About 10 years ago my wife and I got two recues. A female greyhound and a male lurcher (who basically looked like a greyhound). My wife used to try to get our dogs to howl, because she thought it was funny. It turned into something they would do on command. Anyway, about 8 years ago my wife discovered the song "Werewolves of London" by Warren Zevon. At the appropriate parts of the song, she would command our dogs to "sing", and they'd both howl. Yes, hilarious. Anyway, about 7 years ago the greyhound got osteosarcoma, a painful bone cancer, and we had to put her to sleep. The lurcher was extremely lonely, so we rescued another greyhound. My wife didn't put the Werewolves song on again, because it made her feel sad. Fast forward about a year, and we're both in the house doing whatever, and I put on a playlist, not realising the song was in it. As soon as the first bar of the song played, the lurcher jumped up onto the armchair at our front window, frantically looking into the park out front, howled, and ran around the house "searching", presumably for Pasha. Tears, obviously. But also the realisation that a dog can recognise a song, years after last hearing it, in a sea of thousands of other songs. And within the first few seconds of it playing. Honestly, I was astonished.
Nowhere near as moving a story but, back when my spouse used a Windows laptop, every night she'd logout from Windows and the little signature Windows sign out tune would play, and then she'd call our two dogs to their crates for the night. Over time, our two dogs, upon hearing the Windows log off sound, would immediately jump up and go to their crates.
I bought her a Mac, and the Windows sound ritual ceased.
A couple of years later, I found a youtube video compilation of every Windows signature sound and I played it. Despite it being the middle of the afternoon, the moment that specific log out tune played, the two dogs leapt up and went to their crates.
Somewhat similar to how dogs can recognise sound, our dog has a metal water bowl and she's learnt that picking it up with her mouth and throwing it to the floor creates a distinctive clanging sound. So now, whenever she wants water (even if it happens to be 3am), she'll throw her bowl across the room
My phone has a distinct notification sound for Life360, plays for people coming home. GPS being a little inexact on the app it consistently plays too early. My dog has come to recognise this sound, allowing him to be ready and waiting at the window for whoever it is.
(I wonder what he thinks this magical sound IS, but I guess the answer is he does not think, he just accepts. Dogs are have a wonderful lack of introspective angst, they just take the world as they find it.)
I want my children to have a dog
Or may be two or three
They'll learn from them more easily
Than they will learn from me.
A dog will teach them how to love,
And have no grudge or hate
I'm not so good at that myself
But a dog will do it straight
I want my children to have a dog,
To be their pal and friend
So they may learn that friendship
Is faithful to the end.
There never yet has been a dog
That learned to double cross
Nor catered to you when you won
Then dropped you when you lost.
Thank you. I stupidly tried to read this to my wife just now and ended up a blubbering wreck, because all of those dogs are now gone. The lurcher died of cancer 2 years ago, and Lily, the lovely old greyhound we got as his companion, died 2 months ago (14 years old, so no complaints)
We're getting two rescues next month. Greyhounds again.
We've had 3 greyhounds, all died of cancer, two of bone cancer. Seems to be the curse of the greyhounds. It's lovely that you'll be adopting again. Tracks in the US have mostly closed, the waiting list for retired racers are long. UK and Ireland still have many retired racers, but the cost to transport them to the US is quite prohibitive. I quite envy you, and wish you much love with your new darlings.
My most previous greyhound would play bite, which indicates to me he knew what a real bite does. On occasions I have said "ow ow" he would stop immediately and looked at me with surprise. I have also stepped on him or otherwise jostled him by accident, and I immediately and profusely said "sorry, sorry", and he would lick my hand as if he understood it was a mistake. Am I anthropomorphising the behavior? I've never doubted that dogs could differentiate what is intentional and unintentional.
I love watching human dog behavior from a distance. The moment when a human steps on a dog and then turns around to address the dog and provide comfort is like predictable poetry.
It isn't just that dogs know when it was a mistake or not, they do, they also want the apology. Apologies are always key, even if predictable.
That's a common misconception - dogs don't give anyone affection unconditionally. They have varying degrees of _loyalty_ (some dogs will keep attached someone that beats them), but overall, they clearly evaluate the benefits of the relationship, pick favorites, etc. Like any other animal (humans included) :-)
That’s a lovely poem. Any idea where it’s from? Googling brings up only this comment, and a scan of a dog training club newsletter from 1995 with no attribution.
After growing up and loving dogs all my life I don’t think I can have another. The end tail is just too sad seeing them deteriorate and eventually be put to rest and it just guts me so badly. 10ish years is simply not long enough of a lifespan and it feels cruel growing so attached then having to say goodbye to a family member again and again like deja vu after the 3rd dog I had and loved (German Shepards and Pitbull rescue)
Rest In Peace my old best friends, you’ll never be forgotten.
Same. But the real reason why were getting two more is that we have space in our homes and our hearts for two dogs, and the dog rescues are overflowing. We choose greyhounds because the the racing industry is horrible and the dogs get treated like shit. As long as dogs need homes and we are able to provide one, we'll have dogs.
Your dogs will have been born anyway, the only difference is that you won't get to know him and he won't get to know you. It's just as sad either way. Don't rob yourself of being in their life and having them in your life.
Yeah I’ve never cried that hard in my life, to go through this every 10ish years is brutal for me, especially after my 3rd dog passed it really made me pause and not get run out and get another doggo (~4 years since my good boy passed away)
That’s a bittersweet but beautiful story. I love dogs, they’re smarter than many give them credit. And adopting rescues is the nicest thing dog lovers can do
I inadvertently trained my dog to recognize Frozen Creek by Circa Survive. Years later all it takes to calm him down is to play the opening to that song. I attribute it to a day or two where I had the album on repeatedly and and he wasn’t feeling well - pretty sure he just ate something he shouldn’t have - and he’d come lay in my lap and sleep.
Many pet owners have seen this behaviour, and what I find note worthy too is that that trauma can be easily detected when the animal doesn't react according to intention.
Anecdotically, I adopted a mistreated dog this year. He's a really good boy, and shows the exact same behaviour the paper states regarding accidental interactions in general. But if you are for example brooming and slightly touch him, he immediately hides and may even piss himself. It seems to me that he was beaten up with some kind of stick when he was just a puppy. Poor boy :(
We adopted a border collie around 1.5 years old two years ago with this same behavior. He was completely paranoid and would piss everywhere if you touched him in certain places or came close too quickly. He really would turn into a shaking blob of jello around strangers, and would lose his shit around any of our Asian man friends or even around them in public, he’d void his bladder and back away barking and snarling.
Took a while for him to get comfortable and after giving him a lot of positive reinforcement and space he’s become the most extroverted love bug I’ve ever met. He regularly smashes up against me when I’m on the couch and at the most inconvenient times because he’s got the grace of an unsupported blob of ballistics gel, but what I love most about his growth over the last two years is that now he’ll even try to put his nose under unsuspecting pedestrian’s hands on walks! Even if they’re Asian men!
I had a dog with similar traits-- fearful and would piss herself, scared of brooms and loud noises, scared of people walking directly towards her--and I know for certain she was never mistreated by a human. She was the runt of the litter, for whatever that's worth.
Anyhow, I don't always think these behaviors are the result of tragic circumstances, even if they often are.
Mmmm, my dad was a veterinarian and me being a dog trainer ( well, for 4 dogs of our own where I learned a lot from where I trained my dogs), so i got to a lot of my dad's clients to help out with their new/adopted dogs that behave frightened.
It's weird that your dog still has the same behavior after one year with "his own family".
I think playing with a dog has a lot of "accidental" touches that should make him accessible to those actions.
I also don't think it was a stick, since my own abused dog was afraid of sticks in particular. As long as we had one it was okay and he didn't care ( since we played with it). But if someone unfamiliar would try that, he would become aggressive ( happened one time many years after, when an older guy with a walking stick came over and wanted to silence/move the dog with his cane. Luckily I was nearby and heard the sound immediately )
Thats for all the info! Luckily he is getting a lot better. We avoid aproaching him with stick-like things in order to not startle him, so the last time I saw him piss himself was about 7 months ago. The only thing that hasn't improved is his fear of my parents. It's only with them, he even aproaches strangers now. But I guess he'll learn to trust them with time.
Depends on the dog but this is a relatively easy context to recreate so I'd recreate it (starting with low level stimulus and working your way up) in order to desensitize and counter condition the dog.
Yes absolutely. He's overcoming his trust issues with strangers and I'd say he's pretty happy with us. The before/after difference is huge and I'm so lucky to have him.
Reminds me of a funny post on Reddit a while back. Some guy said that he got up in the middle of the night for a drink of water, didn't put the light on, and accidentally kicked his dog who was asleep in the kitchen. He said "my dog thinks I got up in the middle of the night to kick him".
The base perspective of these types of 'discoveries' always seems to come with an underlying belief or assertion that our natural world is incapable and dumb. Why do these scientists assume the worst as a starting point?
What makes these types of discoveries become headlines? I don't get it.
Experimental science is all based around ruling out the null hypothesis. For that it needs to be falsifiable.
The hypothesis 'the dog can differentiate between A and B' is very hard to falsify. Because the dog could differentiate, but choose to not act. You would need a fairly complete understanding of the dogs mental workings, and scanners to study them.
On the other hand, 'the dog can't differentiate between A and B' is much easier to falsify. If you repeat an experiment a sufficient amount of times and the dog consistently has different behavior between A and B, you can rule this null hypothesis out.
That is the real reason we always 'assume the worst'. Because 'assume the worst' is the easiest to scientifically rule out.
What part of the scientific method would you have them invoke to start from the assertion that the natural world is very intelligent while crafting experiments?
When I accidentally stepped on my dogs paw as a teen, the dog looked hurt and disappointed. The same dog barked at my sister when she tried to stick a pencil up his nose.
Did the dog differentiate the scenarios based on intent or did it recognize my apologetic behaviour as non threatening? Or was it because my interactions with the dog were almost always positive while my sisters were not? Or simply because a pencil up the nose might have hurt a lot? Or because it was a hunting dog and we had hunted together multiple times? Was the dog actually disappointed in me or had they evolved to fake that by adjusting their eyebrows to this situation? Or did I project that emotion?
> Did the dog differentiate the scenarios based on intent or did it recognize my apologetic behaviour as non threatening?
Apologetic behavior is a pretty good post-facto signal of intent! Humans also rely on it with each other. So I'm not sure that relying on sort of secondary signals like that is a real problem for the theory that dogs can read and care about human intent.
But it isn't "assume nothing", because it's just a different assumption. Science doesn't treat each new human person as if they were not conscious. Science works off reasonable inferences all the time. We reasonably assume that a full-looking bag is full, that big objects are heavy, that snakes are dangerous.
I think it is reasonable to assume that domesticated animals are at least somewhat intelligent. After all, they convinced us to shelter, protect and feed them!
There is an even simpler answer to your question than the ones other, very good, comments are pointing out. All of the scientists who unquestioningly believed that dogs could tell the difference didn't do this study. All of the scientists who unquestioningly believed dogs couldn't, didn't do this study. All studies are done by whichever members of the scientist population don't believe the affirmative or the negative.
All studies are done by scientists who are desperate to get published and have their work referenced.
Even a cursory glance at that corner of funny-cute-etc-animals YouTube videos will convince that animals, especially mammals, have at least very complex internal and social lives.
This study isn't treating dogs as if they were not conscious or intelligent.
It's isolating a particular aspect of intelligence to determine if it exists in a particular fashion. In this case, the question of if and how dogs are aware of human agency. This is a very interesting question.
The exact same falsifying process is used with studies about humans. Using these processes we've significantly changed our understanding of human cognition in the last century so it seems like it's working!
No one's suggesting that dogs or people aren't intelligent. The question is exactly how this intelligence functions, because there are many ways to reach a particular conclusion.
The first sentence of the abstract is "When dogs interact with humans, they often show appropriate reactions to human intentional action. But it is unclear from these everyday observations whether the dogs simply respond to the action outcomes or whether they are able to discriminate between different categories of actions"
They don't assume they are dumb, they just don't assume anything, as they should.
Assuming the natural world is dumb is simple, consistent, and easy to explain.
If you start with the assumption the natural world is “smart”, what does that even mean? Does it mean that we should assume dog can do calculus, but choose not to? Or that dogs are capable of complex communication, but also choose not to?
Saying the natural world is “smart” is a pretty meaningless statement. How smart is “smart”, everyone will have a different opinion, so you can’t use it as the basis for discovery or discussion.
However everyone understands what the natural world being dumb means. From there you can start the journey of proving step-by-step where the smarts are.
I don’t think that the assumption is that the natural world is dumb. The scientific discovery process aims to highlight new insights to help us make a better and useful description of the world. Implying that the starting point is "dumb" is incorrect. The starting point is a blank page, that will be filled by the research, whatever they find out.
I understand what your trying to say. But I don’t agree with words you’ve used.
We don’t assume nothing, that’s clearly not true. A basic assumption we make is that the natural world is capable of perceiving us and responding to our actions.
The question we’re normally testing is how complex the process between perception and response is. As general rule we assume that process is extremely simple (“dumb”), and work to understand how complex (“smart”) it actually is.
For example, in this paper the scientists didn’t start by proving the dogs were capable of observing the humans and responding to their actions. That was a given. What was tested was how complex the dogs perception and decision making process was.
Using words like “dumb” and “smart” are extremely crude. But it’s the words used by GP and OP.
It's the opposite : you assume that the natural world is smart, but they don't assume anything, they just test the hypothesis that dogs are smart, and in this way validate part of your assumption.
I think it's a better way to deal with things, as your assumption might not hold scrutiny very well : what is natural world ? Are worms part of it ? What about rocks ? Can we deduce from there that worms and rocks are able to distinguish intentional from non intentional actions ?
Really? Because it seems to me that they suspected the opposite - that animals are intelligent - and they designed an experiment to attempt to prove it.
The first three sentences of the abstract contradict your comment; the scientists started with a question, not an assumption.
>When dogs interact with humans, they often show appropriate reactions to human intentional action. But it is unclear from these everyday observations whether the dogs simply respond to the action outcomes or whether they are able to discriminate between different categories of actions. Are dogs able to distinguish intentional human actions from unintentional ones, even when the action outcomes are the same?
It is newsworthy because new evidence has been found.
I suppose because until you actually show that something is the case, experimentally, it's just guess work either way. The world is full of different kinds of people. You, for instance, obviously see dogs as intelligent mammals. But there's also the person who buys a puppy for their 8 year old, and sees it as a fluffy clockwork toy that eats and shits. Not only do they not bother to wonder if it's sentient or intelligent, they actively suppress those thoughts because they are inconvenient thoughts. Those thoughts mean you have to care how the thing 'feels'.
One of the reasons is that for many centuries the Western thought was deeply influenced by Christian thought as formed mainly by Thomas Aquinas. According to him, animals are devoid of "the life of reason" with all consequences (basically, we can do what we want with them). It turned out, animals can feel, can be happy and unhappy, and can understand much more than we had imagined. This not a result of our intuition, but years of research. Nevertheless, the harm has been done, and animals have been cruelly abused because of the underlying belief that they don't feel (or, even if they do, it is ethically neutral). It's 2021 and there are several companies still testing their products on cosmetics, for example. At least natural fur is not a thing anymore.
It’s worth noting that Aquinas was using ‘reason’ in a quite narrow and specific sense (very roughly, the ability to think about things as such via concepts). His position was not inconsistent with dogs having emotions or various forms of what we’d call intelligence.
On the other hand, in medieval and early modern Europe non-wild animals that did bad things were often given full trials with a judge, jury, prosecutor, defense [1]. That seems to suggest a view that animals were more than just unreasoning beasts.
it also doesnt help that on page 1 of the most popular religion it basically says that humans have dominion over all the animals on earth, or some sort of slosh to that effect
We _are_ exceptional in quite a few areas. Our communication skills are unmatched anywhere in the animal kingdom and even the best animals fail at anything higher than primary school math. We also constantly see animals failing to adapt to the modern world with things like cars, screens and sometimes even glass.
So I do think it's newsworthy that animals are able to parse complex human action and intent.
I agree. We can all be exceptional in our own ways.
Sharks are exceptionally good at maintaining their species (self cloning for large animals is amazing). Dogs (and wolves) have exceptional senses of smell. The hearts of most bird species are exceptionally better than those of mere mammals.
However, when it comes to the characteristics where we think humans are exceptional, I’ll only allow another animal to take the top spot if they start an argument.
To date, no animal has even started the argument… much less won it.
The commenter's point was, I think, sarcastic; the average member of the public thinks of themselves as qualitively different from animals, and indeed our ethical systems are built around that.
I am hesitant to add yet another response as you already have a few very good ones. However . . .
My wife and I like to call the studies that prove the obvious, "no shit studies," because they really aren't surprising. In this specific context, very few scientists doubt that animals have emotions and intelligence. The thing is, you still have to do the experiment to know for certain. It happens fairly regularly that we discover things that seem obvious are actually wrong.
> Why do these scientists assume the worst as a starting point?
You just described the Karl Popper criterion. [0]
It's the most rigorous way of doing science. The same also kind of exists in law with the innocent "till proven guilty"
They’re not assuming that the natural world is stupid. They’re doing what good scientists do, which is to not take for granted that human interpretations of the world are universal/true/even make any kind of sense from the social standpoint of other mammals.
> "Researchers would be prosecuted for cruelty, unless they conformed to its provisions, which required that an experiment involving the infliction of pain upon animals to only be conducted when "the proposed experiments are absolutely necessary for the due instruction of the persons [so they may go on to use the instruction] to save or prolong human life"
It also contains punishments for not giving animals anesthestia, which is a ridiculous waste of resources if "people didn't even think animals felt pain until the 1980s."
Similar timeline on babies. But I think it's important to distinguish "scientists" from "people" in this case. My mom witnessed my brother's circumcision, on the day of his birth. She knew without a doubt that he was in immense pain, which the doctor flatly denied. Similarly, people who work with animals have known that they feel pain since time immemorial.
This is one of these things that most people who deal with animals (so - almost everybody) knew for millenia but philosophers debated over cause it's interesting and you can show off how smart you are and quote classics.
You will have a very hard time taming an animal if you think it feels no pain.
I notice this in cats too. There is a stray cat I feed from time to time. When I try to pet her, she does not appreciate it by often trying to scratch me. On the other hand, I stepped on her paw once and she did nothing.
Of course, this is anecdotal evidence.
> When I try to pet her, she does not appreciate it by often trying to scratch me.
Animals will often misinterpret an attempt to pet with an attempt to grab. It helps a lot to attempt to pet with the back of your hand rather than your palm and fingers.
When my dog was a puppy, he ran around my feet like crazy and I accidentally stepped on his paws a couple of times. He was not mad at me at all, he just learned to keep some distance when going for a walk.
My dog knows how to ring poochiebells with his paw to be let out.[1] I also know a dog who will frequently use her paw to lower the phone in your hand or shut the lid of your laptop as if to say “pay attention to me, not this”.
I used to live with a dog who really, really loved to be petted. He would hop up next to you on the couch while you were reading a book, on a laptop/phone etc and very deliberately hook your forearm with his "wrist" (not sure the right term, first major leg joint above the paw) and pull your hand/arm towards him for pets. Cute the first few times but he was so persistent and deliberate about it, it became a little annoying!
Of course. My sister’s dog is small and careful not to get stepped on, but when she wants attention (which is often), she steps on people’s toes to get it.
That would be the baby schema effect. A lot of animals, us included, has infants with similar traits. These traits is then something that these animals recognize and influence their behavior. This is why we find babies, kittens, lambs and puppies cute. In cat and dogs this shows up as higher tolerance for bad behavior.
Kittens and puppies do the same exact annoying shit to their bodies as human equivalents as well, not to mention babies/toddlers smell distinct from adults/adolescents, even to humans (or maybe just me).
My dog is pretty tolerant of having his ears pulled when playing with other dogs. I don't what it is about the skin of dogs but they are pretty resilient to this.
That is intentional action. Unintentional I think would be stepping on their paws by accident vs intentionally stomping on their paws while looking at them.
Similarly, my Newfie will look at the stick flying past, then look at me with that expression that big dogs can do… “why did you just do that, human ?”, then sit down, preferably in the snow.
Interesting, what else can you say about the non-breed heritage. What is it most closely related to in terms of dog? Or it is closer to wolf? (Serious question)
That's an open question but I can't now find the citation that the whole presumption that dogs come from wolves isn't necessarily right, that they may all be cousins.
She does show a chihuahua great grandparent, but otherwise is native central american. people mistake her for a yellow lab since they gravitate towards certainty and in so doing ignore entirely non lab features in coloring and geometry, and behavior.
Curiously the Dingos and the dogs you might see being brought back from the Middle East theaters of war to europe/americas look super similar.
My conjecture is that this is the natural dog, that you could recreate things like a yellow lab with many generations of selective breeding, that Huskies and Malamutes likely are more wolf related. But it's only a conjecture.
Look at EmbarkVet.com for one source of canine dna documentation, I'd suggest.
I'm reminded of service dogs that are trained to ignore or oppose commands that would put their human in danger.
E.g. when given a command to cross a street in front of a driving car, the dog is trained to push the human the other way.
I guess this is mostly about paying attention to surroundings. Part of me hopes there's a little of "my human made a mistake in assesing the safety of this action" there too.
Going only by the headline, I don't know why this would be a surprise to anyone who has lived with dogs or cats.
I have hurt some of our four-legged family members - kicking them because I didn't see them, or stepping on their tail - and the very first thing they always want to know is if I did it on purpose or by accident.
I wonder why this would even be the subject of research? And if it were, how could you possibly conduct an ethical experiment around it?
> I stop and tell her get how sorry I am, which did not make much sense and probably confuses the cat even more.
Thanks for giving this some thought. Really, it does make sense to your dog or cat.
When cats play, they often will hurt each other a bit as they tumble and play. Same with dogs. Just watch their behavior afterward.
If they really meant to hurt each other, the attack will continue. If it was an accident, they will stop, smell each others' butts, see if everyone was OK, and then either take a rest or get back to playing.
Two of our cats love to toss and tumble every night. If you didn't know, you might think they were fighting. But they are best of friends and love to play like that.
I suppose this is the bottom line (quite literally): if you kick your cat, smell her butt!
No, seriously, you don't need to do that. Cats and dogs have an amazing talent for reading human emotions. So just reassure her that you didn't mean to do it. A little head scratch, pet her, and she will get the message.
What I meant is that it may be better to just continue walking after having stepped on them as if nothing happened, rather than making the event special.
I have more experience with children than with cats so this may be the reason (when my children fell and hurt themselves (in the "usual way"), they would look around to check how parents react. If we did as if nothing happened or just casually acknowledged the accident, they would usually go ahead with what they were doing. Running to them with "poor baby!" was the worst thing to do (in our case at least))
> I have more experience with children than with cats so this may be the reason (when my children fell and hurt themselves (in the "usual way"), they would look around to check how parents react. If we did as if nothing happened or just casually acknowledged the accident, they would usually go ahead with what they were doing. Running to them with "poor baby!" was the worst thing to do (in our case at least))
Dogs are like this, too. This is how a lot of owners end up reinforcing fear and fear-related aggression: cooing and fawning when their dog is shaking with fear, growling, or barking.
I've had dogs who are smaller than most cats. When I step on a paw, I do apologize and I do check on the critter, but I try to keep it low-drama so as not to feed into all that.
I just pick them up and gently squeeze each paw with gradually increasing firmness, while I watch to gauge the reactions. This lets me know whether he's actually hurt or the yelping was more anticipatory (like a 'watch out!') and if the former, which paw it was and a little bit about how bad it is. Then I give them a quick and cheerful apology and I pet them or throw a toy to chase or something like that.
If you want I can try to find some more authoritative resources on this, but basically your intuitions and the analogy from your kids are right on afaik.
I think there is a fair bit of evidence that animals console each other and “reconcile” after they’ve hurt one another. I definitely think dogs and cats understand you’re trying to communicate you‘re sorry. Or maybe at least that you aren’t angry with them.
At any rate, we humans have been “apologizing” to our pets like this forever. It’s almost instinctual to us. So I don’t think it’s a confusing experience for pets. It would probably more confusing for your pet if you were to suddenly stop this behavior.
Agree with the other comments. I do totally let our cat know that I am sorry and will use high-pitched voice (distinct from when I push them (gentle but firm) away from food and use low-pitch, for example) and do caring things like invite them to come to me, stroke them, etc. Not scientific but I do believe they get it.
This might have the side effect that they care less to avoid the situation next time (sometimes it's totally their fault, behind an opaque door how am I supposed to know they're sitting there? Of course it can move at some point), though the toilet door they seem to have been burned by often enough that they start running when the toilet flushes regardless of whether the door was cracked and we could each see each other's eyes so they know I know they're there ^^'
In science, we cannot cite our intuition or anecdotal experience as firm and reliable evidence for any phenomenon. One outgrowth of this is that good science is not just about investigating something that is likely to be surprising, it is about checking our intuitions in a more systematic and structured manner.
Do you seriously think I am going to experiment with kicking my dogs and cats or stepping on their tails, for the sake of science?
I love the dogs and cats that I have the privilege of living with. So no, I'm not going to do that.
Update: sorry I took some offense at your comment. Basically, I don't think this is a matter of science. Our dogs and cats are living, emotional creatures.
As their human, it is my intuition and interaction with them that best teaches me how to provide them with a loving and happy home.
Or you could just do what these scientists did, and test whether or not dogs were capable of recognising intent in scenarios that don’t involve harming them.
Not sure why you would need to harm to test if they could understand intent.
> I don't think this is a matter of science. Our dogs and cats are living, emotional creatures.
If by that you mean that nobody should be experimenting by doing intentional harm to any animal which we can reasonably suspect to be able to experience pain then I agree. If you mean that emotions are beyond science to comprehend, then I'm curious why you think that is?
Okay yeah that's way more philosophical than I was thinking. To me it's just neurons that fire and chemicals that are released in response to stimuli. That's the science part and the way we can iirc already recognize pain in brain scans. Or even just behavioral: you can observe how it alters its behavior depending on what the hurter does after hurting the animal. (Horrible as such a thing would be, it would still be science, even if we might choose not to use data obtained by extremely immoral research.)
So you love your pets and treat them kindly and with affection, yet you are assuming that your pets behaviour when you do accidentally hurt them is due to an unproven ability to discern that it was an accident rather than simply learned behaviour that you are not a threat and, rather, a boon?
Or you could just watch cats and dogs for a while to see how clearly they understand the difference between friendly play, territorial grandstanding, and all-out war without needing accredited scientific legitimisation.
How many dogs and cats have you personally lived with?
Have you ever hurt them, intentionally or by mistake?
Did their response change based on whether you reassured them that it was an accident, or making it clear you really meant to hurt them?
And honestly, I have to say I am a bit offended by being accused of anthropomophism.
I am not attributing "human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities" like the dogs and cats I've lived with.
I am doing my best to understand their dog and cat emotions. They are not human emotions, they are dog and cat emotions. You can't deny that they are emotional creatures, and it is my job as their caregiver and protector to understand them and meet them where they are.
I’ve always had pets. I currently have two Siamese cats. I’ve accidentally stepped on them, but never intentionally hurt them. All of that is beside my point, though.
What you’re saying is clearly correct. The OP’s post supports this. I was simply telling you why studies like these are necessary: because things that can seem very real can be a case of cognitive bias. A scientist’s job is to gather evidence to reveal whether what we perceive is real or illusion.
So how would a scientist prove conclusively that other humans are conscious and self-aware and not just very advanced automata that behave in ways which mimic consciousness and self-awareness?
No matter how much data you collect, when you're assessing behaviour there's always a subjective interpretation of how behaviours differ and what they mean in context.
Experiments like these simply disguise and hide the subjectivity.
Questions of subjective experience are absolutely unprovable scientifically.
You can collect correlations between stimuli and responses, but when you're done you have a table of correlations between stimuli and responses - and that's all.
In practice we assume that our own states correlate with behaviours, and this also applies to other humans in a straightforward way. (It often doesn't, but it's a nice thing to believe.) From there it's an easy step to making the same mapping for certain animals, albeit with more of a stretch.
But this is all unprovable, even as a hypothesis. All you can say objectively is that stimuli either match or don't match expected behaviours.
> So how would a scientist prove conclusively that other humans are conscious and self-aware and not just very advanced automata that behave in ways which mimic consciousness and self-awareness?
That's not the topic we're discussing but this isn't meaningfully different from the "are we in a simulation" question.
This particular question is about animals understanding the difference accidents and not, which is a super interesting question because they can't communicate. This is something you can construct experiments around and observe different behaviors.
Anecdotes are still anecdotes regardless of how many you have.
For data you need to actually measure a response in a controlled environment. Making sure you record both the interesting, and non-interesting, responses so you can compare them.
Humans have a very strong natural tendency to only remember and evaluate interesting responses. Causing us to vastly overestimate the frequency of interesting outcomes. That paired with our brains strong desire to pattern match, means we’re terrible at making accurate observations on a day-to-day basis.
Hence scientists do experiments like this to discover what aspects of our intuition are accurate, and what parts are inaccurate.
They compared across breeds ("51 dogs of various breeds", 9 of which were pugs or 'small' [1]), but some breeds are... dumb as hell. I'm skeptical the statement holds across all breeds. My friend's pug will run full speed into a wall for no apparent reason, hardly the most perceptive of creatures.
Even though the study looks very clear and crisp but the paper talks about theory of mind, etc. whereas dogs IMO are body language masters.
It's not obvious that they need to model what the other animal (us) are "thinking" when they just need to pay attention to how we're moving our limbs which is correlated with wether something is by accident or intentional
I noticed that with my prior dog that when I accidentally dropped his ball he did not try to catch and retrieve it but only when it was clear that it is playfully intended.
How do the dogs know if an action is intentional or unintentional? Is it from the emotions, e.g. when someone intentionally withholds a reward they look angry, but when they unintentionally withhold a reward they look surprised and sad?
Dogs are very emotional and can read human emotion. I can tell if my dog is happy, excited, bored, relaxed, angry, upset, scared, or confused. Similarly my dog can tell if someone likes them, doesn't like them, is sad, angry, and maybe other emotions.
I think the evidence from the various studies along these lines is pointing towards dogs legitimately having empathy.
And an empathy that is strongly compatible with humans.
We aren't just talking about understanding feelings. Empathy includes the ability to see and understand a situation from another person's mental and physical point of view.
Previous studies have shown that dogs can understand a human pointing at an object, and even mentally shift their perspective to understand what the human is pointing at from a completely different direction.
The implication of this study is that dogs are genuinely putting themselves in the human's point of view and understanding that the result was not what the human intended and failed due to clumsiness.
Dogs understand apology as well. If you bonk them and then give them scratches they bounce back. If you bonk them and don’t they can get upset about it.
It seems that puppy body language has built-in preemptive apologies. All that snout licking and booking is basically, “I’m sorry I’m a PITA but look how cute I am!”
People may assume an action is unintentional but they still check by looking at the person who made the action. Other social animals probably have the same behavior.
