Dog Day Afternoon

[mundens]

Dogs are smarter than people may think, smarter than apes even :

"When it comes to understanding human behaviour, no mammal comes even close to the dog," says Kaminski. Her Leipzig research team has demonstrated that dogs are far better than the supposedly clever apes at interpreting human gestures.

Wolves, however, do not demonstrate these traits, nor are they capable of learning them! Basically, the millennia of association between dogs and humans has been long enough for "natural" selection to create a smarter dog, that is genetically better at understanding and communicating with humans than it's wild counterparts.

Associating with humans and their children has also rubbed off on their learning techniques :

Range has already shown that dogs use a learning strategy -- selective imitation -- that, until recently, was believed to be unique to human children once they turned a year old.

So that smart dog of yours, is actually smart. Much smarter than you might have thought.

Comments

[ethel-aardvark.livejournal.com]

I bet the millenia of association also encouraged natural selection that has made dogs capable of tilting their ears forward, head to one side, and opening their eyes wide until the humans say 'aww..cute!' and feed them :-)

[mundens.livejournal.com]

Hee! Yes I suspect that's true too!

Either that or humans have been naturally selected to find dogs cute, and feed them, coz the ones that didn't got eaten!

[seraphs-folly.livejournal.com]

It explains Doogs nicely: hes really got a great memory and picks up on whats wanted (whether he listens or not) but his logic belongs to a much more stoopid beastie.

I suspect the dog lovers at the newspaper gleefully seized the excuse to go put up lots of doggy pics.

Great article thx

[tatjna.livejournal.com]

My dog may be smart, but as dogs go she's still pretty thick. She is brilliant at knowing exactly how to get the best pats out of me, and knowing when a head-in-lap-with-loving-gaze is the best thing, but she has no clue about avoiding being manipulated by my brother's (smarter) terrier.