Slashdot Mirror
Dog Trained on 200-Word Vocabulary
An anonymous reader writes "The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany is reporting in Science Magazine today on an example of successful human to non-human communication: Rico, a collie trained on a vocabulary of 200 words. Their conclusion is that 'brain structures that support this kind of learning are not unique to humans...[Rico has a] retrieval rate comparable to the performance of three-year-old toddlers'. In case you ever wondered if your dog understands what you are saying, Rico 'can learn the names of unfamiliar toys after just one exposure to the new word-toy combination.'"
"Get me a beer you damn dog!"
I'd buy THAT dog for a Dollar!
If those damn dogs wanna live in our country, let them learn OUR language.
But then... isn't that precisely what humans do? React on their surroundings as dictated by their instincts? Because you, are just a bunch of instincts using memories.
Hivemind harvest in progress..
...we could teach our High School students as well.
I think I think, therefore I think I am.
It would make sense that the dogs that could understand their masters best would be the one that would be bred and thus their genes would be passed on. So maybe it's natural selection.
For instance it's no break through that dogs understand commands, seeing eye dogs have been doing this for decades, but does the language used make a difference? For instance I assume these dogs were trained in German, would French, Spanish or something like Arabic work better? Can a "dog langauge" be made that works better for them, perhaps allowing a 400 word vocab or more?
Last I heard the average human had a vocab of around 2500 words or less. Raising an animals higher could lead to full fledged conversations rather than just an instructional command oriented relationship.
my ex-gf and i had a border collie for over a year. by the end, she (the collie) had a vocabulary of well over 100 words. she knew the difference between the ocean, the lake, and the river. she knew what the "purple squeaky ball" was. her favorite word though was "treat".
a current friend of mine also has a border collie. he is trained to turn off the tv, shut the tv cabinet door, and turn the lights off when his owner falls asleep at night.
i think most border collies are smarter than a lot of people i deal with on a daily basis at work.
--BlueLines "The cost of living hasn't affected it's popularity." -anonymous
The article comes as no big surprise to anyone who has lived with a Border Collie. They are definitely smart dogs, and can understand what you're saying to them. And better than a three year-old child, they'll actually do what you tell them to do.
"You might as well get your son a ticket to hell as give him a five string banjo." -unknown minister
I just saw something on Deutsche Welle (in Los Angeles actually) and that dog indeed picked out a bunch of items among dozens littered across the floor on verbal request. What's interesting is that the canine still used his nose (not his eyes) to identify the object. Looks like his brain is correlating verbal commands with smells - contrary to how human beings would solve this problem. ;-)
Anyway, I never bought into that whole 'humans are unique' bullcrap - countless reports have proven that several species elicit signs of abstract thinking, verbal communication (whales, dolphins in particular), emotions like sadness (chimpanzees and other primates), anger, tendency for rape (chimpanzees again - why am I not surprised? LOL), etc.. Why are we still so full of ourselves and continue to describe ourselves as the crown of evolution while we decimate other species and commit atrocities unknown to any other species on this planet. I hope this dog doesn't smarten up too much - once he realizes how screwed up his 'masters' are - he's probably reconsidering that whole loyalty issue
This dog actually seems to be understanding quite a bit of what he is going on. It's not just a matter of finding an object he has learned to associate with a particular sound. There was a show on tele earlier today about this dog and they showed an experiment that went something like this:
The dog has a collection of roughly 200 toys, each of which he knows by name. When told a toy's name, he'll go and fetch the toy. That's not really impressive, that's what most dogs do. Now comes the cool part though. They added a new toy - one the dog had never seen before. The toy was added to the collection while the dog wasn't in the room, so he didn't see the toy being added. Then they told him to get this new toy. Simply by telling him the new toy's name, which he had never heard before of course. Now, the dog went to his toy room. He found all the old toys and the new one. Since none of his old toys matched the name he had been told, he figured that they what they meant must have been this new toy he just discovered.
This is really the reasoning part. You don't need to tell the dog what the toy's name is - the dog will figure it out himself. If you tell him to look for something he's never heard of, he will have a look around and if there's something new and unusual, he will guess that's what you meant. Isn't that sort of the way humans learn? At least it's certainly not the way dogs are normally trained.
I'm not sure if anyone out there has every worked with a Collie before. They're really amazing.
The difference here is that they are HIGHLY motivated. I think we could learn a lot from this lesson.
Collies are able to have such an impact on our lives because they really really REALLY want to make us happy.
I've always wanted to own one but they are a LOT of work. It's almost a full time job. If you don't have work for them they will just go insane. Better to keep them on a farm...
Somebody took an Underdog Super Irony Pill today.
KFG
Bark
Rough
Bow Wow
Grrrr
Whimper
Whine
Howl
Roof
http://www.kubuntu.org/
This seems more impressive.
koko.org
Setting his threshold to 5, Sparky eliminated most of the trolls on /.
There is no such thing as a sentient non-homosapien.
Prove it. When's the last time an ape told you he wasn't sentient? There are many ways to determine if an animal is intelligent. One is being self aware. Only larger primates and dolphins can recognize themselves in a mirror. Another aspect is knowing of ones' lifespan. Only humans and a few primates are aware of our own demise. I believe one famous gorilla, Coco, had a sign language vocabulary of a couple thousand words and phrases. She also cried when her pet cat died and began asking about her own death when comforted by her trainer.
And what do you mean by "There may be varying levels of intelligence among the animals, but no animal can reason, they can only react to their surroundings as dictated by their instincts." What do you mean by reason? I've seen competitions between hunting dogs to retrieve a marker at the end of a field full of fallen trees and large puddles. The winner was not always the fastest runner or best swimmer, but the one that could navigate the best route with no help from its' handler.
And many animals can do more than react based on instinct. Many higher order animals are capable of using basic tools (like a long curved stick to get ants out of a nest). Some parrots have been tested by setting a piece of fruit at the top of a clear cylinder and several traps between the fruit and exit. In a matter of minutes they learned how to get the fruit out by sliding, rotating, moving, and removing blocks of wood in the proper order. Surely that goes beyond basic instinct. Does learning and problem solving not indicate some level of intelligence?
By what standard do you judge intelligence? Many people who post on Slashdot would not pass my test, but that gorilla does. Does something have to act like humans do, pursuing a more efficient means to destroy yheir species, before it is recognized? Does it have to communicate through spoken word?
This is really the reasoning part. You don't need to tell the dog what the toy's name is - the dog will figure it out himself. If you tell him to look for something he's never heard of, he will have a look around and if there's something new and unusual, he will guess that's what you meant. Isn't that sort of the way humans learn? At least it's certainly not the way dogs are normally trained.
I didn't know that they did it this way. I am not as impressed as I was before. The dog is going to realize which one is out of place just by the smell of the toy which obviously doesn't fit w/the rest. Trained dogs sniff out stuff that they recognize all the time. What's so different about them picking the one thing that is different?
A dog may be able to bark, but a dog cannot bark about barking.
Your assertion does not hold water. Vocabulary size is important because it tells us important things about the cognitive ability of dogs. Dogs that are able to learn a large vocabulary are able to keep track of a large number of objects and distinguish between them. No is claiming that Rico has the same capacity for abstract reasoning as even a three year-old child, but this is an impressive accomplishment.
As an aside, I consult with producers and trainers of working dogs (guide dogs, sleddogs, etc.), Two pertinent things that we have learned is that there is a genetic component to trainability (~20%); and that dogs do not always work the way that we think they do -- when a drug detector dog indicates on cocaine they are actually indicating on a byproduct of cocaine manuafacture.
Please do not sell the dogs short, even if they are not yet our new canine overlords.
There is no such thing as a sentient non-homosapien. There may be varying levels of intelligence among the animals, but no animal can reason, they can only react to their surroundings as dictated by their instincts.
This is simply wrong. The higher apes show clear evidence of reason, as do many dogs, elephants, cetaceans, and even some birds - the parrots and corvidae. Many of these animals demonstrate something called 'theory of mind' - they can put themselves in the place of others, figure out what those others are thinking, and practice deception. Its easy to show that apes and dolphins can recognise themselves in mirrors, indicating a sense of self-awareness. Even octopuses and squids can relate to each other in complex ways and communicate.
A good demonstration that things are not instinct is because many of these behaviours can be learned and passed on as a form of culture. This is shown in apes, with food-washing, bathing and tool-making. There is recent evidence that such cultural patterns may be present in birds, with some crows learning how to design and use simple tools to get at food.
Here is an example conversation:
Me: "What's on top of the house?"
Dog: "Roof!"
Me: "Who's the most famous baseball player?"
Dog: "Ruth!"
Me: "How does sand-paper feel?"
Dog: "Rough!"
3 out 3!
Table-ized A.I.
There's actually no rule that you have got to name an institute after a person only if it's field is related to the person.
It's generally out of respect i suppose
like we have a Mahatma Gandhi institute of technology/medical sciences/business administration/.* in every city of India
good to know that even a scientist receives such a respect in germany
(Karma be damned; I am no better than an AC anyway)
This is bullshit, according to Geoffrey Pullum, professor of linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Screw paraphrasing: " The trained object-fetching behavior of Rico, the border collie that this German research is talking about, has nothing at all to do with understanding language. The behavior is comparable to what you would have shown if you demonstrated that you had trained your goldfish to swim to a given object in its tank when you showed it a card with a given letter of the Greek alphabet. By all means attempt that too, if you think it would be interesting science. But don't bring it to me for my approval under a headline saying Research Shows Goldfish Can Read Greek, that's all! Unless you actually enjoy seeing the veins standing out in my neck as I hurl some more defenseless chairs and coffee tables and goldfish tanks around the room. "
His post is available here. And for those geeks interested in language, check out the Language Log.
public void fetch(Object what)
{
if (what == newspaper)
newspaper.ripToShreds();
else
what.drenchWithDrool();
}
public void annoyNeighbour(int nightsPerWeek)
{
if ( nightsPerWeek < 7 )
nightsPerWeek = 7;
self.bark();
self.scratchFence();
self.rattleGate();
self.bark();
}
public void walkOnFootpath(Boolean leashed)
{
if ( ! leashed)
self.chaseChildren();
self.crap();
}
(In case you hadn't noticed, I don't like dogs much! Fido can take his 200 word vocabulary and go play in the traffic.)
Chimps and other apes do sometimes fashion tools, which is to say they do more than pick up a rock... they actively shape a twig or branch to do what they want.
But the most impressive, was a crow that bent wire into a hook, to form a tool. Weird, eh?
As for being self-ware, recognizing yourself in a mirror... how useful is that as an indicator? I mean, pick some insect with compound eyes, a bee perhaps. Magically make it intelligent, could it recognize itself? What about some species that is naturally blind?
Also, I believe you people want to use the word sapient, not sentient. I would guess that there isn't a mammal in existence, that isn't sentient to an extent. Forgive me from borrowing from scifi, but Data (Star Trek) was argued to not be sentient, even though he was clearly intelligent. Sentience would be the ability to love, empathize, and lots of other things that are difficult to define.
Another interesting note on animal intelligence... anyone ever bothered to read up on octopi? These things can also solve problems if the reward is food, and they can learn to do so, simply by watching another octopus solve it. What's more, they have been known to climb out of aquariums entirely, across a floor, and into another to eat fish that they see.
Mostly, various religions have ingrained (maybe reinforced) the human tendency to discount any "lesser" animal as worthwhile. In modern times, that tends to amount to discounting their intelligence. I'm not about to stake my life on my cat scoring 190 on an IQ test, but it just seems right to think of her as a person. That tends to be difficult for those who can only assign value to an animal.
And lastly, in this mostly random rant of mine, I pose this question. If human intelligence can vary so greatly, from the barely more than vegetable, up to the ubergenius... why is it so hard to believe the same might be true of animals. And if they were already close to the lowest end of human intelligence, might not the occassional animal ubergenius be comparable to an average person? We might very well stumble across some dolphin that tells us to go fuck ourselves. (though how it will flip us the accompaning finger will frustrate it to no end).
Furthermore, the best, and indeed the only way to fix a set of alleles within a breed is through inbreeding....
7. The Standard
The existing Border Collie is not a breed without a standard. It has a very specific standard, by which dogs without registration papers and pedigrees can be Registered on Merit if they can demonstrate their herding ability to satisfy this standard. Whatever appearance standard is designed by the AKC and its chosen Breed Club (should it eventually designate one), it will not be the same standard to which the breed currently strives; it will therefore, by definition and unavoidably not be the same breed of dogs.
Even though the initial registration will come from the existing breed, the next generation of "showdogs" will have been bred under a different set of selective rules, and will already be at least philosophically different. After three years, when the AKC closes its books and no longer allows dogs of the original breed to be used for breeding, the AKC breed will have become a separate entity, no matter what its name!
This already happened at least once, when the "Lassie" collie was created. The working sheepdogs used to be called "collies." They became "Border Collies" to distinguish them from the developing show breed. At the time of separation, there was no real distinction; anyone can tell the two breeds apart now.
All of this is quite apart from the possibility of a standard being chosen which is simply inconsistent with the demands of the shepherding life. This may be in the written standard or in the fashions of judges who know nothing about these physical demands. This has already happened to some of the breeds (Labrador retrievers, for instance, are currently too heavy and short-legged to be of much use in the field; Siberian huskies tend to be showring winners with legs too short to run properly and with fluffy coats that cannot shed snow and ice; bearded collies look nothing like their ancestors, and have coats which obscure their vision, and collect burrs and mud). There has been some call for the USBCC to become the breed club so that we could set the standard and thereby avoid the problems of inappropriate physical traits being used. Unfortunately, although the problem will be made worse by the "wrong" standard, it is the existence of a physical appearance standard, and not its details, that is the danger. The currently proposed standard is flexible enough to appear to cover many of our dogs. In practice, however, an appearance standard, however broad it may seem, will subject the breed to all the problems listed above.
Although there is a popular belief that a dog that looks like his father (or mother) will work like his father (or mother) this is simply not necessarily true. Because of recombination of genes, it is no more likely that the pup with his father's markings is going to behave more like his father than the pup with completely different markings. If we were to set the show standard to duplicate in every detail the appearance of the latest International Supreme Champion, this would no more guarantee us a working breed than any other conformation standard. If we don't choose the pups that work like the latest Champion, we are not selecting the right genetic blend from the many possible combinations.
8. What Is A Breed?
As was stated in the USBCC Spring Newsletter:
"To a geneticist, a breed is simply this: a population of animals whose breeding is controlled and outcrossing limited, so that genetic selection can be exercised on it. . . . A population is simply a subgroup of the whole species of dog, Canis familiaris. Controlled breeding and limited outcrossing make it possible to select . . . for whatever genetic traits the organized breeders decide on. Organized breeders is almost a necessary part of the definition; one breeder cannot produce enough dogs to truly create a breed, and a lot of breed
Seastead this.
My, arent we feeling superior today?
It is also possible that the dogs you have come across are stupid (yes, it may come as a shock to you but animals intelligence varies too).
OK, lets look at it another way. How many 3 year olds would you trust to lead a blind person around safely and successfully, day after day? And that is not something that is based on instinct either. Personally if I was blind I would chose the dog any day.
I would talk to my last dog in basic natural speech when I wanted him to do something and the vast majority of the time he would understand. Now if I said something like "We are going home" in the back paddock he would start heading home, if I said the same while out somewhere he would head for the car. Are you saying that is not reasoning? If I said "go to the car" he would head to the car irrespective of where he was.
Generally you will find the dog will be as intelligent as you treat it (sort of like people really). If you treat your dog as a "dumb dog" then all he will do is bark all day and dig up the yard. If you talk to him in natural language, and treat him as if he has some intelligence, the vast majority of the time he will respond by acting more intelligent.
Prove it. When's the last time an ape told you he wasn't sentient? There are many ways to determine if an animal is intelligent. One is being self aware. Only larger primates and dolphins can recognize themselves in a mirror. Another aspect is knowing of ones' lifespan. Only humans and a few primates are aware of our own demise.
I don't think the mirror-test is an accurate refleciton (no pun intended) of whether an animal is self aware. All a mirror shows is that the animal is aware of its body. And it wouldn't really be too hard to program a robot that could recognise itself in a mirror. Would that make it self aware? Nope. Because your self, your id, is considerably different to your body.
There is no current test for self-awareness. Now, I can tell that I am self aware, because I have a distinct concept of "self". I really can't be sure of anyone else, but I can assume that since others of my species exibit similar behaviour to me, I can reasonably assume that they possess the same trait of self-awareness that I do.
Dolphins and gorillas... Well, I'm not too convinced. They're intelligent, but I don't quite think that they're quite there; the evidence availiable doesn't make a good case, in my opinion. Though I'll admit that this is mainly due to no-one having inventing a convincing self-awareness test, yet.
Problem solving doesn't show an animal is self-aware. Recognising physical objects does not, either. I'm not entirely sure what does, however. Speech helps, of course. It could be that certain language patterns can only arise with self-awareness. It could be that a self-awareness is related to some effect on the quantum level, that cannot be replicated by a Turing Machine. There is some evidence to believe that a Turing Machine cannot represent a self-aware entity.
To be honest, we have such a crude definition of "self", that we'd need to figure out precisely what we mean when we talk about sentience, before we can start to think up tests for it.
Perhaps that will prove to be the greatest scientific challenge of our race.
On the other hand, by the time my daughter was three, while she still wasn't much for taking instruction, she could converse, reason and had enough abstract thinking to laugh at Shel Silverstein in the right places.
Don't get too excited. I've no idea who Shel is, if it matters, but in my experience, kids laugh when adults laugh; they are always looking for cues for social behaviour. This is the case even with early teenagers. And, in fact, some adults.
If you want to please or get on with someone, you will laugh when they laugh.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
In fact, if you know just a bit about contemporary research in child language you can pick up the hints in the AP article Pullum links about how it ties in:
This is reminiscent of some of the work of Eve Clark-- which Geoff can't be excused not to know.Are you adequate?
...recursively combine words into a meaningful sentence
This is not a useful distinction, as its hard to define 'meaningful sentence'. There are stages in language development in children, and many animals seem to show equivalent word combinations to young humans.
Its a continuum: Human language capacity did not appear suddenly fully-formed. Its likely that humanoids before us had some language ability, perhaps with less complex grammar and vocabulary.
However, language is a highly controversial indication of sentience. It's possible to imagine self-awareness, and the ability to conceive that others exist and they are like you (a theory of mind) without the need for any language at all.
Its also possible that language, like vision, has evolved independently many times. Whale song is complex, and we have no idea yet if it has anything we would understand as words or grammar, but maybe that's just putting our interpretation on things. Its clear that chimps and parrots are able to combine words in innovative ways to form something that seems like a 'proto-sentence'.
because animals can't communicate meaningfully using only single words.
Why not? Humans can do this. It's usually obvious what I mean if I say things like:
'Yes', 'No', 'Stop', 'Hungry', 'Busy', 'Bored', 'Whatever' etc. Some animals show a similar meaningful single-word use.
This argument seems to me to be self-fulfilling: if you defining sentience in terms of human attributes, then you will of course define anything lacking those attributes as non-sentient.
here's still a big difference between working for years to teach an animal something that most human toddlers pick up almost accidentally from exposure...and getting an animal to reason about things like religion, philosophy, infinity, the possible existance of the soul, calculus, etc..
The first dog that teachs another dog a language...I might be impressed...the first dog that teaches words to a human child, I'll be a bit more impressed.
The first dolphin that can solve a linear algebra problem or contemplate the age of the universe...*that* will impress me
this doesn't. just glorified animal tricks
Ten thousand years ago your ancestors hadn't even come up with an idea as simple as the wheel, let alone linear algebra or calculus.
The really scary thing is that those were genetically modern humans, every bit as smart as you or me, except that they didn't have access to the education that we do. If you had had their education -- if you had been raised by cavemen -- the concept of the wheel would likely be completely beyond you. If you had to move a heavy object, it would simply never occur to you that you could do something other than drag or carry it. If it's too big to drag or carry, it stays put.
It took tens of thousands of generations for humans to make those first simple steps -- fire, the wheel, agriculture. So you might want to think about that when considering just how much difference there really is between you and a really smart animal.
Hint: it's probably not as much as you like to think.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
actually, while I'm making broad sweeping stereotypical claims, I'll take it further - as it's certainly not limited to tech support.
It seems to be a very strong thing in a lot of people that they'd rather guess, or lie than be seen to not know the answer to something.
Advanced users are users too!
He lived until he was old and sick, and then I went off to college and he chose to commit suicide.
They understand that they can die, and they can choose when they're ready to go.
Look, I lived with border collies for 18 years. They weren't my pets, they were family. After 18 years of watching them, I believe they're not only as smart as people, but that part of the reason some people have problems with their border collies is that the dog is smarter than they are.
The thing is, there are two factors which prevent most people from understanding how smart they really are: one is that they can't talk (although mine tried and startled a few people by croaking out a kind of "hello" they don't really have the right vocal equipment) and the other is that they don't have the same priorities as people do: people worry about going to school and earning money and paying for the next vacation... border collies worry about making sure their family is happy and well, and they see you as their family.
My dog's even smarter than yours...
We could spell "s-n-i-f-f t-h-a-t o-t-h-e-r d-o-g'-s a-s-s" or "l-i-c-k y-o-u-r o-w-n b-a-l-l-s" and he would do it every single time without fail!
Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
Did it take the grandparent poster thousands of years to learn calculus or linear algebra or about the wheel? No, it didn't. Take the same amount of time it took him to learn those things, and try to teach a dog the same things. The dog won't be raised by cavemen. You could even send it to the university of your choice.
The gp has been taught a large part of human civilization in his lifespan, which can't be done with a dog. There's your big difference.
Use of the words "good", "bad" or "evil" is almost invariably the result of oversimplification.