A dog pack blamed for the killings of a Georgia couple is a reminder of the fragility of mankind's pact with canines. Underlying the relationship between the species is a simple expectation: We feed them, they don't kill us.

Dogs are so much a part of American life -- valued members of or even substitutes for human families -- that it can be easy to forget they are still animals with teeth and the ability to use them if instinct demands.

Add the lack of an owner and steady meals, and dogs can quickly begin to resemble their wolf ancestors, teaming up in packs for hunting and protection. They may look like pets, but behave like predators.

That is what investigators believe happened to a northeast Georgia couple two weeks ago. They say a pack of wild dogs killed Sherry Schweder as she took an evening walk and fatally mauled her husband, Lothar, when he went to look for her. Authorities euthanized more than a dozen dogs they suspect were involved.

Dogs have killed about 20 Americans this year, a handful fewer than have died from lightning strikes. But it is not unusual for dogs to use their teeth on people. Dogs bite about 4.5 million people in the United States each year, and nearly 900,000 of those, about half of them children, require medical care, the Centers for Disease Control says.

James Serpell, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for the Interaction of Animals and Society in Philadelphia, said the number of dog-bite cases is remarkably low considering how closely humans and dogs live together.

``Frankly it's a triumph that dogs don't bite us more often than they do,'' Serpell said. ``Any dog will bite if you provoke it sufficiently, or if it's in pain, it will defend itself. Potentially any dog will show predatory behavior, especially if it's very, very hungry.''

Spaying or neutering might help some dogs by reducing aggression toward other dogs, but won't make much difference in predatory behavior such as pack attacks on humans, said Dr. Wayne Hunthausen, a veterinarian and director of animal behavior consultations at Westwood Animal Hospital in Westwood, Kan.

``Just because the dog sees you as a source of food doesn't necessarily mean there's any respect there,'' said Hunthausen, a past president of the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior.

Dogs were domesticated tens of thousands of years ago. In some ways they are far removed from wolves -- principally in their willingness to cozy up to humans. In other ways, they seem surprisingly similar.

A strong predatory instinct was key in the wild, and the more important a trait is to a species' survival, the harder it is to breed out, Hunthausen said.

His instructions for children who encounter strange dogs are similar to those suggested by grizzly bear experts: Stand still or curl up and stay still; don't move or make eye contact.

There's a correlation between the number of wolf-like traits a dog has and its resemblance to a wolf, said Beaver, a veterinarian and professor at Texas A&M University's Department of Small Animal Medicine and Surgery -- Siberian huskies and Alaskan malamutes, for example, are nearer to wolves genetically than Chihuahuas or poodles.

If humans kicked dogs out en masse, some could live off the land and hunt in packs, the University of Pennsylvania's Serpell said. Future generations would probably look something like dingoes, Australia's domestic dogs-gone-wild.

``I think most of them would die, actually, if humans weren't around,'' Serpell said. ``They just would not be able to cope.''

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