Dogs, Dogs, Dogs - Wow

I thought I'd present a few bits of knowledge I've gotten from one of the papers in the book on dogs I'm very slowly reading. The book's in pdf format, for some reason that makes it slower to read - I guess because I can't read it in bed before I go to sleep! The book is entitled Dogs, Past and Present: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. It's very, very academic - each article has like 4-10 pages of bibliography! I found it at Archaeopress, a publisher in England where I frequently get books about archaeology for my research. The book is available as a pdf through open access, which is an English/British library system which allows online access to research publications; it's sort of like going to the library on your computer at home.

Jaska would sweep the floor, or do the scrapping, if she had thumbs! She's a big help!

The paper with bits I'm going to highlight is chapter 2.3 in the book and starts on page 72. The paper is titled 'Why Wolves Became Dogs: Interdisciplinary Questions on Domestication' and it's written by Juliane Bräuer and Blanca Vidal Orga. Both are from Universities in Germany. The paper opens by discussing some areas where dogs show especially remarkable skills, skills they have from birth, compared to other animals. The skills are in three social-cognitive domains.

The first social-cognitive domain in which dogs are skilled is communication with sounds and signals. For example, each dog uses different kinds of barking for different kinds of things it wishes to communicate to humans. Dogs can practice and understand gaze alteration - in which the dog or human looks at something which isn't in their immediate area to indicate interest of whatever kind. Dogs understand human communications, including words, 'iconic signs' and gestures.

Dogs are born, it seems, with this ability to understand humans and follow directed input. Directed input in this case is a human pointing at something, so the dog looks in the direction pointed and goes to get or do whatever is indicated. Or perhaps a human is staring at something and the dog turns to stare at it. An example - your dog follows your gaze as you look at the place you hid their favorite toy. They then go to that place and ask for their toy.

'Free ranging dogs and shelter dogs with limited human contact are also able to use', to understand, human gestures (such as pointing) to find hidden food. This is a skill apes, our close animal cousins, perform much worse at, at least at first. Wolves, hand-reared, do not do as well as dogs do at this task (although the wolves' social organization, the pack, gives them skills which dogs and humans have modified and use). But dogs can do this from at least six weeks old!

'A second social-cognitive ability that has been intensely investigated in dogs is perspective taking - the ability to assess what others can perceive.' Dogs seem to be able to know what we, their humans, can see. They know when we are paying attention to them, and when we are not, even if it's only looking. They can also assess what we can hear, or can't hear and modify their behavior accordingly. Amazing, isn't it?

The third social-cognitive domain in which dogs show special skills is cooperation. This is a behavior which is beneficial to others, and perhaps, but not necessarily, beneficial to oneself. Dogs cooperate with humans in just about everything. They hunt, they guard, they pull sleds and other things, they herd, they rescue, they signal, they search, they guide. They are companions and friends. They learn, and learn, and learn. Dogs prefer humans to other dogs in social interactions (I know, this seems nuts, but it's true, see the article, page 73, and Snoopydawg and I have talked about this in our own experiences with our dogs). The dog-human bond is much like the infant-mother bond in humans. Dogs do need special training to help humans in special instances, such as the human having a heart attack. Dogs don't recognize it immediately, they haven't been trained in how to give support and can't do that naturally. They have to learn, like humans do! When they are given time, they do learn. When the human has a problem which is obvious, like being unable to open a door, dogs learn to help very quickly. And they continue to offer that help, without reward.

That's just one chapter, and just a couple pages of that chapter, of the book. The book is intense, full of information. Some is interesting, some not. In the future, I will do a post about the evolution of dogs and what has been learned so far. For instance, we don't actually know how, or when, these cognitive skills in dogs evolved. We may never find out, but they sure are interesting to learn about! It makes one wonder, what skills do other animals like horses, or goats, or cats, have that us humans don't pay much attention to, but which makes our lives so much better?

So, thanks for reading a tiny bit about humans' best friend and here's the open thread - remember, everything is interesting if you dive deep enough, so tell us about where you're diving!