It’s interesting that this article takes some time to describe how the protocol have been conceived for the dogs to not suffer from the experiment. And that by using familiar vocabulary.
It wouldn’t happen for any other animal (ok, maybe for the evil creatures named cats).
It’s not that the scientists took care of the dogs that impress me (it was even needed for the experiment) but that the article author felt that it was important enough to mention it multiple times.
My old cat could tell I wanted her to come with a slight nod of my head. Of course cats are quite independent so I couldn't command her all the time but if it wanted company and got the nod, she would be running with joy in my direction.
Don’t get me wrong. Cats are ok. I even have a cat. They are just not dogs. Ask my cat if she would like to go for a walk outside and she would answer with a middle finger if she could physically do it.
For any dog, it would be the greatest day of all times since at least yesterday.
Well, if you like a challenge, you could always get yourself a husky.
If they don't want to do something then they'll certainly provide some amusement value. Apart from parrots, huskies seem to be the only animal species capable of saying the word "No".
As someone on the HuskyTrantrums subreddit said, huskies are the best pets to watch someone else own.
> For any dog, it would be the greatest day of all times since at least yesterday.
Unless it's _ever so slightly_ damp outside, then my dog will cower in fear at the thought of getting her paws wet. Pouring rain though? Completely fine!
In all honesty I just speak full sentences to my dog. Sure, she doesn't understand it all, but she knows my daughters' nicknames, mommy, cat, pigs ear, bed, upstairs.
My previous dog hardly understood anything. She was a nightmare to train.
My current dog is practically a genius by comparison. She understands complex instructions (“go outside and go potty and then let’s go to bed” - and off she goes!)
Amazing the breadth of comprehension and intelligence from dog to dog.
Years ago I had a Doberman / German Shepard mix that I paid $25 for at the San Jose flea market. An incredibly smart dog that never pooped or peed in the house, even as a puppy. She would just wake me up in the morning when she had to go.
I've come across the same. I have a dog who gave birth at Christmas and now I'm training two of the puppies.
The mom is not great with coming when asked, never has been. Her kids though, as soon as I whistle a certain way they show up and sit in front of me. Generally they are really good at following instructions, perhaps it's because the father is a working dog.
We’ve had Boxers for several years now, 5 as puppies and 1 rescue at 2.5 years old. I’ve noticed a fairly large difference dog to dog from the same breed. Some have been quick learners, and others not so much. One of our current dogs can learn things almost instantly, if she understands the benefit to her. I showed her exactly once to scratch at the door to go outside (something she enjoys) and she picked that up immediately. Then she also on her own translated it to other things she wants -a scratch at the pantry where we keep treats, a scratch at a storage area at our old condo where her toys were kept out of the way, etc.
When my dad was doing some household maintenance he sometimes used to explain the procedure to the dog. On a couple of occasions I've given short technical talks my dog. She just used to sit there with a look that said "I'm not sure I've grasped all the nuances of your argument, but I love you, and you're a genius."
Not just a few words. They can form full, coherent self referential sentences.
In one of the videos Bunny uses assistive buttons to ask who she is after she looks in the mirror.
It's worth being skeptical, and a lot of the Instagram/YouTube animals that "speak" clearly do nowhere as well as their owners suggest.
But look at more of Bunny's videos. Some of the interpretations are fanciful (a pet peeve of mine is the "love you" interactions where there's little reason to think the "love you" means more than "I want attention"), but there are enough of fairly complex interactions that I think it's unreasonable to dismiss it entirely.
I get that the science has to be done to know for sure. But I feel that for this to be a surprising revaluation to someone seems to me to indicate a lingering of the archaic notion that god created man in his image, and therefore man was different from beast.
Just strikes me as an interesting cultural current. Perhaps the real role of science is to help transition between generations of knowledge. What is todays equivalent of geocentrism? What will replace it?
It is unfortunate that popular writing on science is so hand-wavey. People get confused by that and start treating it like a religion. Surly if science has a better more objective way to see the world, it should be able to be made more plain. On the other hand maybe society needs a priest caste.
Pardon my wild tangent, I merely hope to provoke unusual thought.
> Knowing how dogs process sound could, among other things, help canine experts better train service or working dogs.
This seems to be the real practical focus of the research. There’s no surprise that dogs can understand human speech (they obviously do to some degree, as do many animals), but rather digging deeper into the nuances so we can refine our communication with them.
Training a service dog can take up to two years and an experienced trainer - research here might be able to shorten that time and increase the pool of available dogs.
> I feel that for this to be a surprising revaluation to someone seems to me to indicate a lingering of the archaic notion that god created man in his image, and therefore man was different from beast.
I think a more interesting take on the article is that dogs do NOT process woofs like we, and they, process human language. It seems to suggest that there is a qualitative difference between speaking and barking, and also (as stated in the article) that dogs picked up a new set of language skills only by listening to us, which is super cool and in a way the most dog-like thing possible. In that sense I'd say that human and beast are proven different by the experiment.
> who studies how dogs and humans process language at the University of Maryland
I gave out quite a laugh while I was reading this. More so, because I peeking at the article with my stern scientific mind. Now I know that dogs and humans process language differently at University of Maryland.
Obviously the sentence should've been written:
> who studies at the University of Maryland how dogs and humans process language
Personal preference, I believe. But the point still stands: the original sentence is more ambiguous that both our rewritings. Ours just show that the original sentence could be improved.
You're technically correct that the results are only valid for the University of Maryland. The experiments were conducted in a single location, so any potential spatial variation of the observed behavior hasn't been captured in that dataset. ;)
Dogs are not lower consciousness thought. They are not fully aware of themselves nor behave like that. I'd love to talk to the higher form if they can take a few minutes to chit chat.
Perhaps such a "higher consciousness" being is by definition more aware of itself than we are of ourselves. Maybe an octopus or dolphin has higher consciousness that we can't comprehend or notice, because we're testing for human-ness rather than consciousness.
"Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much — the wheel, New York, wars and so on — whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man — for precisely the same reasons." -- Douglas Adams.
I doubt a dog’s auditory cortex is that similar to a human’s. For example dogs don’t really seem to recognize single syllable words well if at all.
I wonder if the olfactory cortex is more sophisticated or simply larger. I have a large dog and I recon the surface area of his nose is probably the same as my house or larger.
> For example dogs don’t really seem to recognize single syllable words well if at all.
I'm pretty sure most dogs understand "no" (and the equivalent word in other languages is often 1 syllable). I haven't done anything approaching a study, but I've trained many dogs in my life and my experience disagrees with you. Some other common words they know really well include: treat, sit, off, here - basically anything you teach them.
Various labradors with whom I have had the pleasure to cohabitate certainly never had trouble with sit, stop, stay, yes, no, left, right, seek, slow, fast and several other similar commands, words intentionally chosen for their short, clear, monosyllabic nature.
"Who's that" is something we always said when approaching someone we recognise, and now if she hears those words - even totally out of context, mid way through a conversation - she gets excited and goes to look out of the window.
My dog (female 18 month old Labrador) understands quite a few as well - fetch, here, slow, drop, leave, go, now. If I want to add emphasis, though, increasing to two syllables seems to help. For example "slowly" or "drop it".
https://twitter.com/airbagmoments/status/1387421368405348357...