From The Discovery Channel news, it appears dogs make more logical choices when we're not around. According to a new study that tested dogs' reasoning capabilities both with humans in the room and without humans in the room, the dogs chose the correct location of a toy more often when people weren't the room than then when they were. Apparently, as dogs have evolved as very social animals, they take their behavior cues and choice cues from their fellow "pack" members (humans) even when they know the choices are incorrect. Left to their own devices, the dogs chose correctly more often.

Granted, it was a small study and it hasn't been re-tested (that I know of), but it is interesting - and it aligns well with my anecdotal experiences in working with and training dogs. One of the reasons dogs are relatively easy to train is their innate need to be a part of a social order and to have things to do. Training gives them that security - even if, for some reason, the trained behavior doesn't seem logical or correct. It's encoded in their thinking to conform to the "expected" norms, rather than their perhaps more logical norms.

What is also interesting about this study is that it seemed to demonstrate dogs have the ability to reason inferentially; i.e. if the ball isn't under that pot, then it's under the other one. Inferential reasoning has been demonstrated in other very social animals as well, like chimpanzees and grey parrots. Which makes sense - after all, if you're going to be successful in social situations, you need a keen ability to infer, understand, and act on social cues from your group.

Lastly, I found it interesting that they also compared this study to similar ones done with small children, who also take their behavior cues from and absorb social information from the adults close to them. Apparently, children tested in similar ways often chose like the dogs - making the 'wrong' choice when the adults were in the room and indicating which way to choose and making the 'right' choice when left to their own devices.

I love animal behavior studies because they inevitably reveal similarities and abilities that were long considered the sole province of humanity. One of my particular favorite examples is the idea of tool making and tool use that Jane Goodall (one of my heroes) witnessed in wild chimpanzees. Since then tool making and use has been observed in a wide variety of species - and not just in primates or mammals; some species of birds have also been observed to select, make, and use simple tools to accomplish tasks.

Which always reinforces my notion that as different as we are from animals, we still come from the same basic mix and have a lot in common. These studies reminds me that as living, thinking, feeling creatures they deserve my respect and compassion. They also make me want to go back to school and study animal behavior. *g*

The full article can be found here.



Dog Logic: Behave Now, Think Later
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

Oct. 9, 2007 — Ever wonder what your dog does when you aren't around? The answer might surprise you, suggests a new study that found our canine companions behave more logically in our absence.

People exert a strong influence on canine choices, it seems, and not always for the better. Dogs are so attuned to our actions, in fact, that they will sometimes abandon logic entirely to please us. But abandoning reason for obedience may serve our pets well in the end.

"I do not think that domestication made dogs less intelligent," lead author Anes Erdohegyi told Discovery News. "On the contrary, dogs seem to show special sophistication in understanding social situations."

"However," she added, "it is true that focusing on the human...sometimes leads to erroneous behavior."

Erdohegyi is a researcher in the Department of Ethology at Budapest's Eotvos Lorand University. She and her colleagues recruited 42 adult pet dogs and their owners for the study, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Animal Behavior. The only criterion for selection was that the dogs had to be "highly motivated to play with a toy."

The first experiment was like the old carnival trick where a person hides a card under one of two or three hats. In this case, the researchers placed a ball under a small plastic flowerpot. They then put a larger flowerpot over the smaller one. An identical flowerpot set, minus the ball, was also used.

A researcher lifted the various pots in front of the dog. At times, the experimenter also gazed at the ball-less flowerpot set, or moved it, and then made eye contact with the dog. While the dogs coveted the ball toy, they usually chose the set without the ball, simply because the experimenter showed interest in it.

The researchers repeated the experiment, the next time using flowerpots or containers that could be lifted remotely with strings without any perceivable human cues. When shown the set without the ball, the dogs immediately made the right choice by going for the other set since, by process of elimination, it had to contain the ball.

The dogs displayed a type of logic called "inferential reasoning" when not influenced by the experimenters, meaning they made deductions and solved problems immediately, as opposed to acting on training or copying the behaviors of others.

"Other non-human species, like chimpanzees and grey parrots, also have this skill, which is very useful in complex social situations and can be regarded as an evolutionary adaptation," Erdohegyi said.

In terms of the goofs the dogs made during the study, she explained, "Dogs, like human babies, are very sensitive to human communicative cues. This ability evolved to recognize the relevant information in teaching situations."

Josep Call, a noted animal expert and researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, thinks the new paper "is an imaginative study that challenges the idea that dogs are incapable of inferential reasoning."

Call told Discovery News that he too was reminded of studies on children "in which the cues they get from adults also send them down the wrong path, and [they] end up using inefficient strategies simply because children are so attuned to what adults do."

He added, "Here we see a very interesting convergence between the behavior of dogs and children."