Showing posts with label Dogs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dogs. Show all posts

K9 Dyadics


Leaving aside the old adage that “a man’s best friend is his mother”, we often hear our doggy friends referred to as “man’s best friend” and we know that they hang on every word we utter. It has been shown that some dogs can understand a limited range of words in terms of names of toys that they are asked to fetch.

Empathy with their owners is also one of their strong suits, and a tolerance at being dressed up in silly clothes so they “look cute” seems to be almost limitless. I can understand why they don’t care how they look, but why don’t other dogs care?

Today I watched a young women walking briskly along with her dog wearing a jacket with a gray background sporting wide pink and yellow stripes. The colors clashed with the violet jogging pants of its walker. My first thought was that it’s just as well that dogs don’t perceive the colors at the red end of the spectrum. Their evolution sacrificed that faculty in favor of improved night vision, or so the cyber-knowledge base has it.

However, back to “walkies” and how other dogs react when they meet and become in the technical jargon of the sociologists, ‘a dyad.’ Discovery News (1) pointed up a newly published study of just this issue by Řezáč et al (2) studying almost two thousand dogs out and about in public. They report on the dyadic interaction dependence of leash state, size and gender of both the walker and the walked.

The conclusions were that dogs of similar size preferred to play together and that females were more playful than males. That last behavior is probably not species specific. When restricted by a leash, dogs were twice as likely to feel threatened in a dyadic encounter. Of course, they also noted that puppies were playful and old dogs couldn’t be bothered.

Saving the best tidbit till last though – dogs with men walking them were four times more likely to bite other dogs than when both dogs were dogs walked by women. This suggests a new study for the behaviorists. Some group needs to analyze the body language and facial expressions of dog walkers as the encounter each other.

Also, we should remember that our pheromones are dependent on testosterone levels and a dog’s nose knows you know!

  1. P. Řezáč, P. Viziová, M. Dobešová, Z. Havlíček, and D. Pospíšilová, Applied Animal Behaviour Science,  134, 170, (2011)
  2. http://news.discovery.com/animals/dog-walking-behavior-111103.html

A Dog's Life


Young puppies are always appealing. We pick them up and look them in the eye and feel that, of course, they should come home with us. If it’s close to Christmas, then it’s very difficult to say no and move on, especially if we’re visiting an animal shelter.

All dogs seem to be able to stare at us so that we have to talk to them.  Although looking sad, they may be scheming how to manipulate us into giving them an early dinner or going for an extra walk. The question is: are they born with that ability or do they learn how to recognize a ‘soft touch’?

Passalacqua et al tackled this one head on with three different breed groups of dog (1). The three types were genetically different so that inherited traits would also be different. They chose herding/hunting dogs like collies, primitive dogs like ridgebacks, and molossoid dogs like mastiffs and boxers.

They ran through a series of manipulative experiments for the dogs to solve to get food and threw in one that was unsolvable. A human was also in the room and the pleading looks for help, if any, were recorded. They started with 2 month old puppies, then ones at 4½ months old, and finally, full grown dogs.

At 2 months old none of the dogs looked at their human for guidance. At 4½ months, the hunting/herding group was starting to ask their human to get off their butt and help. By the time they were full grown, this group were clearly more demanding of equality of effort in getting the job done, after all they had treats owing.

The report concluded that although most adult dogs keep a pretty careful watch on your face and learn to manipulate you as they grow up, they ones bred for strong cooperation, such as the herding/hunter types, are much better at it and more expectant of equal division of labor.

  1. C.Passelacqua, S.Marshall-Pescin, S.Bernard, G. Lakatos, P.Valsecchi and E.P. Previde, Animal Behaviour, In Press, (2011).

Nice Package!


Here on the West Coast, we love our pets and show our care with lavish gifts of fancy toys. The numbers of our pets seem also to be increasing. Perhaps it’s a symptom of the economic downturn that at my apartment block, dogs used to be a no, no but now its yes, welcome and the number of dogs of all sorts and sizes has mushroomed over the past year.

Of course, they must be turned out properly with collars and, more frequently, harnesses chosen for color and style to match their personalities. In poor weather they are smartly turned out in cozy waterproof coats. They march sedately alongside their minder or trot along after them on a bicycle. Rarely, these days do I see happy dogs chasing a ball or stick with tongue lolling out, or trying to herd pigeons or crows who seem to be unaware of being in need of organization.

But appearances are important and our dog is chosen to be another statement of our cool lifestyle. And, apparently, therein lies a problem. In a piece in Wednesday’s San Francisco Chronicle, Amelia Glynn puts her finger firmly on a problem. We all know that responsible pet owners get their pets neutered to reduce problems of overpopulation, strays and unfortunate behavior.  But there is, apparently, a reluctance among many owners to get this done because their macho male dog would no longer look the part.

The answer is now available. Neuticals supply silicone rubber implants to restore your dogs current wimpy appearance to full robust prominence. They no longer have to hang their tail in shame, but can wag it with abandon knowing that they will be receiving admiring glances from all and sundry.

For those poor mutts who still are trying to deal with their loss in spite of their new implants giving their package a well-filled appearance and whose ears are hanging down with that hangdog expression, there is also a solution. PermaStay ear implants will keep those ears upright and eager.


In case your preferred pet isn’t a dog, there is a range of testicular implants available in sizes suitable for rats up to buffalos, so they all can look whole again. Mice, apparently, will just have to get over it!

A nice touch mentioned in the SFC article reports that it is possible to purchase Neuticals in the form of earrings. The perfect birthday gift for the woman with a new trophy husband, wouldn’t you say?

To The Point

Telling our dog where the ball is after we’ve thrown it and it is still standing there with its tongue hanging out, looking at us with adoring and expectant eyes like we had magical powers to conjure it back into our hand, is one of the joys of communing with animals. It is only equaled when the dog delivers it back, well chewed and slippery for us to throw it away again.

After a frustrating morning of such doggy responses when we have had to retrieve half the balls ourselves, we go home and explain to our next visitor that our pet understands every word we say. But what does our average dog think when you point and say fetch or seek? Scheider et al have set out to seek an answer to this big question or something close to it. They studied dogs responses to pointing gestures and the tone of instructions in looking for hidden treats.

Forty-eight dogs took part and were asked to find food in a room. The tester pointed to where there should be food and told the dog “there” either in a high pitch friendly voice or a deeper bossy voice. As a control dogs were told with no pointing.

Results? If dogs had found a treat in the room previously, they searched diligently in the direction of the pointing finger. If there was no pointing, they just looked and waited for the tester to get their act together. They also worked harder when the friendly voice was used – don’t we all.

The interesting control was that the dogs that hadn’t had treats in the test room, didn’t think too much about the pointing. They just looked at the mad scientist and waited for the little black van to come and collect them. Before a dog will go running off in the direction of a pointing finger, it expects to know why – don’t we all.

Of course, you have to be consistent. If it expects food and all it finds is a soggy ball, it may instigate the call for the little black van. A dog does after all have its expectations as well a sense of entitlement.

  1. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0021676

Empathetically Yours


We all have a group of friends or relatives who make up our social circus and keep us entertained and happy. Our ingroup in psychological terminology, the members of which we feel empathy for and we laugh or cry with them. Other groups that we don’t know are out groups and here our empathy can be pretty thin.Empathy makes actions like laughing or crying a great deal more infectious. Hence, if we are a stand-up comedian or a politician – sorry for repeating myself just then– it is wise to stack the audience with some friends. 

Yawning too is infectious, as I have found to my cost when lecturing. The student classmates are an ingroup, and yawns can spread through my audience like wildfire. However, the yawning contagion isn’t confined to familiars with humans, strangers can catch it too.

So it is with dogs. The infectiousness of yawning goes wider than the ingroup. Dog empathy goes wider that just their friends. But then many dogs seem to be optimists and expect me to make a fuss of them without us having been formally introduced.

So what about Chimpanzees? Well Campbell and de Waal of Emory U have just published a study (1). Here a group of chimpanzees were shown videos of familiars and unfamiliars yawning. Although they were very interested in the unfamiliar chimps and trying to see if they checked with someone in a rogues gallery, they didn’t catch as many yawns as when they saw videos of their friends and relations yawning.

Note though that yawns from any of the chimp body were infectious. In an earlier paper (2) Campbell et al reported that chimps also caught yawns from 3-D chimp avatars. Must have been a pretty bad movie if even the avatars were yawning.



1.    http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0018283
2.   Campbell et al.,Proc. of the Roy. Soc., Biological Sciences 276: 4255–4259