Dogs Decoded

[potato_head]

Watching this wonderful documentary, Dogs Decoded. It's available to stream on Netflix, EVERYBODY GO WATCH IT IT'S AWESOME

It summarizes some research into communication between dogs and humans. Some really interesting things:

Dogs look to the left of people's faces first - as people do when looking at each other to get a more accurate read of emotions. They don't do this with each other (obviously, as dogs don't express emotion in their face, for the most part).

And they just demonstrated quite a few people very accurately reading the emotion and situation of the barks of dogs they weren't even familiar with :D

These are both behaviors that they must have evolved during the long process of domestication, since wolves obviously have no need to read the emotion in people's faces - nor do they - and they only bark as a warning.

I doubt we'll ever see this kind of communication with cats, even if we gave them as much time domesticated as dogs have had; cats are rarely selected for their ability to communicate with people, because they don't perform any job that requires it. Dogs, on the other hand, even the pets we have today, are descended from animals that performed closely with people for a very long time, and were selected for their ability to perform tasks with people and work for people.

There's also the fact that that potential was probably already there - wolves were working together long before we started domesticating them. Cats are generally loners, not social animals.

I think I discussed last time I watched a dog documentary - that dogs understand the human indication of pointing, which wolves do not. I didn't realize, though, as they show in this one, that chimps don't understand it, either. I'm surprised they haven't developed that yet. Also, they're now demonstrating that dogs don't just understand pointing, but also the human gesture of the indicative glance.


Also, a collie is currently demonstrating her ability to use abstract thinking by seeing a photo and bringing the toy it represents. AMAZING. The best part was that you could just see her getting it the first time they did it - she stared at it for a moment, then barked suddenly and turned and ran to the toys. Ffff dogs are so awesome

Comments

[poto-heart.livejournal.com]

Ooo :D

I'm still amazed by Tripper's ability to understand words, especially ones we didn't teach him on purpose. He even seems to understand 'where are you', since if he doesn't want to come all the way to me he'll just peek into the room I'm in and then go back to where he was xD

The bit on people being able to understand dogs' barking really well surprised me. I don't think I would be so good at it, since Tripper rarely barks, he uses a lot more body language. He basically has two barks: 'a stranger, I'm excited!' and 'a stranger, I'm alarmed!' xD

[anobjectinspace.livejournal.com]

Yeah I find that with Holly and Byron... there's the words you teach them on purpose and then there's the incredible amount of other things they pick up. Holly worked out what 'nom' means, so I ended up incorporating it into a command (it's her cue when I'm about to throw a treat, now). She also worked out 'do you want?' and now I use it to get her alert/excited poses when I want to photograph them... I always treat her for it of course.

Holly is a neurotic fool so has a large repertoire of barks, whines and growl/grumbles... and I can probably say I understand the vast majority of them. Body language helps a lot though - where her ears are, what her tail's doing, how tense her body is and in what way, what angle her head is at, how wide her eyes are, if the corners of her mouth are tense, and so much other stuff I don't even realise I'm picking up on. I've done a lot of dog body language research and I know Holly so well, I rind it just sort of becomes par of how I interact with her naturally and I don't even know how I know what she's saying half the time. Like, she sometimes wants to go under the covers... I always know when that's what she's whining for and I don't know HOW I know it, lol.

[poto-heart.livejournal.com]

Ahahaha xD Tripper just spent like ten minutes convincing me I had a ball. He started doing his 'I want to play with that ball you have' routine, which mostly involves backing up, laying down and cocking his ears. He usually does this after dropping a ball on my lap, but I didn't think I had a ball. I saw he was looking at the table I was using my mouse on, so I showed my mouse to him, but he shoved it out of the way. Finally I got up and saw...the ball I thought he had lost under the couch! Somebody must have found it and put it on the table. It was at the back of the table, behind my mouse. As soon as I said "Ohhh! I see it" he jumped up and wagged his tail xD Of course we went outside to play ball to make up for my denseness, lol.

But it did remind me of the one other noise he makes - he does sometimes whine and bark when he wants something you have, but usually only balls, and only if you're teasing him. I think this time he did it right away to get my attention, because he knew I didn't know I had the ball. But with him it is mostly body language, which I think I know pretty well.