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Dogs As Intelligent As Average Two-Year-Old Children
Ponca City, We love you writes "The Telegraph reports that researchers using tests originally designed to demonstrate the development of language, pre-language and basic arithmetic in human children have found that dogs are capable of understanding up to 250 words and gestures, can count up to five and can perform simple mathematical calculations putting them on par with the average two-year-old child. While most dogs understand simple commands such as sit, fetch and stay, a border collie tested by Professor Coren showed a knowledge of 200 spoken words. 'Obviously we are not going to be able to sit down and have a conversation with a dog, but like a two-year-old, they show that they can understand words and gestures,' says Professor Stanley Coren, a leading expert on canine intelligence at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Dogs can tell that one plus one should equal two and not one or three,' says Coren, adding that dogs 'can also deliberately deceive, which is something that young children only start developing later in their life.' Coren believes centuries of selective breeding and living alongside humans has helped to hone the intelligence of dogs. 'They may not be Einsteins, but are sure closer to humans than we thought.'"
Be interesting to see what a Wolf would be like as they tend to have a larger brain to body mass ratio.
...my dog is a lot like Einstein, in that her hair goes everywhere and she refuses to accept quantum mechanics.
Just because you sold your soul to the devil that needn't make you a teetotaler. --The Devil and Daniel Webster
I've suspected this for a while, which is why I get especially worked up over people who get their jollies tormenting and abusing animals.
It's basically like abusing a child, and is just as sick.
'They may not be Einsteins, but are sure closer to humans than we thought.'
I don't think so. You're comparing a fully-mature animal to one in its infancy. We've long known that animals can learn behaviors that mimick that of humans -- in some cases, their physiological parts are superior to humans (the eyes of a hawk, for example). But to say they're "closer to humans than we thought" -- that's a quotable designed to be eaten up by the popular press because a lot of people are dog lovers and will jump at the chance to say "Aw, see, old charlie here is almost human smart!"
I'm sorry to say that, no, Charlie is still a dog. A creature that has spent several thousand years being domesticated by humans -- I'd damn well expect it to be able to emulate certain kinds of human behavior and show types of intelligence other animals do not, that's exactly what domestication is supposed to do. But a dog does not have near-human intelligence. It doesn't even have remotely human intelligence -- it has simply learned behaviors that we can understand and manipulate to a far greater degree than other animals.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
One test was that the subject was offered a treat inside a cage -- a banana pellet for the ape, a Gummy Bear candy for the human child -- an a kind of toothed rake to retreive the treat.
In each case, the rake was handed to the subject tooth-side down, and the teeth were to widely spaced to make and headway retrieving the treat. In each case the subject, a chimp and a 2-year-old human, raked away to no effect.
Then the experimenter turned the rake over and demonstrated how the treat could easily be retrieved using the flat end of the rake. Then the rake was returned to the subject with the tooth-side-down position of the rake.
The ape went back to raking away to no effect. With respect to the human 2-year-old, however, not only did the 2-year-old achieve 1-trial learning that the flat side of the rake was the effective way to get the Gummy Bear candy, when the 2-year-old was shown this technique, the 2-year-old laughed out loud, as if to say, "Oh, that's cheating, but if cheating is allowed, I am certainly going to do it."
What I figure was the role of the laughter and the sense that the rake experiment was a joke is this: humor is connected with this type of reasoning and this type of learning. A lot of learning is a matter of figuring out the exception to the rule, what has to be un-learned in order to effect an outcome. So not only did the 2-year-old learn in one trial, the 2-year-old developed a mental model of how the rake was supposed to operate and then made a conceptual correction to that model, and thought the whole thing to be funny.
I don't know the equivalent experiment with a dog as dogs lack the hand dexterity of humans and apes, but the minute I see a dog respond with 1-trial learning to a related situation, only then will I believe any claim as to a dog have the intelligence of a 2-year-old human.
does this additional knowledge mean that we will end up with dogs in other support roles?
How about a "Thinking Brain" dog for some of the terminally stupid people I have to deal with? The blind and deaf already use dogs, why not stupid people? Are you a stupid person who can't make a decision in the fast food restaurant? Dog orders you a cheeseburger. Are you so stupid that you can't decide if you should turn left or right at the stoplight? Dog tells you to turn left. Are you a dumb pedestrian who stops in the middle of the intersection to answer their cell phone? Dog drags you to the curb.
This would be GREAT!
John
No one needs academic elitists from Canada telling them their own sons and daughters are no smarter than an average dog. My husband Todd showed me this article while we were playing with Trig, and I sat down and I thought to myself, boy, what's the world coming to, that if you could equate a puppy's intelligence with that of an unborn child, you could give the puppy a post-birth abortion?
And I'm telling you, when you put forth Americans in front of these scientists on Obama's health care panel, and they put your baby and an Ivy League-educate golden retriever on the scale, who do you trust they'll declare the victor? This is dystopian, this is an outrage, this is what we must fight, America!
--Sarah Palin
Well 200 words is plenty to say "Hello IT, have you tried turning it off and on again?" and "Are you sure its plugged in?"
I have seen some nasty, aggressive dogs. They tend to have nasty, aggressive owners. I have seen some nasty, aggressive children. They tend to have nasty, aggressive parents.
I have also seen well-behaved children and dogs. Guess what their parents are like?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
So a dog goes into the telegraph office and submits his message for transmission: "Woof woof woof woof woof woof woof woof woof."
The telegraph operator says, "We normally charge by the word, but if you like, I'll give you the tenth 'woof' for free."
To this, the dog responded, "But that, my good chap, would make no sense at all!"
The CB App. What's your 20?
Note: Do not put Schrödinger dog with Schrödinger cat. Experimental results may be random.
Actually, if you put a SchrÃdinger dog with a SchrÃdinger cat together, they will form an *Entangled* state.
The simplest possible explanation: Your dog is the antichrist.
Dogs might understand about as many words and gestures as the average two year old, but I don't believe they're as intelligent. At least not according to our definition of intelligence. My two year old (27 months) asked me last night, "Why are balls round?". Then followed up with "is the moon a ball?". You can teach a two year old to communicate, but they come up with those questions on their own. Would a dog ask questions like that if it could communicate with us? I doubt it, but maybe I'm wrong.
As a doctor, you should probably know that you can't have pups with a dog, neutered or not. Don't let that stop you from trying though.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.