Imagine that you are an alien observing life on Earth for the first time. You see a four-legged creature walking with a two-legged creature. Suddenly the four-legger stops and takes a crap, then the two-legger cleans it up. Who would you think was in charge?

A few years prior, we’d had an Irish Setter who was similar to your dog in an affinity to all things small. She’d let three day old chicks hop all over over, the kittens play with her tail, would gently sniff ducklings and guide them out of harms’ way. It seems some dogs have a motherly instinct for baby animals of other species when you’d expect them to be more inclined toward eating them, for example with Kooey (a setter, and therefore technically bred to pounce at and startle birds into flight) and the chicks.

Kurt Vonnegut nailed it with his Thomas Edison’s Shaggy Dog, a great story about Thomas Edison, a dog and the first electric light bulb. I don’t want to spoil it. It’s in his Welcome to the Monkey House anthology.

I adopted an abandoned cat — she was pregnant, so that was probably the reason her previous owner decided to get rid of her… I already had a male dog (also adopted) who was at least 5 years old at the time. Maybe a month later, after she gave birth and the kittens grew up a little, the dog would take care of them, play with them, let them sleep on his belly (probably one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen in my life) etc., while she was away hunting and doing her cat stuff.

When she was around, they got along swimmingly as well. He’d let her eat food and drink water out of his bowls. He was never aggressive towards her, at the very worst he’d get slightly annoyed and run away after she jumped on his back trying to ride him. They walked together around the garden, played together, chased each other.

Other than chasing them around the garden, the dog had no prior contact with any cats. I’d say he was averagely smart, sometimes aggressive towards other dogs, really cautious towards and even afraid of people he didn’t know.

The cat was probably one of the smartest domesticated animals I’ve seen (normal cats bring their servants dead mice and birds; my cat broke into my neighbors house and stole a bag of chicken breast fillets she was barely able to drag). She was generally a very calm and friendly animal.

LOL!!!

27. Donovan

“cats both get embarrassed”

We had a Siamese cat that was walking atop the living room drapes when she lost her balance and fell off,,,she looked at me, shook herself and casually walked off, as though to say “I meant to do that.”

I had a Manx cat that informed me his litter box was in serious need of cleaning by pissing on my sleeping bag and then running to the end of the hall, opposite the bathroom where his litter pan was located, then waited to see if I would be angry over his action. That seems to indicate a “theory of mind”. He assumed I’d be unhappy over his act of pissing. When I merely apologized and promptly cleaned his litter pan, he did the right thing and loaded the pan with waste. SMART cat,,,

Gary 7

Dogs and cats both get embarrassed, though. Or I should say the information I’ve been given by science writers says they can. I have no idea how they tested for it. But that would, to me, cinch the self aware argument. It also means they have Theory of Mind to be able to think that we think that they meant to do something else. Theory of Mind has been widely accepted as a pre-human social species trait.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laika

Wikipedia page and source for info. above.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz7Xbo1m5XA&playnext=1&list=PL9B47556F21C189E8

Short animation with info.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsV-qozMz9A&NR=1

Space doggity & finally one last musical tribute :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZixNE7NEJ4&feature=related

with a nice twist at the end.

@14. My son PVR’d a Just For Laughs Montreal comedy festival, about British comedians. One spoke of Laika, and said that there were no plans for a safe return to earth, and so the satellite burned up in the atmosphere, killing the dog.

Actually Laika (literally “barker” in Russian) was dead long before the satellite re-entered and burnt up :

Laika likely died within hours after launch from overheating,[2] possibly caused by a failure of the central R-7 sustainer to separate from the payload.[3] The true cause and time of her death was not made public until 2002; instead, it was widely reported that she died when her oxygen ran out, or (as Soviet government initially claimed) she was euthanised prior to oxygen depletion.

- Source : Laika page on wikipedia.

Laika’s flight is soemthing I feel ambiguous about – a great space milestone & I guess a necessary step in that they were always going to see if animals couldsurvibve space beore people but .. Poor dog!

Which was sad, but also lucky in a way. For if aliens had intercepted that satellite, they would have concluded that the Earth is ruled by a species that sniffs your crotch, gives you a cheery greeting by rubbing your leg, and yet somehow developed the technology for space travel.

That reminds me of this quote :

All these must be done – but they were no more the “life” of Mars than is walking the dog twice a day the “life” of a man who bosses a planet-wide corporation between those walks – even though toa being from Arcturus III those walks might seem to be the tycoon’s most significant activity – as a slave to the dog.”

From page 85, Robert Heinlein’s ‘Stranger in a Strange land’ novel.

The mirror test as a test for self awareness is thus subject to variables not normally considered by testers. Moreover, manipulation of the dog genome through breeding as somewhat tied different qualitative characteristics of intelligence and vision to the different breeds. i.e. while two different breeds may be roughly equivalent in intelligence, the characteristics of said intelligence may differ enough to make testing for self awareness easier in one breed than in the other.

You can test differences in visual acuity through careful observation. Example: watch dogs who ‘hunt’ flies compared to dogs that don’t hunt flies. It should become readily apparent that many, if not most dogs that don’t ‘hunt’ flies simply have difficulty seeing flies. Attempting to apply the ‘mirror’ test for such dogs will, by definition, result in failure with meaningless results.

On personal observation, I would put it forth that a majority (more than 50%) of dogs lack the visual acuity needed for the ‘mirror test’. This is long before you even get to whether or not said dogs have the mental capacity for self awareness.

Another way of checking visual acuity in dogs is for careful and extended observation for certain behavioral problems. In particular, when I notice what is commonly termed ‘fear based aggression’ in a dog, the first single most common cause appears to be vision issues. In my experience and observations, there appears to be a direct relationship between poor vision and degree of ‘fear based aggression’ which is present. This relationship varies greatly among individuals and is influenced by a number of factors but appears to be more than strong enough that any competent study should be able to show a statisical correlation. Naturally, dogs with ‘fear based aggression’ issues will make poor ‘mirror test’ subjects.

So, the first question should properly be “Are any dogs capable of being self aware?”. If the answer is determined to be ‘yes’, then the question can be extended to ‘Are dogs, as a whole species, self aware?”.

To my mind and as someone who used to be involved in doggies rescue, re-homing and rectifying some limited behavioral problems, I cannot stress enough the importance of pre-selecting test subjects for both the qualities of perceived level of intelligence and acuity of vision if one is going to use such tests as the mirror test. Any study which asks “Are dogs self aware?” and does not pre-select subjects will never be able to gather meaningful results simply because I don’t believe such studies will ever be able to prove that they reached the level of being able to engage the requisite mental apparatus.

Note: While I fully understand the importance of large samples with random selection in most research, the initial first question of “Are any dogs even capable of self-awareness?” requires careful sample selection in order to be able to produced observable results.

I guess the bottom line is that I would be very skeptical of any study which claims either for or against self awareness in dogs without a very careful review of sample selection and testing methodology.

Having said all the above, I’m pretty comfortable with the concept that at least some dogs are capable of being self aware. If you use the existence of a ‘sense of humor’ as a criteria, then I’m fairly certain that many dogs have the capability for self awareness. It’s been my personal observation that bored dogs will, of their own volition, get up and deliberately play ‘tricks’ on companion dogs and give every appearance of being amused in the so doing. The ability to apparently enjoy playing tricks on companions would seem to me to imply a sense of humor.

I find it hard based on my own dog’s behaviour to conclude anything *other* than a certain level of awareness, consciousness and personality.

Same applies to my cat.

Personally, I would reverse the presumption rearding animal intelligence / awareness. I think unless we can conclusively show that animals such as chimps, whales, tapirs, cats, dogs, chickens, octopi, etc .. are NOT self-aware and able to experience emotion and some level of thought and understanding then the default asumption should be that they can.

On the other hand, even a dog that the researcher hasn’t worked with before will figure out that the human is pointing to something, and go to that cup every time. Dogs have been bred to follow our cues closely.