Dogs display capability for selective imitation

[wolveraptor]

See Spot. See Spot watch. See Spot imitate.
Study: Dogs mimic behavior selectively, depending on situation
By Rob Stein
The Washington Post
Published June 5, 2007

Dog owners have long maintained that their pooches have a lot more going on between their furry ears than scientists acknowledge.

Now, new research is adding to the growing evidence that man's best friend thinks a lot more than many humans have believed.

The experiment indicated that dogs can do something that previously only humans, including infants, have been shown capable of doing: decide how to imitate a behavior based on the specific circumstances in which the action takes place.

"The fact that the dogs imitate selectively, depending on the situation -- that has not been shown before," said Friederike Range, of the University of Vienna, who led the study. "That's something completely new."

The findings come amid a flurry of research that is revealing surprisingly complex abilities among dogs, chimps, birds and many other animals.

"Every day, we're discovering surprises about animals and finding out animals are far more intelligent and far more emotional than we previously thought," said Marc Bekoff, an animal behaviorist who recently retired from the University of Colorado.

The study was inspired by research with human infants. Fourteen-month-olds will imitate an adult turning on a light with her forehead only if they see her doing it with her hands free. If the adult is clutching a blanket, infants will use their hands, presumably because they can reason that the adult resorted to using her forehead because she had no choice.

To determine whether an animal could respond similarly, Range and her colleagues trained Guinness, a female border collie, to push a wooden rod with her paw to get a treat.

A dog generally does not use its paws to do tasks, preferring to use its mouth whenever possible. So the key question was whether dogs that watched Guinness would decide how to get the treat depending on the circumstances.

After making sure the owners could not influence their pets' behavior, researchers tested three groups of dogs. The first 14, representing a variety of breeds, did not watch Guinness. When taught how to use the rod, about 85 percent pushed it with their mouth, confirming that is how dogs naturally like to do things.

The second group of 21 dogs watched Guinness repeatedly push the rod with her paw while holding a ball in her mouth. In that group, most of the dogs -- about 80 percent -- used their mouth, imitating the action but not the method Guinness had used. That suggested the dogs -- like the children -- decided Guinness was only using her paw because she had no choice.

The third group of 19 dogs watched Guinness repeatedly use a paw on the rod with her mouth free. Most of those dogs -- 83 percent -- imitated her behavior, using their paws and not their mouth. That suggested they concluded there must be some good reason to act against their instincts.

"The behavior was very similar to the children who were tested in the original experiment," said Zsofia Viranyi, of Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest, who helped conduct the experiment, published in the May 15 issue of the journal Current Biology.

Viranyi and her colleagues said more research is needed to confirm the results.

The findings stunned many researchers.

"What's surprising and shocking about this is that we thought this sort of imitation was very sophisticated, something seen only in humans," said Brian Hare, who studies dogs at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany. "Once again, it ends up dogs are smarter than scientists thought."

No comment for now.

[Bug-Eyed Earl]

Well, duh!

[Singular Intellect]

Blasphemy!

You people should know that humans are special as god's creation and animals only exist to serve us any way we see fit!

Trying to attribute human qualities to them is Satan's work!



Seriously, I don't find anything surprising about this.

[wolveraptor]

It was previously believed that dogs didn't have the mental capacity to realize that the mechanism by which an action is performed is less important than completion of the action itself. They're essentially able to do the same thing more than one way, and know when a behavior is performed in a notably unusual way - they will take notice and imitate when this occurs.

[Gil Hamilton]

I'm not surprised at all, but then again, I'm convinced my dog has more reasoning and problem solving skills than at least 40% of the people on my college campus.

[B5B7]

The study was inspired by research with human infants. Fourteen-month-olds will imitate an adult turning on a light with her forehead only if they see her doing it with her hands free. If the adult is clutching a blanket, infants will use their hands, presumably because they can reason that the adult resorted to using her forehead because she had no choice.

Those human infants are smart (and tall ).

[Cao Cao]

Breaking news: Researchers discover the obvious.

"Next week we hope to prove the link between eating and expelling bodily waste!" says top scientist.

I mean really.. dogs can imitate? I've only known that since forever. My dog would imitate the behaviour of my cat when she had kittens, leading to him leading her kittens around like their mother. Then one of her kittens began to imitate my dog, gnawing slippers like he would and carrying bones and stuff in his mouth when no other cat I knew did that.

[Shroom Man 777]

Aw, that's so cute!

[AMX]

Breaking news: Researchers discover the obvious.

"Next week we hope to prove the link between eating and expelling bodily waste!" says top scientist.

I mean really.. dogs can imitate? I've only known that since forever. My dog would imitate the behaviour of my cat when she had kittens, leading to him leading her kittens around like their mother. Then one of her kittens began to imitate my dog, gnawing slippers like he would and carrying bones and stuff in his mouth when no other cat I knew did that.

Reading comprehension
It's not the "imitation" part that's important about "selective imitation", it's the "selective" part.
wolveraptor explained it pretty well.

[Sturmfalke]

I mean really.. dogs can imitate? I've only known that since forever. My dog would imitate the behaviour of my cat when she had kittens, leading to him leading her kittens around like their mother. Then one of her kittens began to imitate my dog, gnawing slippers like he would and carrying bones and stuff in his mouth when no other cat I knew did that.

That dogs can imitate is not the point of the article, it is that they can select what exdactly they imitate: Pressing the button with their mouth or their paws.

[wolveraptor]

I'm always irritated by posts that consist of nothing more than, "well no duh lol". Do you really think scientists would waste valuable research money on things that are already known? Do you think their sponsors would let them get away with shit like that? Such posts usually come from those who haven't read/understood the implications of the article.
I mean, I'm not surprised by the article, but I wouldn't say that it's conclusions were already common knowledge.

I think this kind of research should encourage stricter punishments for animal abuse. These are remarkably intelligent creatures, and they deserve some basic rights.

[General Zod]

I'm always irritated by posts that consist of nothing more than, "well no duh lol". Do you really think scientists would waste valuable research money on things that are already known? Do you think their sponsors would let them get away with shit like that? Such posts usually come from those who haven't read/understood the implications of the article.
I mean, I'm not surprised by the article, but I wouldn't say that it's conclusions were already common knowledge.

I think this kind of research should encourage stricter punishments for animal abuse. These are remarkably intelligent creatures, and they deserve some basic rights.

I don't have the link, but someone did post an article on here once about a scientific study that basically said, "Yes, men find boobs distracting". . . .so it's not as if scientists won't do research on something we already know.

[ArmorPierce]

A lot of research and social science is about researching the obvious and quantifying the numbers, as it should be. A lot of things are considered common knowledge to some people when in actuality this common knowledge is wrong.

[Spoonist]

I'm always irritated by posts that consist of nothing more than, "well no duh lol". Do you really think scientists would waste valuable research money on things that are already known? Do you think their sponsors would let them get away with shit like that? Such posts usually come from those who haven't read/understood the implications of the article.

Yes of course scientific studies spend too much time wasting valuable research money on things already known. That is basic knowledge about science and this article is clearly an example of this. What they have "proven" is basic knowledge for anyone who has been around dogs trained for specific tasks, like police/customes/blind/mold/sheephearding/etc. Certain breeds of dogs are excellent at doing specific tasks set in specific contexts, without that ability the trained behavior would take place outside of the context. An example is dogs for the blind which are trained to see when they need to be "proffesional" and when they can "misbehave". It is clear from the given example of the experiment that in this case they have had to limit the test down so much that it becomes obvious what the result will be.

Just like others will point out this is in the nature of science, we don't necessarily spend the money where they are most needed. Instead we do the research where the money/politics is. Lots of it is to "prove" that which we think we "know" so that it becomes quantafiable. Sometimes it is about getting positive results, it can be devastating for your funding if you actually prove the reverse of what you tried to prove, even though from a broader perspective that result is much, much more interesting.

[wolveraptor]

In science, if something isn't quantified, it isn't known for sure. So spending research money to quantify something that "is already known" is not really possible.