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Imitation In Dogs Matches Humans and Apes
sciencehabit writes "The next time your dog digs a hole in the backyard after watching you garden, don't punish him. He's just imitating you. A new study reveals that our canine pals are capable of copying our behavior as long as 10 minutes after it's happened. The ability is considered mentally demanding and, until this discovery, something that only humans and apes were known to do."
Stop chewing on your wife's best shoes and the dog will stop doing that too! Oh and also don't chew on the sofa cushions either.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
I know i shouldn't kiss the girl that owns him
Humans Evolved from Apes and Dogs Evolved from Wolves.
There has to be lots of mimicry.
I did not copy that song! I Swear! It was my dog!
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
"Doggie see, doggie do" just doesn't have the same catch as "monkey see, monkey do".
Especially the "doggie do[o]" part...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Er... parrots?
human bipedal motions better than any other dog.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaYPWtNvJ-A
I've seen a scientific documentary that shows how crows can learn just by looking at other fellows and imitate them to solve practical problems.
Human, apes and dogs are hardly the only species to do so.
my old dog watched me open the fridge one day, and carried on doing it and emptying the contents until a child lock was put on it
So this is why I see many fat dogs lately..
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Dogs have been scrutinizing us humans for 400 centuries, so they're experts at understanding our moods and behaviors.
Come on, a girl that can lick herself? That is the ultimate self service.
"It may come one day to be recognized, that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps, the faculty for discourse?...the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being?... The time will come when humanity will extend its mantle over everything which breathes... "
Jeremy Bentham (1748 - 1832)
Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
My cat imitates my actions, but then again he's a rare breed that has a reputation for acting more like dogs than cats. He's a Turkish Van who barks (short, loud verbalizations to get my attention instead of the traditional "meow"), fetches (some other cats can be taught to fetch... Turkish Vans teach their owners to play fetch), and generally exhibits the behavior of a pack animal that wants the favor and attention of the alpha animal (the human).
As for imitative behavior, he loves to watch me wash dishes. Turkish Vans are fascinated by water (in nature they swim for fun and fish for food), so he has to be on the counter watching whenever I'm washing dishes. He sees me apparently rubbing my "paws" together under the stream of water, and if I turn to put the dish in the drying rack, he will invariably start pawing at the stream of water, and then rubbing his paws together under the stream. He's invariably very confused because he doesn't understand what this accomplishes, but he keeps doing it because he sees me doing it.
Cats have the intelligence to imitate behavior, but they don't exhibit it because most domesticated cats do not have the pack mentality. They do their own thing unless there is a reward for doing your thing. You hear about people teaching their cats to flush the toilet, but that's usually because they're fascinated by the "reward" of getting to watch the whirlpool. Turkish Vans and dogs, however, will do things because they see you doing it and they want to win your approval by doing what you do.
Mimicry is perfectly standard behaviour for animals. There have been studies on how parents teach their offspring how to hunt dating back decades. This applies on land, on/under water and in the air. Most of the studies I have heard about involve mammals or birds, I can't remember any involving reptiles, fish or (in particular) insects. Some larger spiders may have this ability - ones large enough to eat small ground-nesting birds for instance
.
The article itself is more about adapting behaviour by watching humans and that is self-limiting, apart from speech there is not much useful a bird can learn that way. I have a neighbour who used to look after the garden before it was turned into a lawn. Back then he had a fan - a blackbird which would hang around when he was digging, waiting for worms to be unearthed. It presumably recognised my neighbour as non-threatening and the digging as the same thing it would do but on steroids.
I was attacked by a goose a few years back. We were sitting outside and someone had fun throwing it scraps, closer and closer to me. It tried to drive me off by driving at me while hissing and flapping its wings. I joined in the fun by advancing on it, hissing back and 'flapping' my arms the same way. Communication was achieved, goose withdrew to a safer distance.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
Some breeds of dogs surpass apes in some cognitive skills that humans value. Dogs are mentally capable of showing humans which direction to go. They can herd sheep. They can come and bark at me when Timmy falls into another well.
Dogs are far smarter than they let on. It's not just mimicry, they can talk, read, write, and operate heavy machinery. The only reason we don't ever see them doing this is because mankind would put them to work and tax them. I don't blame them really.
I've seen cats and dogs imitate their human masters for ages. I've even seen a cat raised around by dogs where the cat barks instead of meowing. I'm confused on how this is news and not common knowledge?
Was wondering what the hell those dogs eat. They're always loafing around the house, stinking up the place with their nasty farts.
Oh. Now I get it.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
Still won't do my taxes.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
My 2 anecdotes are about chickens. I keep a couple of bantams, more as pets than anything else.
At a stage the one hen hatched a batch of chicks. Because the chicks can't fly or hop much yet (I've seen adult chickens fly a remarkable distance quite gracefully, and hop over obstacles 2-3 times their height with a single wing flap, much like a human would use his arms for balance when hopping over something), they can't get onto the perch in their coop for the night, so mom and chicks slept on the ground. There is however a ramp-like plank up which they could walk to reach the perch, if they where so inclined. So when they where about 3 weeks old I decided to teach them to use the ramp: I made one chick from the clutch run up the ramp (running away from my hands, which shielded it in all the directions it was not supposed to go. From there on all chicks slept on the perch at night.
The other anecdote concerns moving from a dish-tipe water bowl to a old milk jug fitted with Chick Nipples for drinking needs (click the link if you dare....). All I had to do is activate said nipples by hand so that they could see it releases water. Now they are happily drinking from this arrangement. OK, it could be argued that they peck at shiny stuff or water droplets in any case, and would learn in this manner, but still...
Now chickens are not the most intelligent animals, I would be the first to agree. But they are a LOT smarter than what people normally give them credit for.
Plus, they taste like chicken.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
My cats, both of them will attempt to do stuff like reach for the door knob to open closed doors. They are round knobs so they can't do it. But they know what they need to do. One of them has opened a bag of litter and knocked it over when we were out so she could do her business in it after the door to the room with her litter tray blew shut in the wind (I kid you not).
Animals are a lot smarter than we give them credit for, a lot of the tests they "fail" is likely because they are simply differently motivated.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I have two dogs. One of them I got a year ago, and I went through the normal training process(on my own, without professional training). It may have taken a while for some things like 'shake' but she eventually got it all. She's well-trained now with only the exception that she sometimes jumps on people when she's excited(still working on it).
My second dog is now 5 months old, and training her has been super easy. All I have to do is have them both in the same place while training, and the young one picks up on what the older one is doing right. Remove the old one, and the young one still knows all of the tricks. It has worked wonders on getting the young one to stop chewing on things. If she chews on something, she gets scolded. I offer the same thing to my older dog and she doesn't even try to chew on it, because she knows better. Then, the young one learns not to chew on that thing any more.
Getting dogs to mimic each other is a super easy way to get them to learn new tricks, and it's something my family has been using for a long time...
I also remember reading a study that showed that octopuses also have the ability to mimic other animals(and is one of their defensive mechanisms). I honestly can't believe this is news.
I've seen my friend's horses try to unlock the stall doors after the human locks the stall door, with disturbing accuracy. This doesn't seem unusual to me.
My friend's dog is always getting yelled at over voice chat because instead of going to bed at a normal time, she hops off the bed and watches him play Neverwinter. He plays on his TV with a controller and headset so the dog knows that he's playing with the controller. So she always licks it and bites at it because she wants to play too. One time he got up for a second and his character basically had a seisure that involved running around and falling off a cliff in game and it turns out she was messing with the buttons with her tongue. So she's not very good at Neverwinter but at least she tries to imitate him.
No, dog behavior expresses traits similar to human frontal lobes, but in dogs, the trait is more universal. Apes exhibit a similar arrangement of the lobes and as such similar logic patterns. Both can be considered part of the human condition but applied to a different collectivee strategy. This is just anthropomorphism.
I'll have to remember that...
It is a measure of human hubris that we fail to note the fact of animal intelligence that leads to their mimicing us. Another common example of this is the tendency of cats to become vocal and develop novel utterances as a result of observing human speech and interaction. Any keen observer will note that cats. left on their own will not develop such behavior. Upon observing and interacting with humans, at first a cat will simply meow in an utterly feline way, but then it will begin to experiment with varous gargling and purr/meow vocalizations. Finally, of course, there's the famous "silent meow", performed solely for the benefit of a human audience.
Parrots are intelligent enough to watch what you do and copy your actions to duplicate the effect.
You cannot leave keys near my parrot as he will get hold of them and try the keys in the padlocks on his cage until he unlocks them. He knows this as he's seen me do it.
not to hump each others' legs in front of the dog.
He thinks he's people!
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I think there are a lot of dog trainers who are "positive reinforcement only" and probably ties into some kinds of animal welfare philosophy somehow.
We went to dog training at the local humane society with our 10 month old rescue (half pit bull, half great dane, 95 lbs now at 2 years) and the focus was 100% on positive reinforcement.
We found that for some behaviors it was just not effective -- ie, barking out the window at passers by. It worked well for some things like sit, stay, and come, but for behaviors that the dog did you didn't want them to do it didn't accomplish anything.
We hired an in-home trainer recommended by friends and she recommended some simple "punitive" steps we could take -- grabbing the scruff and muzzle during an unwanted behavior and saying NO and if repeated, kenneling the dog and not letting him out until he stopped barking. She also recommended a pinch collar which did a lot to control pulling and lunging, although you still can't put a squirrel in front of this dog without some lunging.
We found that the punitive behavior was MUCH more effective at controlling unwanted behavior than trying to teach an alternative behavior when the dog was so strongly motivated to do something we didn't want.
I never got to the shock collar stage, although I have been tempted a couple of times. As the dog has grown older some of the annoying behavior has tapered and I think our training helped dampen a lot of unwanted behavior.
Cats are a product of their upbringing and environment, like many critters, people included.
Cats that grow up in very active households tend to be very sociable towards strangers (same for "shop" cats). Cats that grow up spending their lives with someone who doesn't socialize much, tend to be more skittish of strangers. Cats that grow up by themselves tend to be more sociable towards humans; cats that grow up with another cat tend to be more social with the other cats (playing, following, snoozing, etc.) and more aloof to humans.
Cats can be passive, cats can be assertive. I dated someone whose cat decided that when we were making out on the couch, that was a swell time to climb up and sit on her back and purr and knead her back.
I've known people who had cats who would play fetch; it's not that unusual - and my cat came when he was called, usually because he knew that it meant he'd get a warm lap, petting, or ear/chin scratching.
Please help metamoderate.
I thought octopuses learned behaviors through observation and imitation, as well.
i get this powerful urge to do the same. what does this mean?
something that only humans and apes were known to do
Octopuses, Crows and various birds, potentially mice.