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Imitation In Dogs Matches Humans and Apes

Posted by Unknown on from the that's-where-fido-picked-up-his-bad-habits dept.

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."

1 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Humans Co-evolved with Dogs! by jamesh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Dogs didn't evolve from wolves. Dogs were bred from wolves. There is a world of difference. And that breeding program was designed to maximize certain aspects of canine intelligence. A dog is a man-made creation that has no relation to evolutionary development. In this light, the fact that dogs exhibit mimicry while almost no other animal does is not surprising.

    The difference is purely semantic. The difference is that dogs didn't evolve from wolves through natural selection, they evolved via human selection (which may still considered natural), but it's still an evolution.