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Dogs' Brains Have Human-like "Voice Area"
sciencehabit writes "When you hear a friend's voice, you immediately picture her, even if you can't see her. And from the tone of her speech, you quickly gauge if she's happy or sad. You can do all of this because your human brain has a 'voice area.' Now, scientists using brain scanners and a crew of eager dogs have discovered that dog brains, too, have dedicated voice areas. The finding helps explain how canines can be so attuned to their owners' feelings."
Of course this area of the brain is missing in CEO's and political pundits..
I love all these studies that constantly come out showing that dogs are, well, loving, loyal, and built to hang around humans. Of COURSE they are. Dogs are domesticated, and like, are the best thing ever.
I would like to see more studies about how flexible these relatively large changes are, and how fast they can occur. We all know about the Russion project to make "dogs out of foxes" by domesticating foxes by choosing them based on friendliness:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
Do these little foxes have a section where they are mirroring the dogs? In other words, is this morphological change something that happens when an animal is domesticated into a pet, or are dogs just special because awwwww doggie?
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.
because they learn to mimic our facial expressions with fair accuracy.
Cats have been reported to be developing smaller brains since their domestication. Whatever it takes, I guess.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Ever notice how when you ask a dog a question, it almost always tilts its head and gives you a puzzled look? Cracks me up every time.
so human
much voice like
wow
many feelings
very dedicated
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
If you've been around dogs much you can get a pretty good idea of their emotional state by their vocalizations. Not just the obvious growl or excited yipping, even straight barks have an inflection that tells you a lot.
It shouldn't surprise anyone that an animal which can vocalize emotion has a brain that can pick it up as well
But when they do bark at real trouble, there's a different sound in it.
The inflection angle goes both ways.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
My dogs "fart area" of the brain is very similar to a humans.
no, I do not picture my coworker and friend's butt-ugly mug when I hear their voice
My yellow lab understands words and picks up on the tone of my voice. Listens better than my kids.
What scans of Alex the African-Gray parrot would have shown. Or any talking bird for that matter. Actually, I would guess that many birds have a similar "voice region". Dolphins and whales too for that matter.
We've had carefully selected Golden Retrievers in our extended family for 30 years. For a point of reference this is a breed that's ranked #5 in intelligence compared to all breeds. Our family dog is amazingly human-like, even after carefully trying not to anthropomorphize him and our feelings about him.
He has a vocabulary of about 50 words. He understands short sentences, or at least enough words in them to understand what we mean. "Go upstairs and find your ball", "Hey I put food in your bowl", "Go see your mom" (since he's an adopted pet we're his adoptive parents, dogs are not things to own). He responds like a human. He can practically tell you a whole story with his facial expressions. He can roll his eyes sort of by looking at the ceiling and making a face when he thinks we're being ridiculous, and it's different than a similar face when he thinks we're being obtuse. He even has a favorite movie, Snow Dogs. He pays close attention to the dogs and has done the eyeroll to the ceiling thing when the humans start making out. He cracks us up daily.
We've all seen a dog lift an eyebrow and tilt their head to say "what the heck are you talking about?" Tip of the iceberg. When you have a really smart one for a decade it's like having a furry kid in the family. A very well behaved one, but there you go.
I sort of feel sorry for people who never get to be "dog people", call a dog "it" and think the rest of us are crazy and just anthropomorphizing our pet. Most of us "dog people" don't need these studies to tell us anything. But I'm still glad they're studying.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
"When you hear a friend's voice, you immediately picture her ..."
Nope. I do not. I might visualize an abstract, inky blob, but I most certainly do not picture the person.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
My dog responds to this and I don't quite understand how. If I say that to him and the ball is around, he will go after it and immediately want to play. Even if the ball is put away or not visible (we cycle toy free availability to maintain interest), he will search for it.
But I haven't done often enough or with enough treats to make it a reinforced behavior like "sit", "down" or "wait". I can only guess I've used the word "ball" a lot when playing with him and the ball and he's come to associate that word (or the phonetic sound) with the ball.
Perhaps this finding will help these people with the Indiegogo fundraising for their project;
http://www.nomorewoof.com/
Dogs and humans often make inter-species "friendships" for mutual benefit, the Coyote and the Badger is just one such example.
Why? Is it because the coyote says* "ARGH! Snake! A snake!" and then gets impressed by the honey badger who doesn't give a fsck?
* In a metaphorical sense.
I'd love to sit down and have a beer with my adopted dogs. I'd like to hear their story, where they came from, what they've done in their lives and what they are thinking about now.
Even if their speech was on the level of a toddler or smaller child, I'd still love to hear it.
do() || do_not();
Dogs have a lot more language than most people realize. We have a many generational large pack of livestock working dogs on our farm. Admittedly these dogs are more intelligent than a typical companion dog because they are selected for intelligence and spend their life doing herding, guarding and other tasks which stimulates their minds.
They typically know 300 words that is in a shared pidgin that we use which is a combination of signs, vocals (our language and theirs) and body language which describe objects (nouns), actions (verbs), variation (adverbs and adjectives) which they use in multi-word sentences. They both understand us, understand each other and speak back to us.
Some of the dogs understand and use as many as twice that and they actively make new signs to describe new things. This has previously been shown in other species. Dogs do it too.
Their biggest problem is their lives are so short. This is why having the multi-generational pack makes this behavior more noticeable - the dogs are passing on culture from generation to generation unlike dogs which are kept isolated in human families and treated as just a pet.
"When you hear a friend's voice, you immediately picture her, even if you can't see her."
Who is this referring to? I never visualize people. I'm a non-visual learner. When I hear someone's voice I think of the person's identity, never an image.
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"Cochon" == "pig", and "neuf" (French for "nine") sounds sort of like a grunting pig. 7+2=oink (nine), 3*3=oink (nine) 36/4=oink (nine), 4*2=oink (farmer kicks pig in private parts) squeeeal (eight)
I swear to god this is true.
I live on a farm, that when we bought it inherited a number of cats, as well as a bunch from a neighbors farm. (owner had died so cats transferred to where the food was). Along with these cats came feline leukemia which is a sickness that will kill a 3 year old cat within a month, but is often picked up when they are kittens. (very sad). They end up being very lethargic and then die. We ended up with over 20 cats, peaking at over 30.
In anycase, there was one cat, we called the mother cat, that seemed to be like the mother hen of the other cats. She would adopt kittens from other cats that didn't seem to have the ability to take care of their own. She was a great mouser and would sit on top of a fence post watching for mice. Or she would do this strange echooy call as she walked through the fields. In anycase it worked for her.
She came down with the feline leukemia and was in a bad state. We did what we could for her, but she was going fast. On the day before she died, she was just lying around when other cats started bringing her presents of mice. She perked up with these gifts but was dead within the day.
The important point here is that other cats
1. knew she was dying, or at least in trouble.
2. brought her gifts which they would not normally do.
3. she accepted these gifts.
All the cats seemed sad after she died, and I supposed that I could be just anthropomorphizing their response. But I don't think so.
I've also heard in other barns, that cats have a hierarchy of places to sit. (on bales of hay). The top cats are the highest.