From the myth of the ‘guilty look’ to the exciting discovery of dogs evolving an inbuilt affection for humans, canine psychology is finding out more all the time

Probing the emotional lives of animals is new territory for biologists. A couple of decades ago, emotions were off-limits: scientists studying animal behaviour focused on what they could see animals doing, not how they might be feeling. Yet questions of animal emotion underpin animal welfare – as Jeremy Bentham wrote in 1789, “The question is not, ‘can they reason?’ nor ‘can they talk?’ but ‘can they suffer?’” The growing animal rights movement forced us to consider animal emotion, and we now know a great deal about how the vertebrate brain generates and makes use of what we humans experience as “feelings”.

A whole other layer of complexity arises when thinking about the animals that share our homes, especially dogs. Most dog owners are convinced that their pets not only lead complex emotional lives, but also know what their owners are thinking. Study after study seems to provide support for these notions: most recently, scientists at the Messerli Institute in Vienna have shown that dogs can discriminate between human faces that are expressing different emotions, even when they can only see half the face, and the person in the photo is completely unfamiliar to them.

Unfortunately these studies, taken as a whole, provide little comfort for those who would like to believe that dogs are little different to humans, apart from an inability to talk. Not only is their emotional life distinctively different to our own, the evidence also suggests that the way they perceive us bears little resemblance to the way we think they do….

Full article: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/16/dog-scientists-guilty-look-canine-psychology

My dog is currently thinking “fk off and leave me alone”

That Pug is not thinking very much in that photo. It’s not excited about anything. It’s pretty much a Pug brain at rest. Not asleep. Just chilling.

Trust me….I know what an alert Pug looks like. And I know what a bored Pug looks like. That one ain’t either of those.

Do you reckon if we proved an animal was a sentient emotionally complex being we’d stop eating or killing them

• Do you reckon if we proved an animal was a sentient emotionally complex being we’d stop eating or killing them

I’m halfway there, I’ve never eaten a dog*. Though it would be a long time before you’d get everyone on the planet agreeing to go vegan…

* to my knowledge…

I recon he is thinking “I’ll stick to doing it “doggie style”

bob(from black rock) said:

I recon he is thinking “I’ll stick to doing it “doggie style”

“Oh and while I’ve got you there, why does abscess make the fart go “Honda”?

> as Jeremy Bentham wrote in 1789, “The question is not, ‘can they reason?’ nor ‘can they talk?’ but ‘can they suffer?’”

I have heaps of respect for Jeremy Bentham. Anyone with even a passing interest in “morality” or “justice” needs to read Bentham. But I thought he hadn’t written anything about animals. Very pleased to see that I was wrong.

mollwollfumble said:

> as Jeremy Bentham wrote in 1789, “The question is not, ‘can they reason?’ nor ‘can they talk?’ but ‘can they suffer?’”

I have heaps of respect for Jeremy Bentham. Anyone with even a passing interest in “morality” or “justice” needs to read Bentham. But I thought he hadn’t written anything about animals. Very pleased to see that I was wrong.

Thanks, I’ll look for his work.

>….dogs evolving an inbuilt affection for humans

I suppose they may have, humans have influenced via selective breeding later, but way back humans and dogs might have co-evolved.

Little ol’ has no doubt dogs have moods, and don’t mind the generous extending or crediting them with having emotions, but do think it more important to credit internal mental states, or internal states generating moods (in the context of homeostasis and homeostatic mechanisms little ol’ thinks of these).

transition said:

>….dogs evolving an inbuilt affection for humans

I suppose they may have, humans have influenced via selective breeding later, but way back humans and dogs might have co-evolved.

Little ol’ has no doubt dogs have moods, and don’t mind the generous extending or crediting them with having emotions, but do think it more important to credit internal mental states, or internal states generating moods (in the context of homeostasis and homeostatic mechanisms little ol’ thinks of these).

And when you think about it, it would have been the wolves/dogs with the ability to convince the humans to feed/shelter them who would have been fed/sheltered. If no such natural trait existed, we would not have dogs.

of course if I say internal ‘mental’ states i’m probably attributing “minds” with all the problems that might come with defining that, so i’d say ‘internal states’ in the context of ‘moods and orientations’ in a framework of homeostasis.

Does anyone watch the show about superhuman? There was a bloke on there that was tested as having the language of wolves down pat.

>And when you think about it, it would have been the wolves/dogs with the ability to convince the humans to feed/shelter them who would have been fed/sheltered. If no such natural trait existed, we would not have dogs.

dogs would have scavenged from humans, been accepted, this comes near feeding them in context no serious hostility, and dogs would have been an early warning system at night etc in exchange.

this taking things in as ‘pets’, familiarizing with human ways (family/familiar/familiarize) is too what humans do in the nurturing of their own, and reciprocal growing insights are gained, and the environment influenced and what breeds with what and what survives to do it over and over is unfluenced.

transition said:

>And when you think about it, it would have been the wolves/dogs with the ability to convince the humans to feed/shelter them who would have been fed/sheltered. If no such natural trait existed, we would not have dogs.

dogs would have scavenged from humans, been accepted, this comes near feeding them in context no serious hostility, and dogs would have been an early warning system at night etc in exchange.

Dogs also assisted in hunts,rounding up the animals humans then fed on.

bob(from black rock) said:

transition said:

>And when you think about it, it would have been the wolves/dogs with the ability to convince the humans to feed/shelter them who would have been fed/sheltered. If no such natural trait existed, we would not have dogs.

dogs would have scavenged from humans, been accepted, this comes near feeding them in context no serious hostility, and dogs would have been an early warning system at night etc in exchange.

Dogs also assisted in hunts,rounding up the animals humans then fed on.

Dogs probably taught us how to hunt in a pack, by observation.

roughbarked said:

bob(from black rock) said:

transition said:

>And when you think about it, it would have been the wolves/dogs with the ability to convince the humans to feed/shelter them who would have been fed/sheltered. If no such natural trait existed, we would not have dogs.

dogs would have scavenged from humans, been accepted, this comes near feeding them in context no serious hostility, and dogs would have been an early warning system at night etc in exchange.

Dogs also assisted in hunts,rounding up the animals humans then fed on.

Dogs probably taught us how to hunt in a pack, by observation.

Yeah, OK but we taught them how to light fires.

roughbarked said:

Dogs probably taught us how to hunt in a pack, by observation.

I dunno about that. Chimps hunt in packs and certainly didn’t learn it from dogs.

• I dunno about that. Chimps hunt in packs and certainly didn’t learn it from dogs.

They learnt it from the velociraptors*…

* before they were wiped out by the flood…

Witty Rejoinder said:

roughbarked said:

Dogs probably taught us how to hunt in a pack, by observation.

I dunno about that. Chimps hunt in packs and certainly didn’t learn it from dogs.

How do you know that?

roughbarked said:

Witty Rejoinder said:

roughbarked said:

Dogs probably taught us how to hunt in a pack, by observation.

I dunno about that. Chimps hunt in packs and certainly didn’t learn it from dogs.

How do you know that?

I’d expect that if chimps and dogs had a symbiotic relationship we’d have noticed by now.

Witty Rejoinder said:

roughbarked said:

Witty Rejoinder said:

I dunno about that. Chimps hunt in packs and certainly didn’t learn it from dogs.

How do you know that?

I’d expect that if chimps and dogs had a symbiotic relationship we’d have noticed by now.

Chimps had the advantage of treetops for observation.

>the evidence also suggests that the way they perceive us bears little resemblance to the way we think they do….

inclusive generalizing “us” and “we” alert.

Even across our own species the difference between individuals regard reading such things is, well, a diverse bunch of individuals we are.

http://www.sciencealert.com/did-the-evolution-of-dogs-coincide-with-garbage-dumps

Also, it’s time for another dog photo…..