Posted on 11/24/2016 9:28:45 AM PST by MtnClimber
Once again, science has confirmed the suspicions of dog-owners that their beloved pets know more than they are letting on. In this case, it has to do with memory, a favorite subject of researchers who study the mental abilities of other animals.
No one doubts that dogs can be trained to remember commands and names of objects. They also remember people and places. But Claudia Fugazza and her colleagues at the Family Dog Project at Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest set out to see whether dogs share a more complex kind of memory.
In people it is called episodic memory, and it involves a sense of self. In animals, it’s called episodic-like memory, because it’s difficult to try to plumb something as elusive as self without the aid of language.
All attempts to understand thinking and memory in nonverbal animals are difficult, and Dr. Fugazza, Adam Miklosi and Akos Pogany developed a technique that depends on something called “Do-as-I-do training,” which itself is pretty amazing.
In this training, dogs learn to imitate any action the trainer takes. First the trainer does something like touch an open umbrella with his hand. Then he says, “Do it.” Then the dog taps the umbrella with its paw — assuming the training is going well.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Very amateur unless your dog also SOLVED the physics equations. :-o
Years ago I had a little terrier-mix named Chica. A friend came in the back door unannounced and Chica started barking at him. As a joke I said, “Watch out, Chica; he eats little dogs.” Chica dashed back to the bedroom and got under the bed. I had to get down on my hands and knees and persuade her I was just joking before she would come out and meet the man.
I never knew if his answers were right or gibberish!!
My rat terror Jax opens the front door when he wants in or out. It pisses me off because the GD chicken comes in, craps on the floor, then flies up in front of the tv.
I wake up, go into the living room and the door is wide open, the chicken has crapped on the floor and now is perched on the table watching the frickin’ tv my wife left on before going to work.
This is all true. The dog is too old to give away and the chicken is the last of my laying stock so my wife thinks she’s a pet.
I hate them both.
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