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What Are You Reading Wednesday Meme
Oct. 31st, 2013 01:18 pmWhat Are You Reading Wednesday Meme (except it's Thursday. But, whatever.)
WhatHave I Just Finished I Am Still Reading:
The Plantagenets by Dan Jones
What Am I Currently Reading:
The Genius of Dogs by Brian Hare
(Partial) Good Reads Summary:
My inner geek is really enjoying this book. So much fun and interesting science!
Er... it is much more of a science book than a warm and fuzzy pet book (though clearly this scientist loves animals).
Though I never knew his name, I had heard of the author's initial study that took him down this pathway. The study was an unexpected detour from an initial study of chimpanzees and their cognition. The researchers were running a study as to whether chimpanzees would pick up cues from humans, did they interpret gestures as a way to help them solve a problem (in this case, pointing to hidden food). After many repeated tries the chimps simply did. not. pick up on the human cues. During this study a grad student (Hare, it seems) piped up, "My dog can do that." Head researcher was skeptical (after all chimps are smarter than dogs). Look, everyone loves their dog, but...
No, Hare insisted, his dog could do that. And he went home and taped an experiment that proved that he could.
And Hare's dog is not unique. Dogs can do that. Dogs can do that all day. Dogs can do that as tiny puppies, and they can do that whether they have been human-raised or not. It's an innate skill. An innate skill that is not shared by wolves, coyettes, wild foxes, etc. In fact, this is an extradordinarily rare skill. So rare, in fact, that it's mostly confined to humans, dogs, bonobos, and some very specific, special foxes.
What follows is an explanation of the following years of research Hare has put into these questions (researching infants, dogs, wolves, bonobos, foxes, etc.). By some tests dogs are not as smart as chimps, bonobos, dolphins, etc. (and in some specific areas wolves or even rats), but in other areas... dogs are extraordinary.
He begins with the "My dog can do that" story and of where that research has led. Dogs are incredibly skilled in their interaction with humans. Not only can they understand the pointing gesture, they also understand a whole host of social interaction cues, and they are quite good at understanding language. They can learn hundreds of words, and can make leaps of understanding based on inference (which came as a surprise), and of categorization (an even larger one). They can take a symbol and translate what that means in the real world (show them the picture of a toy and they can go get the actual toy for you).
When studying wolves (dog's closest genetic relative), wolves do not have this skillset. And hand-raising/taming them does not aid them in acquiring it. These traits, along with others, seem to be a result of domestication.
The special and specific foxes in question are ones that have been part of a 50 year research project in Russia (taken, at times, at some degree of danger to the scientist. That was an interesting part of the story in itself). The Russian researcher wanted to study the process of domestication, taking a control group of foxes, half of which were mated at random the other half specifically chosen from the 10% of the most docile, least fearful animals. Over the subsequent 50 generations of animals, significant changes have occured in the non-control group. Not just one change, but a whole host of them occurring together. Not only did the foxes become less aggressive, they became increasingly more dog-like (growing smaller and more 'adolescent'-like as well), and there were cognitive changes too.
There's also a section on chimpanzees and their behavior (which in the wild, biologically favors the aggressive) versus Bonobos (used to be called pygmee chimpanzees) which are a far less aggressive animal, far more social... and smaller and more adolescent-like. Hare refers to bonobos as being 'self-domesticated'. In that in wild chimpazee cultures, it is the aggressiveness of the males which is the overriding evolutionary pressure. Only the most aggressive chimpanzees can mate as they will murder male competition and the murdered males' offspring ('taking' the females in the process. Punishing females who do not comply.) By contrast evolutionary pressure in the bonobo population is towards less aggression as it is a female-dominant culture. Female bonobos protect one another. This group social construct has resulted in their choosing their own mates rather than simply being overpowered...and they choose less agressive males, with a non-aggressiveness becoming a strong evolutionary pressure within their numbers. Within their species, many of the differences between bonobos and chimpanzees are somewhat equivalent to the differences between dogs and wolves.
Hare goes on with his theory of the domestication of dogs (theorizing that they were to some degree self-domesticated, which subsequently allowed enough interaction with humans to become fully so). More, he theorizes that it wasn't just a one way street, that interaction/tolerance of dogs also aided in domesticating us (though we're partially self-domesticated as well) isasmuch as having dogs around for hunting and protection was an evolutionary boon -- in the form of aiding survival -- to the dog-tolerating/socializing homo sapiens.
Haven't finished the book yet, but it's been interesting so far, both in the studies of various forms of cognition in a variety of animals, as well as the evolutionary anthropology involved. I've liked it. If you're science-nerdy or animal loving science nerdy it's a pretty good book.
What
The Plantagenets by Dan Jones
What Am I Currently Reading:
The Genius of Dogs by Brian Hare
(Partial) Good Reads Summary:
Brian Hare, evolutionary anthropologist and founder of the Duke Canine Cognition Center, offers revolutionary new insights into dog intelligence and the interior lives of our smartest pets.
In the past decade, we have learned more about how dogs think than in the last century. Breakthroughs in cognitive science, pioneered by Brian Hare have proven dogs have a kind of genius for getting along with people that is unique in the animal kingdom.
Brian Hare's stunning discovery is that when dogs domesticated themselves somewhere around 40,000 years ago, they became far more like human infants than their wolf ancestors...
My inner geek is really enjoying this book. So much fun and interesting science!
Er... it is much more of a science book than a warm and fuzzy pet book (though clearly this scientist loves animals).
Though I never knew his name, I had heard of the author's initial study that took him down this pathway. The study was an unexpected detour from an initial study of chimpanzees and their cognition. The researchers were running a study as to whether chimpanzees would pick up cues from humans, did they interpret gestures as a way to help them solve a problem (in this case, pointing to hidden food). After many repeated tries the chimps simply did. not. pick up on the human cues. During this study a grad student (Hare, it seems) piped up, "My dog can do that." Head researcher was skeptical (after all chimps are smarter than dogs). Look, everyone loves their dog, but...
No, Hare insisted, his dog could do that. And he went home and taped an experiment that proved that he could.
And Hare's dog is not unique. Dogs can do that. Dogs can do that all day. Dogs can do that as tiny puppies, and they can do that whether they have been human-raised or not. It's an innate skill. An innate skill that is not shared by wolves, coyettes, wild foxes, etc. In fact, this is an extradordinarily rare skill. So rare, in fact, that it's mostly confined to humans, dogs, bonobos, and some very specific, special foxes.
What follows is an explanation of the following years of research Hare has put into these questions (researching infants, dogs, wolves, bonobos, foxes, etc.). By some tests dogs are not as smart as chimps, bonobos, dolphins, etc. (and in some specific areas wolves or even rats), but in other areas... dogs are extraordinary.
He begins with the "My dog can do that" story and of where that research has led. Dogs are incredibly skilled in their interaction with humans. Not only can they understand the pointing gesture, they also understand a whole host of social interaction cues, and they are quite good at understanding language. They can learn hundreds of words, and can make leaps of understanding based on inference (which came as a surprise), and of categorization (an even larger one). They can take a symbol and translate what that means in the real world (show them the picture of a toy and they can go get the actual toy for you).
When studying wolves (dog's closest genetic relative), wolves do not have this skillset. And hand-raising/taming them does not aid them in acquiring it. These traits, along with others, seem to be a result of domestication.
The special and specific foxes in question are ones that have been part of a 50 year research project in Russia (taken, at times, at some degree of danger to the scientist. That was an interesting part of the story in itself). The Russian researcher wanted to study the process of domestication, taking a control group of foxes, half of which were mated at random the other half specifically chosen from the 10% of the most docile, least fearful animals. Over the subsequent 50 generations of animals, significant changes have occured in the non-control group. Not just one change, but a whole host of them occurring together. Not only did the foxes become less aggressive, they became increasingly more dog-like (growing smaller and more 'adolescent'-like as well), and there were cognitive changes too.
There's also a section on chimpanzees and their behavior (which in the wild, biologically favors the aggressive) versus Bonobos (used to be called pygmee chimpanzees) which are a far less aggressive animal, far more social... and smaller and more adolescent-like. Hare refers to bonobos as being 'self-domesticated'. In that in wild chimpazee cultures, it is the aggressiveness of the males which is the overriding evolutionary pressure. Only the most aggressive chimpanzees can mate as they will murder male competition and the murdered males' offspring ('taking' the females in the process. Punishing females who do not comply.) By contrast evolutionary pressure in the bonobo population is towards less aggression as it is a female-dominant culture. Female bonobos protect one another. This group social construct has resulted in their choosing their own mates rather than simply being overpowered...and they choose less agressive males, with a non-aggressiveness becoming a strong evolutionary pressure within their numbers. Within their species, many of the differences between bonobos and chimpanzees are somewhat equivalent to the differences between dogs and wolves.
Hare goes on with his theory of the domestication of dogs (theorizing that they were to some degree self-domesticated, which subsequently allowed enough interaction with humans to become fully so). More, he theorizes that it wasn't just a one way street, that interaction/tolerance of dogs also aided in domesticating us (though we're partially self-domesticated as well) isasmuch as having dogs around for hunting and protection was an evolutionary boon -- in the form of aiding survival -- to the dog-tolerating/socializing homo sapiens.
Haven't finished the book yet, but it's been interesting so far, both in the studies of various forms of cognition in a variety of animals, as well as the evolutionary anthropology involved. I've liked it. If you're science-nerdy or animal loving science nerdy it's a pretty good book.
