Fascinating research coming out of Duke University

This Post was stimulated by a link sent to me by Chris Snuggs, who will be joining the author’s team at Learning from Dogs in due course.

The link was to an article published in Time Magazine on September 21st and is available in their online version.

The article is about the extraordinary social skills that have been developed by dogs over the millennia that they have been associated with man.  It featured Brain Hare (sort of seems an appropriate name!) Assistant Professor, Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke.

The article is also rather timely as only a few days ago, there was a Post on this Blog about the befriending of a man with a wild wolf, or was it the other way around!

Back to the Time magazine article,

“Understanding a pointed finger may seem easy, but consider this: while humans and canines can do it naturally, no other known species in the animal kingdom can. Consider too all the mental work that goes into figuring out what a pointed finger means: paying close attention to a person, recognizing that a gesture reflects a thought, that another animal can even have a thought.”

Now to many dog owners this may seem pretty obvious.  Certainly, when I’m out walking with Pharaoh, my German Shepherd, he clearly knows that an outstretched arm means that this is the way we are going.  He can be chuntering off in one direction, stop and see that us humans aren’t coming the same way and will take the direction indicated by my arm as ‘corrective’ action.  This will be before I have taken a step in that direction, so Pharaoh’s guidance is coming from arm and other subtle body gestures not from the way we are walking.  That he is certain of the new way to go is demonstrated, to my mind, by the fact that Pharaoh will cut the corner off if he can.  Note that I have never ‘taught’ Pharaoh this in a formal sense.

Anyway, back to the Time article,

It’s no coincidence that the two species that pass Hare’s pointing test also share a profound cross-species bond. Many animals have some level of social intelligence, allowing them to coexist and cooperate with other members of their species. Wolves, for example–the probable ancestors of dogs–live in packs that hunt together and have a complex hierarchy. But dogs have evolved an extraordinarily rich social intelligence as they’ve adapted to life with us. All the things we love about our dogs–the joy they seem to take in our presence, the many ways they integrate themselves into our lives–spring from those social skills. Hare and others are trying to figure out how the intimate coexistence of humans and dogs has shaped the animal’s remarkable abilities.

It’s a long article but well worth the read if you are at all interested in what’s going on behind your mutt’s eyes!

The Duke website is also worth viewing as it contains both a link to a video on dog behaviour and details about how you may have your dog participate in the research programme.

Amazing animals – or should one say – an amazing relationship between animal and man.

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