Fw: [EthologicalEthics] How did we learn to speak volumes with a look?

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" BEKOFF MARC " <marc.bekoff

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Monday, July 21, 2003 10:56 PM

[EthologicalEthics] How did we learn to speak volumes with a look?

 

 

> Washington Post, 21 July 2003

>

> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14197-2003Jul18.html

>

> How Did He Learn to Speak Volumes With a Look?

>

> By Rob Stein

> Washington Post Staff Writer

> Monday, July 21, 2003; Page A08

>

>

> As any poodle, spaniel or mutt owner knows, dogs have an uncanny ability

> to read human body language, whether it's following a finger pointing the

> way to an errant tennis ball or spotting a glance that signals an imminent

> trip to the park.

>

> But animal behavior experts have debated for years how much of this dogged

> perceptiveness is inborn and how much is learned by being raised around

> humans. New research, however, indicates that the capacity to communicate

> with humans silently through gestures and glances has become an inborn

> talent as a result of the thousands of years that dogs have lived, worked

> and played with people.

>

> " They don't speak like we do. But there is communication, " said Adam

> Miklosi of Eotvos University in Budapest.

>

> Miklosi is among researchers around the world who have been working to

> gain a better understanding of the talents displayed by man's best friend.

> Most recently, Miklosi and his colleagues conducted a unique experiment to

> try to tease out exactly how much of the capacity to interpret humans'

> subtle signals is instinctive.

>

> " People usually assume that dogs got more stupid because humans provided

> everything. All they have to do is lie back and enjoy life, " Miklosi said.

> " What we think is that dogs went through a re-evolution that started from

> some sort of wolflike animals. . . . They acquired skills that make them

> adaptive to the human environment. They interact with humans. They learn

> from humans. "

>

> To test his ideas, Miklosi and his colleagues designed an experiment

> comparing dogs with their closest relatives -- wolves. They took 13 wolf

> pups from their mothers when they were just four or five days old and

> raised them in human homes just like puppies. As adults, the wolves

> received intensive contact with their human caretakers, who literally

> carried the animals with them wherever they went.

>

> Previous studies had shown that adult dogs were better than adult wolves

> at reading human body language. But it was unclear how much of that was

> inborn and how much dogs learned growing up around humans. This experiment

> was aimed at clarifying that point.

>

> " The wolves got more human contact than the ordinary dogs got from their

> owners, " Miklosi said in a telephone interview. " They were really thrown

> into the human environment. "

>

> The researchers then trained the wolves and various breeds of dogs to get

> a piece of meat by pulling on a string. After the animals learned how to

> get the meat, the researchers attached the string so that no matter how

> hard the animals pulled they could not get the meat.

>

> The wolves just continued to pull on the string in frustration. But the

> dogs quickly stopped pulling when the string did not move and turned to

> look at the faces of the humans, the researchers reported in the April 29

> issue of the journal Current Biology.

>

> " The dogs gave up much earlier. They were, very quickly, looking at the

> humans, the owners, looking at their faces, " Miklosi said. " That is what

> is interesting. That never happened with the wolves. They just kept

> pulling. But the dogs, what they did was basically look at the owners. If

> you observe this as a human, you would describe it as an asking-for-help

> gesture. "

>

> The experiment shows that " the dogs have adapted to use this channel " of

> communication, Miklosi said. " This has provided the opportunity to

> communicate with us. And the wolves have not, " he said.

>

> " The dogs have learned our language, to some extent. So we don't need to

> learn dog language. They can use our channels of communication, like

> vision, " Miklosi said. " You can point for a dog and communicate with it.

> You can point for a wolf, but it won't understand what you are doing. "

>

> Brian Hare of Harvard University, who previously conducted a similar

> experiment that showed dogs were superior to chimps and wolves at reading

> human gestures, said the results show that " dogs really understand that

> humans are their partners in life. They can elicit their help and use them

> as a kind of tool. "

>

> " Wolves don't know that. They keep trying to solve it on their own. It's

> something that's programmed into their genes, " Hare said. Hare is planning

> a follow-up experiment to try to determine why dogs are so much better at

> reading human cues.

>

> " It could be that because there was selection for dogs that are smart --

> dogs that can read human cues and figure out what they want, " Hare said.

> " Those were the ones that survived and passed their genes on. "

>

> But another possibility is that dogs' ability is a byproduct of

> domestication. Hare tells the story of foxes that were domesticated in

> Siberia 50 years ago. Over the generations, the foxes developed physical

> changes, including floppy ears, curly tails, different colorings and

> smaller teeth and jaws.

>

> The human caretakers of the foxes " weren't trying to create any of those

> changes. They were just trying to get friendly foxes. But when they bred

> them together they got these changes as byproducts, " Hare said.

>

> So, for dogs, " the alternative is that when dogs were domesticated, " the

> capacity to pick up cues from humans " was just an accident -- just like

> the floppy ears, " Hare said.

>

> Hare plans to compare the domesticated foxes with dogs to try to find out.

> " If they perform like dogs on the test, then we know it's likely the dogs

> also changed as a byproduct, " Hare said.

>

> " The question is: How did the evolution happen? It's very rare that you

> can actually demonstrate what the selection pressure was, " Hare said.

> " That's why this is so exciting. We're going to take a big step towards

> solving a mystery. "

>

> Marc Bekoff, a dog behavior researcher at the University of Colorado in

> Boulder, said that Miklosi's experiment shows that " dogs aren't just

> dumbed-down wolves. "

>

> " A lot of people think that domesticated animals, when compared to wilder

> animals, aren't as smart, " Bekoff said. " It shows that species adapt to

> the social niche in which they live. And the social niche for a dog would

> be its human companions. "

>

> Bekoff said this ability probably helps explain the sense that many dog

> owners have that their animals empathize with their emotions. Dogs can

> pick up the subtle physical clues that signal what their human companions

> are feeling, whether it's happiness, sadness, anxiety or anger.

>

> " I think part of the reason there is this strong bond between dogs and

> humans is because we are empathetic to them and they show empathy to us, "

> Bekoff said.

>

> " We can never know for sure. But I've done a lot of work on animals'

> emotions. Animals and humans share a lot of the same neurological

> structures and the same neurochemistry. I think it's really dog empathy. "

>

>

>

>