow.
There are about 35,000 homeless dogs in Russia’s capital, roaming the streets and alleys looking for a meal. Most of them are feral and eschew contact with people. However, about 500 or so have done what many homeless people have done and become semi-permanent denizens of the subways—in this case, the Moscow Metro. The advantages are more than just a roof and associated shelter from the weather. The dogs can cozy up to riders in hopes of getting food tossed their way, or, if opportunity knocks, scare an unsuspecting train-goer into dropping his or her snack. Either way, this newfound meal is critical to the hungry subway-living dog.
For about two dozen or so dogs, though, the bark-and-eat gambit is merely a start. These advanced dogs have taken the subway game to the next level: They have become commuters. Areas with office buildings are crowded during the day but sparsely populated during the early mornings and late evenings; meanwhile, the opposite pattern is found in residential neighborhoods. Therefore, it behooves panhandlers, canine and human alike, to be near the offices at lunch time and near people’s homes at night. So, some Metro pups do exactly that—as reported by both ABC News and the Sun newspaper, the dogs have figured out how to navigate the train network to optimize their locations throughout the day.
And they do so in style. The dogs have figured out which trains offer more room, so they can curl up on a bench for an in-transit snooze.
In 1980, the New York Times reported that the typical price of a single slice of pizza had matched, “with uncanny precision,” the price of a single ride on New York’s subway system since the 1960s. The Times revisited the strange correlation in 2002 and determined that it was still true.