Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
Speaker 1: you know, Julie, the title of today's podcast is does
Speaker 1: my dog really Love Me? Or something to that effects. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we just nailed it down, but over forgot it. But
Speaker 1: but the original title that I had pitched was your
Speaker 1: dog doesn't love you? And we decided not to go
Speaker 1: with that because, uh, it's it's a little anti dog
Speaker 1: and I didn't want to come up with this dog
Speaker 1: hating cat person. Well, and the jury is a little
Speaker 1: bit out on that, right. Yeah, we can't definitively say
Speaker 1: your dog doesn't love you, because there's some interesting data.
Speaker 1: So I just want to point out that if you're
Speaker 1: Josh Clark, you can apparently definitively say that dogs are
Speaker 1: man's best friend and quote, even if you're strictly a
Speaker 1: bona fied cat lover, it's nearly impossible not to be
Speaker 1: moved by the brand of loyalty unique to dogs. That's
Speaker 1: from Josh's How to Work's article um is Our Dogs
Speaker 1: trully Man's Best Friends, which is worth reading but but,
Speaker 1: but Josh has a bit of a thing and for cats.
Speaker 1: I think he was licked by them as a child
Speaker 1: or something. I think so too, he was afraid they
Speaker 1: were going to steal his breath. Yeah, but but I
Speaker 1: admit I I tend to side more with the with
Speaker 1: the cat uh on the on the cat's side of
Speaker 1: of the old dogs versus cat's argument. And I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to stir up a big debate because I think
Speaker 1: there's a lot of crossover between the affinity we have
Speaker 1: for our animals and the the the the often ridiculous
Speaker 1: ideas we get in our head about what they are
Speaker 1: and what our relationship with him consists of. Oh, you're
Speaker 1: talking about anthropomorphosizing, where we project all of our feelings
Speaker 1: onto cat, dogs, sometimes a robot you name it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And there's but the interesting things, there's been a lot
Speaker 1: of studies and exactly what's going on beyond beyond the
Speaker 1: whole This dog is my child, this dog is my friend, um,
Speaker 1: you know that they're There's been some actual studies into
Speaker 1: what's going on in the brain when we inter act
Speaker 1: with dogs. What's what's going on in the dog's brain
Speaker 1: when it's interacting with us, and uh and and and
Speaker 1: you know, there's no denying that these are amazing creatures.
Speaker 1: And in the relationship they have with us is is
Speaker 1: pretty bizarre. Uh and and and pretty incredible. They've You
Speaker 1: have you have a a a species that just lives
Speaker 1: throughout the world, often in luxurious environment. Well sometimes they're
Speaker 1: not so luxurious environments. But but you have some dogs
Speaker 1: that are really living well and and really benefiting from
Speaker 1: from all the fruits of human culture without actually having
Speaker 1: to do any work. Yeah, well, let me just spring
Speaker 1: this little stat on you. According to the Nova documentary
Speaker 1: Dogs Decoded, there are more pet dogs than babies in
Speaker 1: the world, nearly half a billion. So yeah, of course
Speaker 1: they've got their own clothes and furniture, and you know,
Speaker 1: they've got their own little dinner plates. And according to
Speaker 1: um Um The World Without Us author Alan Wiseman, if
Speaker 1: humans civilization were to stop, tom most of these dogs
Speaker 1: would just vanish, because it's it's we'll not vanished, you know,
Speaker 1: like it's not like not like the you know, the
Speaker 1: Second Coming and the Rapture and all that. But but
Speaker 1: they would they would die out pretty because pretty steadily
Speaker 1: in most cases, because they wouldn't be able to support themselves.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't be able to feed themselves in the environment
Speaker 1: like that depend on Yeah, they depended on us. I
Speaker 1: mean likewise with the cats, most a lot of the
Speaker 1: cats would die and others would just become feral because
Speaker 1: we've created these these artificial environments and we've propped up
Speaker 1: these these species and allow them to just run wild,
Speaker 1: you know, around the world, even if running wild is
Speaker 1: only in your living room, in your backyard, right right,
Speaker 1: I mean we can't help it because we look at
Speaker 1: these dogs, we look at puppies, and we instantly feel
Speaker 1: a connection. Right. We already know that this is scientifically proven. Yes,
Speaker 1: we've in fact, we've we've seen the release of oxytocin
Speaker 1: in the brain when well in two cases. One when
Speaker 1: we're just interacting with their dogs and we're making a
Speaker 1: long gaze um eye interaction, which is like we lock eyes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's a two thousand and nine um Japanese study and
Speaker 1: they took fifty five dog owners, all right, they brought
Speaker 1: them in and they had all the dog owners peanut
Speaker 1: up and then they tested that sounds nice, tested the
Speaker 1: urine for oxytocin levels, and then they put them in
Speaker 1: the playroom, let them play with their dogs all right,
Speaker 1: and then they observed how they're interacting with their pets.
Speaker 1: Then the dog owners came back in and they took
Speaker 1: another yearine sample um which I guess they had to
Speaker 1: have a drink while they're in there playing with their dogs.
Speaker 1: I don't think i'd be able to go twice like that.
Speaker 1: And and and they were able. And they also had
Speaker 1: a control group where some owners sat in a room
Speaker 1: with their dog and we're told to completely avoid looking
Speaker 1: at their animal. So uh so that that they found
Speaker 1: that that there was a increase in oxytocin levels. And
Speaker 1: the people who made long gaze eye contact with their dog,
Speaker 1: that's where they're looking on average, you know, two and
Speaker 1: a half minutes of eye contact during play. And uh
Speaker 1: and and so the people were benefiting from this, from
Speaker 1: this this relation ship. They're feeling really good about it.
Speaker 1: It's mutually beneficial to them. And then also we should
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about oxytocin. This is that feel
Speaker 1: good hormone that is released and a lot of people
Speaker 1: think about it more in the example of an infant
Speaker 1: and its mother during the breastfeeding process, because that's when
Speaker 1: oxytocin is released for for both um for both the
Speaker 1: mom and the baby, and they're both feeling all lovey
Speaker 1: dovey and content. And oxytocin is great because it's an
Speaker 1: incredible stress reducer. And they have actually found that people
Speaker 1: who are dog owners are less likely to have heart attacks.
Speaker 1: And if they do have a heart attack and they
Speaker 1: are a dog owner, they're three to four times more
Speaker 1: likely to actually survive that heart attack. That's how powerful
Speaker 1: oxytocin is and a possible reason why we feel such
Speaker 1: a bond to our animals, in particular dogs. Now, of
Speaker 1: course it's worth knowing that if you don't survive that
Speaker 1: heart attack, dogs are cats will probably eat your feet.
Speaker 1: But that's that just goes with the territory. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: a very at least lick them. Yeah, well it starts
Speaker 1: with licking and then it becomes eating because they can't
Speaker 1: help themselves. This is the situation where they just then
Speaker 1: I'll go ferrell and yeah, and then then they go
Speaker 1: they go ferrell in the living room. Yeah, they run around.
Speaker 1: So you know, we know that the oxytocin and and
Speaker 1: this sort of connection makes us want to cuddle and
Speaker 1: care for them. And again and Nova's dogs decoded. There
Speaker 1: was a section um in which they featured psychologists Morton Kringelbach,
Speaker 1: and he put adults in a make scanner, which is
Speaker 1: like a supercharged neuroimager, and then he showed them photos
Speaker 1: of adult faces, infant faces, and puppy faces, nothing else,
Speaker 1: just like the big face looming in the background or
Speaker 1: without dark background. And what he found is that within
Speaker 1: one seventh of a second, their orbital frontal cortex, which
Speaker 1: is involved in emotional responses, started to light up. And
Speaker 1: it showed activation only when people looked at infants and puppies,
Speaker 1: not other adults. And he called this that the parent instinct. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or it's I mean, it's basically the cute factor. It's
Speaker 1: why people love like cute overload. It's why if you're
Speaker 1: if you like Peter or somebody, you're gonna put a
Speaker 1: baby seal on the cover of your your promotional material,
Speaker 1: or a half naked woman. But but but in many
Speaker 1: cases Green Piece or various organizations, you'll see that like
Speaker 1: the white baby seal is the one to put on
Speaker 1: because its face looks so much like an infant. You
Speaker 1: look at cute cartoon characters and you can see like
Speaker 1: the big eyes and the you know, in the small
Speaker 1: head and in the various uh um, some measurements that
Speaker 1: didn map up with a with a baby's face. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you've actually even mentioned this when we've talked about
Speaker 1: robots and and having robots in the service industry, that
Speaker 1: they're in Japan, that they've got the really super cute
Speaker 1: looking robots that actually to us, look, you know us
Speaker 1: here in the West look kind of creepy because it
Speaker 1: does look like cartoon character giant robots. Um. But so yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's definitely something to that. Um. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: there you go that the basis a very good scientific
Speaker 1: basis for why we feel the way we do about dogs.
Speaker 1: So Okay, we've got the bond with them, right, Um,
Speaker 1: and we know from fossil records that we have a
Speaker 1: really long history with dogs, right this, This didn't just
Speaker 1: start up in the last hundred years. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: this is like a hundred thousand years ago. We can
Speaker 1: we know that we started to hang out with them,
Speaker 1: But why would we hook up with canine familiars anyway? Well,
Speaker 1: the most immediate um answer that comes to mind is
Speaker 1: that we're we're probably in a situation where we were
Speaker 1: either competing with the wolves for food, or the wolf
Speaker 1: or the wolves were food or both. And uh, and
Speaker 1: after you've killed a whole bunch of the adult wolves,
Speaker 1: you might find all these little baby, cuddly wolves, all right,
Speaker 1: and you go there and your first instinct, well, you
Speaker 1: probably have two competing instincts. One is, hey, let's fry
Speaker 1: these puppies up because there because because the tribe is hungry,
Speaker 1: and these look delicious. But then on the other hand,
Speaker 1: they look kind of like human babies. So it's your
Speaker 1: belly is full and your bellies full, and they're harmed.
Speaker 1: They're unlike the adult wolves you just strangled to death
Speaker 1: on the primeval plane, you know, or you know, are
Speaker 1: beat to death with a stone. Um. These things aren't
Speaker 1: attacking you. There may be licking your hand, and that
Speaker 1: they look cute. So you've been like, all right, let's
Speaker 1: take these back to the camp and play with them
Speaker 1: for a little bit. Yeah, and so this and then
Speaker 1: this sort of bond could have developed. And then all obviously,
Speaker 1: wolves we know are the closest relative to dogs, right,
Speaker 1: so at some point dogs separated from wolves. Um, so
Speaker 1: it's very likely that we began to see the wharf
Speaker 1: and having these little pups around that then became really
Speaker 1: good hunters along with us. And if you look at
Speaker 1: dog domestication, which happened around fift years ago, that's about
Speaker 1: the same time that we quit doing the whole nomadic
Speaker 1: hunter gatherer thing and switched over to being a grarian's
Speaker 1: so you know, then we're much more localized and it
Speaker 1: makes sense to have a dog around that can help
Speaker 1: you hunt. That's really fat us inefficient with with their
Speaker 1: own food consumption and how they use it as fuel, right,
Speaker 1: so they don't have to eat a whole lot themselves
Speaker 1: and they can guard right, right, and that in turn
Speaker 1: makes us much more successful as a species, right and
Speaker 1: you can and uh, it's also worth noting that there's
Speaker 1: a show on Discovery and BBC called Human Planet, and
Speaker 1: it's a great example of this whole um hunting and
Speaker 1: then raising the young kind of situation with the Owa
Speaker 1: Guagi Guaga people of the eastern Amazon, and they hunt
Speaker 1: and kill monkeys, which they eat and they make them
Speaker 1: do a delicious looking stewins. Well that's I don't know
Speaker 1: about eating brains, but they're definitely stewing up some monkeys.
Speaker 1: But then they'll bring the baby monkeys back to camp
Speaker 1: and they'll they'll not only raise them as pets, but
Speaker 1: in some cases they'll actually breastfeed the really young baby
Speaker 1: monkeys um, which is you know, even more than more
Speaker 1: oxy uh toastin released into the system through that. But
Speaker 1: but it's an interesting it's such an interesting glimpse into
Speaker 1: how humans work. Just the idea that you could on
Speaker 1: one hand kill and eat this particular species, but then
Speaker 1: also raise it up as a pet. And then they
Speaker 1: in this case, they don't actually eat um eat the
Speaker 1: monkeys that they raise pets, so there's a difference there.
Speaker 1: But but then you have situations, I mean, clearly you
Speaker 1: have people who are really attached to baby goats that
Speaker 1: may grow up to be become a food source. So
Speaker 1: that you see plenty of examples in human culture where
Speaker 1: where there's even this divide between the baby and the
Speaker 1: edible adult, it will become right. Yeah, And just to
Speaker 1: go back to oxytocin again, and I have read this
Speaker 1: before that it's it's actually pretty addictive um apparently for
Speaker 1: for new moms, and then it does give you a
Speaker 1: big rush. So it's sort of interesting that you know,
Speaker 1: you see those instances of surrogate um breastfeeding happening like
Speaker 1: like a wet nurse is could be an oxytocin addict.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, yeah, I mean you think it is an
Speaker 1: altruistic doct but you have to wonder, you know, if
Speaker 1: they're just doing it for the rush. So maybe you know,
Speaker 1: this is completely unproven, but but maybe the situation was
Speaker 1: we domesticated um dogs and are working on monkeys because
Speaker 1: you have, like you have these these oxytocin addicted nurse
Speaker 1: maids who are running wild through the woods and give
Speaker 1: me some puppies. Let me breastfeed some puppies, you know,
Speaker 1: because I gotta get that rush. Wow, I'm saying, like
Speaker 1: this pulp fiction movie like set fift years ago, I'm yeah,
Speaker 1: thinking about Darryl Hannah now as as a crazy wit nurse.
Speaker 1: This is not good. Yeah, and we gotta get back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's totally unproven. Do not use that as an answer.
Speaker 1: We gotta get back your students. Yeah. But but then
Speaker 1: another reason that we would hang out with canines and
Speaker 1: domesticate them is their sense of smell, which again would
Speaker 1: help with hunting um and in fact, cancers apparently have
Speaker 1: a smell that dogs can be trained to detect according
Speaker 1: to a growing body of research. Um and actually they've
Speaker 1: had some small trials which have shown canines capable of
Speaker 1: detecting melanoma in a person's skin and lung and breast
Speaker 1: cancers by chemical que was in the person's breath. The trick,
Speaker 1: according to Auburn University veterinarian Larry Myers, is the ability
Speaker 1: of dogs to smell the multiple layers of chemicals. So
Speaker 1: it's so much more nuanced and sophisticated rather than the
Speaker 1: way that we detect smells. They've they've got a lot
Speaker 1: more parts to their system, so to speak. So all
Speaker 1: of this adds up to the fact that we that
Speaker 1: that dogs have definitely helped us to become successful and
Speaker 1: our survival and and certainly dogs themselves have become very
Speaker 1: successful in their survival right. And it's it's interesting to
Speaker 1: to look at, Okay, just on the surface things. Dogs
Speaker 1: definitely have emotion, whether whether or not they can there's
Speaker 1: this thing called love, and they can feel it. That's
Speaker 1: that's a different issue. But but definitely emotion is it
Speaker 1: has evolved as an adaptation and numerous species. Uh. It
Speaker 1: bonds animals to one another. It catalyzes and regulates a
Speaker 1: wide variety of social encounters among both friends and competitors,
Speaker 1: and it permits animals to protect themselves adaptively. And with
Speaker 1: the dogs that the curious thing is that dogs have
Speaker 1: are much more social and say cats because I mean,
Speaker 1: like my cat doesn't want any part of another cat
Speaker 1: except to chase them off and uh, and they're just
Speaker 1: not social for some reason. It may want to live
Speaker 1: with she man want to live with humans. But the
Speaker 1: heck with all the cats, dogs however, much more social.
Speaker 1: They have a much more social mind and uh. And
Speaker 1: therefore there's this they have this whole alpha uh situation
Speaker 1: where one alpha can dominate the others and there's this
Speaker 1: dominant and passive thing in there. And then the way
Speaker 1: they behave so we've been able to interject ourselves into
Speaker 1: their into this this uh, this this system where we
Speaker 1: can eat where we either become the dominant master of
Speaker 1: the dogs or we become this thing that the dog
Speaker 1: is possessive of. Um, which is generally not the ideal situation,
Speaker 1: but you see it all the time. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: interesting again to draw those parallels and see how we
Speaker 1: are more alike than different than dogs in the sense
Speaker 1: that we are really social creatures, and certainly fifteen years
Speaker 1: ago we were you know, carnivorous. Um, not all of
Speaker 1: us are now, but and we really relied on hunting. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So same thing with dogs, right, Yeah, you had this
Speaker 1: suddenly this dogs like growing up among people, and there's
Speaker 1: this this guy and he's like saying, hey, I'm the
Speaker 1: pack leader. Let's go catch ourselves some food, and the
Speaker 1: dogs like, yeah, I'm game for that. That's totally what
Speaker 1: I've evolved to do. So let's yeah, let's let's make
Speaker 1: it happen. And by the wather like thirty of you guys,
Speaker 1: five of us. Yeah, you guys have the clubs, you
Speaker 1: can be the pack master. Fine, you know so part
Speaker 1: of it is like you kind of wonder how much
Speaker 1: the dogs are going along in their own survival. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you you get into all this uh, this,
Speaker 1: this these other weird areas who were like you take
Speaker 1: a dog's natural hunting instinct and then you you you
Speaker 1: kind of perverted over the over the ages to to
Speaker 1: create say a hurting animal where you're like saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you guys are really good at catching these animals, but
Speaker 1: let's work on you not killing them, but just moving
Speaker 1: them around, uh, in exactly the place I want them
Speaker 1: to be, right, yeah, when you're talking you gent x right,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, so yeah, I mean actually eugenics became pretty
Speaker 1: popular in nineteenth century Europe, right, So there's this drive
Speaker 1: to perfect and design our environments, including pets, and of
Speaker 1: course you have this sort of newish technology too, and eugenics, um,
Speaker 1: so they applied that to dogs through selective breeding. So
Speaker 1: you're like, in the scenario you were talking about, that's
Speaker 1: like a border collie, right, um. And so this allowed
Speaker 1: us to to basically breed out traits and breeding traits
Speaker 1: as you said, and and and you know, of course
Speaker 1: now we have our little tiny um toy poodles and
Speaker 1: every from that to like a mastiff, right, and you
Speaker 1: can take everything in between and sort of mush it
Speaker 1: up and see which you can get. So it is
Speaker 1: amazing to think that right now, um, of dog breeds
Speaker 1: are modern breeds that we created. So that's four hundred
Speaker 1: genetically distinct dog breeds. This presentation is brought to you
Speaker 1: by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow. So in many of these cases,
Speaker 1: we are breeding, selectively breeding animals to encourage particular traits
Speaker 1: that that allow them to perform a task, and as
Speaker 1: those tasks disappear, we end up then in breeding them
Speaker 1: selectively to encourage physical traits that we identify with that
Speaker 1: particular breed. Right, so you have like situations like with boxers,
Speaker 1: where you no longer actually need boxers to perform the
Speaker 1: task they were bred for, and instead you just breathe
Speaker 1: them to look even more and more like a cartoon
Speaker 1: character of themselves in the ring. Yeah, and then there's
Speaker 1: the there's the whole the longer the ring. Um. I
Speaker 1: believe they were used to control cattle and like, I
Speaker 1: think it's like slaughterhouse situation. Um, so we have robots
Speaker 1: for that now, So instead you're just like, hey, let's
Speaker 1: breed them, make them look funny and stand on the
Speaker 1: side of a football field. Likewise, even with with with
Speaker 1: the with with sheep herding dog, like my my family
Speaker 1: has a as a herding dog and they don't have
Speaker 1: sheep or anything. So the dog just loves to run
Speaker 1: around and barket trees and attempt to herd things like
Speaker 1: tractors or or branches in a tree or hawks flying overhead,
Speaker 1: and and you just think, wow, we've really screwed this
Speaker 1: one up. We we we've we've we've taken this animal's
Speaker 1: natural hunting instinct turned it into something that benefits us
Speaker 1: and then say all right, we're eliminating that job. But
Speaker 1: you guys stick around and uh and just go crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's actually where the problem comes in, right, because
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it sounds like in this scenario,
Speaker 1: at least your dog can go out and hang out
Speaker 1: in the yard, but some of those types of dogs
Speaker 1: are you know, confined to apartments and they just go
Speaker 1: run and running circles and basically then the next thing
Speaker 1: you know, they're on zoloft. So um. But what allows
Speaker 1: us to do this to to breed these traits is
Speaker 1: that they have such a great plasticity of jeans, and
Speaker 1: it takes just twenty five years to create some sort
Speaker 1: of breed that you want, which, if you've get evolutionary terms,
Speaker 1: is like supercharged evolution in a sense, right. Um. And
Speaker 1: there's actually a good example of this is a dog
Speaker 1: called the dogo Argentino and it has something like, you know,
Speaker 1: twelve different breeds that they tinkered with over two and
Speaker 1: a half decades to create the perfect dog that could
Speaker 1: take down wild boars. Without killing the boars, but could
Speaker 1: also hang out with kids, you know, and be all cuddly. Wow,
Speaker 1: that was an interesting checklist when they were putting that
Speaker 1: one together. It's like, I needed to be able to
Speaker 1: take down a boar, but I wanted to hang out
Speaker 1: with my kid too. Yeah, And in twenty five years
Speaker 1: and and and and taking everything from like a mastiff too.
Speaker 1: I think there was actually, um, maybe a bull terrier
Speaker 1: in there somewhere in the mix, and just tinkering around
Speaker 1: with it, and then finally they had something that Again,
Speaker 1: this was helping them at the time because they really
Speaker 1: didn't have this wild boar problem that was eating all
Speaker 1: the crops, and so they wanted to take them down
Speaker 1: without killing them. And this was a good solution. But
Speaker 1: it's also a little bit frightening to that we could
Speaker 1: do this to such a degree, right, hence the eugenics part,
Speaker 1: which you know, that's a whole other two sides to
Speaker 1: the eugenics coin for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And then of
Speaker 1: course the other problem with this, or you know, a
Speaker 1: problem in the sense when it's not used, um perhaps
Speaker 1: with the best of ethical intentions, is when you have
Speaker 1: someone who's a disreputable breeder who is continuing to breed
Speaker 1: so aggressively that there are a lot of defects that
Speaker 1: the dog might be born with. Right do you end
Speaker 1: up with in some cases a genetic neurological problems? Um, Like,
Speaker 1: for instance, there's the whole feigning goat thing. Um if
Speaker 1: you're anyone familiar with the feigning goat, these are goats
Speaker 1: that they just happened to uh through breathing. They have
Speaker 1: this neurological condition where they'll you'll frighten them and they'll
Speaker 1: fall over. And for a number of reasons, people decided
Speaker 1: that the breeders decided, hey, let's keep let's keep this.
Speaker 1: This is a good trait to having a dog, even
Speaker 1: though it's it's not really i mean, in a goat,
Speaker 1: even though it's not really good trait. And there are
Speaker 1: some but there are some breeds of dogs that have
Speaker 1: similar conditions just because they've been they've been they've been
Speaker 1: this sort of narrow branch on the tree as they've
Speaker 1: continually bread to encourage various various traits that are part
Speaker 1: of that breed. Yeah. So, I mean, there's there's a
Speaker 1: lot going on here that can actually tell us about
Speaker 1: ourselves too. Of course, we always as humans figure out
Speaker 1: how we can get some data off of you know,
Speaker 1: other scenarios and so if there are certain diseases and dogs,
Speaker 1: like the boxer genome has been decoded, so that's been
Speaker 1: really helpful and saying, okay, on this marker we find
Speaker 1: this disease, let's now flip over to the human genome
Speaker 1: and see if we can find it there and see
Speaker 1: what it can tell us about this disease. So that's
Speaker 1: actually helpful. Yeah, So okay, so we know this, we
Speaker 1: know about the genics part, we know why we hooked
Speaker 1: up with them. But my question is, you know, how
Speaker 1: well do dogs really know us and how well do
Speaker 1: we actually know them? Is their data there? You know,
Speaker 1: our our dogs at good as reading our emotions as
Speaker 1: we think they are. Well, it's interesting that they can
Speaker 1: definitely communicate with us that they are a that I
Speaker 1: mean not every species can do this. Um. For instance,
Speaker 1: you have the case of Chaser, the border collie from
Speaker 1: Spartan Bird, South Carolina that apparently knows A thousand and
Speaker 1: twenty two perhaps more. Now, who knows this is? I
Speaker 1: think this article is from like a year ago. A
Speaker 1: thousand and twenty two nouns um and and it can
Speaker 1: also identify verbs like like the owner was able to
Speaker 1: teach it to understand commands like fetch ball, fetch frisbee,
Speaker 1: fetch it all and and and it was understanding both
Speaker 1: the verb and the noun. So that's I mean, that's
Speaker 1: that's pretty amazing. And she knew categories to right, yes,
Speaker 1: like you know, she knew like the balls, the toys
Speaker 1: and so on and so forth, so she could be
Speaker 1: directed even at a greater level. And then from what
Speaker 1: I remember to in that article, the owner had worked
Speaker 1: with her for like five to six hours a day,
Speaker 1: repeating words sometimes forty times, like a new word forty
Speaker 1: times every which is insane. And if you think about
Speaker 1: this too, um, we as humans learned something like ten
Speaker 1: new words a day until we reach I believe, the
Speaker 1: twelfth grade, in which case we then have something like
Speaker 1: sixty thousand words at our disposal. That here's this border
Speaker 1: collie getting forty new words a day to our ten
Speaker 1: words a day. So that is actually a a particularly
Speaker 1: strange situation. This is, you know, most dogs know something
Speaker 1: around the order of a hundred and fifty words. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but then again, six like six hours a day
Speaker 1: with this uh, with this old dude in his apartment. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like if if I was stuck with
Speaker 1: him and he was coaching me on vocabulary, I'm sure
Speaker 1: I would learn all these fabulous new words. And I know,
Speaker 1: I know, I think we all should just go spend
Speaker 1: a week with them. Um. But the other thing about dogs,
Speaker 1: and this is something that's been proven out, is that
Speaker 1: they really have learned to read our emotions. Uh. And
Speaker 1: and this is was found again in the Nova Dogs
Speaker 1: Decoded documentary. Uh. What they said is that when humans
Speaker 1: spress emotions, they do so asymmetrically. And what that means
Speaker 1: is if I express anger or joy, if you if
Speaker 1: you go down the middle of my face and cut
Speaker 1: it in half and and examine it, you'll see that
Speaker 1: it's not symmetrical in the way that I expressed those emotions.
Speaker 1: So one part of my face is gonna be different
Speaker 1: than the other. Okay, it's not going to be, of course,
Speaker 1: like too crazy looking. It's it's pretty nuanced, like like
Speaker 1: whatever the face is when like if you smile on
Speaker 1: one side of your face and frown on the other,
Speaker 1: you're talking like even a normal what we might on
Speaker 1: the surface think of as a normal smile is still
Speaker 1: not a completely symmetrical Yeah, what looks cohesive really isn't.
Speaker 1: Um So, and that's that's again, that's such a nuanced thing.
Speaker 1: But what they did is they said, Okay, for humans,
Speaker 1: when we're looking at the emotions, are reading emotions, we
Speaker 1: start on the left hand side, and then we got
Speaker 1: left to right, so we have a left hand bias.
Speaker 1: So what they did is they want to see if
Speaker 1: dogs did the same thing. So low and behold. They
Speaker 1: put them in front of a screen and they watched
Speaker 1: the dog's reactions. They filmed the dog, and they saw
Speaker 1: that the dogs did the same thing. They went from
Speaker 1: left to right, although when dogs look at each other,
Speaker 1: they do not read from left to right. And as
Speaker 1: far as they know, dogs are the only species that
Speaker 1: can read human emotions in that way and the way
Speaker 1: that we do. So they know they know that, like
Speaker 1: this is how you read a human space. You have
Speaker 1: to look left or right. Yeah, yeah, in order to
Speaker 1: to pick up on the nuance of okay, well that's
Speaker 1: the emotion that I think that is being expressed by
Speaker 1: my owner right now, which is really pretty interesting. Um So, again,
Speaker 1: there's this idea that dogs have evolved to read a
Speaker 1: human space and that that makes dogs understand us in
Speaker 1: a way that other species don't. And again hence the
Speaker 1: bomb that we feel with them, that they can actually
Speaker 1: feel our emotions. Um. And they also respond to gestural
Speaker 1: cues like pointing yes though it's it's it's interesting that
Speaker 1: there was a study UM from the Department of Comparative
Speaker 1: and Developmental Psychology at the the map Plank Institute for
Speaker 1: Revolutionary Anthropology in Germany Max Plank. Yeah, they have, they've
Speaker 1: come out before UM where they looked at a ra
Speaker 1: tional and rational acts UM. Here like, here's the example
Speaker 1: you have in human infants and a mother. Like if
Speaker 1: the mother is is say, I don't know turning on
Speaker 1: the coffee maker, we know, well, I guess nothing to pay. Well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna roll with this analogy, all right. So the
Speaker 1: baby sees the mom using her hand to turn on
Speaker 1: the coffee maker, all right, and then that they'll on
Speaker 1: some mobile connect and say that's that's a good use
Speaker 1: of that hand. That's irrational use. But and then they
Speaker 1: see the mother, well, say, with an armload of clothing,
Speaker 1: she doesn't have a free hand, but she needs to
Speaker 1: turn on the coffee maker. So she uses her forehead
Speaker 1: to do it or knows I don't know. Um, and
Speaker 1: then the child will be like, all right, we'll give
Speaker 1: them this situation. That makes total sense. But if the
Speaker 1: if the mother were to walk in with nothing in
Speaker 1: her hands too free hands, and then reached over and
Speaker 1: turned on the coffee maker where there with her forehead
Speaker 1: or nose, that the child would not see this as irrational.
Speaker 1: That's coconuts. Yeah, but the dog, there's no coconuts with
Speaker 1: with the dog. The dog would just accept either act.
Speaker 1: There's no difference between irrational and irrational. Okay, So that's
Speaker 1: a case in which we might be projecting ourselves onto
Speaker 1: whether or not a dog can can make those sort
Speaker 1: of judgments, right, I mean, and another thing is the
Speaker 1: whole like, oh my dog did something bad and uh
Speaker 1: and and and now he's sorry or she's she's sorry
Speaker 1: a little catter, she's so ashamed of herself. But that's
Speaker 1: just a submissive behavior. They're not really ashamed of anything.
Speaker 1: There was an interesting study into that that was actually
Speaker 1: profiled on the Radio Lab episode Animal Minds, which is
Speaker 1: a good listen for more of a broader animal emotional
Speaker 1: uh um thing and uh and but but you had
Speaker 1: these people that you know, we're claiming all my dog
Speaker 1: thinks that thinks it did something bad. He knows it
Speaker 1: did something bad, and that's why it's ashamed. But they
Speaker 1: found that that that that dogs in a control group
Speaker 1: would behave the same way even if there had been
Speaker 1: no mischief in the living room, um et cetera. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's why animal behavior is so tricky, right, because
Speaker 1: you've got the whole fact that your dog is so
Speaker 1: tuned into you that you can't help but think that
Speaker 1: the dog is with you in lockstep and the way
Speaker 1: that you're thinking and acting. And in fact, that they
Speaker 1: called the Clever Hans effect. And Clever Hans was actually
Speaker 1: a horse in the nineteen hundreds that could use his
Speaker 1: hoof to count um and answer mathematical questions. And he
Speaker 1: was just like the star of the animal world. Right,
Speaker 1: everybody was astounded by his knowledge. But a psychologist picked
Speaker 1: up on the fact that the horse answered correctly only
Speaker 1: when the questioner knew the answer. So what was happening
Speaker 1: is that the horse would count up until the point
Speaker 1: in which they observed that the questioner began to relax
Speaker 1: when when when they had read when clever Hans had
Speaker 1: reached the correct number. And again it's that that nuance
Speaker 1: of being able to read body language and say, okay
Speaker 1: that the human is fine, Now this must be the
Speaker 1: right answer and all quit you know, stomping my hoof.
Speaker 1: So they've they've talked about that with dogs as well.
Speaker 1: Is that, you know, there's there's that fine line of
Speaker 1: you know, how much is the dog just trying to
Speaker 1: read your your um emotions and your your gestures as
Speaker 1: opposed to really cogitating. Yeah, there's it's like there's this
Speaker 1: fiction we create with this with this dog, is this
Speaker 1: friend or this this this child in our lives? And uh,
Speaker 1: but the animals participating in this fiction as well. And
Speaker 1: I find that really fascinating. I mean, it's not I
Speaker 1: don't think it it downplays the what's amazing about the relationship.
Speaker 1: But but it's it's it's kind of like blind men
Speaker 1: and elephants, or one is touching one part of the
Speaker 1: elephant and the others touch in the other and they
Speaker 1: both have certain ideas about what's going on, but neither
Speaker 1: one is the correct. Uh, neither one is the the
Speaker 1: the actual image of the elephant. Well, and we we've
Speaker 1: talked about symbiosis before, right, and parasites, and this reminds
Speaker 1: me of that this is sort of like the mutually
Speaker 1: beneficial parasitic relationship, right right. I mean, your your dog
Speaker 1: is pretty much like, well, you know, I'm sure that
Speaker 1: your dog gives you a lot of love or perceived love,
Speaker 1: but your dog is really kind of you know, just
Speaker 1: hanging out on your couch, eating your food, watching your TV. Uh,
Speaker 1: not necessarily contributing to the household income, right right, but
Speaker 1: but maybe participating to your feeling of of of of
Speaker 1: of safety in your house, or or elevating your emotions.
Speaker 1: So there, I mean there's a different benefit. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: barking at strangers, or if you're really on the ball,
Speaker 1: maybe it actually does work around the house overthing you
Speaker 1: have like seeing eye dogs and helper animals, where there's
Speaker 1: a definite case to be made for this. This and
Speaker 1: this symbiotic relationship is really um, you know, working on
Speaker 1: all cylinders. Yeah, and see, I think that the two
Speaker 1: are so entangled. That's really hard to look at this
Speaker 1: and say, you know, is there a definitive love or
Speaker 1: you know or not? Right? And what complicates it is
Speaker 1: the way that we actually react to dogs as well. Uh.
Speaker 1: Dr Adam mcclowsky, at a research center in Hungary recorded
Speaker 1: six different scenarios in which a dog was barking. And
Speaker 1: this isn't parton because dog barks, we often hear and
Speaker 1: then we think, oh, the dog is feeling this way
Speaker 1: or that way. And so what he had observed a
Speaker 1: lot of humans saying, oh, well, my dog does this
Speaker 1: mewing sound or actually it's like a cat, right, but
Speaker 1: this complaining kind of whiney sound. You know, she's she's
Speaker 1: hungry or so on and so forth. So he wanted
Speaker 1: to see if he could actually corroborate that. So he
Speaker 1: had these six different scenarios in which a dog was barking,
Speaker 1: and a couple examples is as you actually mentioned, is
Speaker 1: um barking at the door, barking at the gate when
Speaker 1: they're a stranger approached, and he recorded that bark. And
Speaker 1: then another example was when the owner put the dog
Speaker 1: on a leash and then left the dog and the
Speaker 1: dog started barking as to say, you know, don't leave
Speaker 1: or whatnot. And he took these six different recordings and
Speaker 1: played them for dog owners, not the dog owners that
Speaker 1: the dogs are attached to but totally random dog owners,
Speaker 1: and those dog owners could, almost without fail, each time, say, oh,
Speaker 1: I can you know I think that that dog is
Speaker 1: going to be lonely, or that dog wants to play fetch,
Speaker 1: but someone is withholding the ball. I mean, they got
Speaker 1: it really very you know, these specific details right, which
Speaker 1: amazed him that they could map the emotion to the bark,
Speaker 1: which begs the question, are we so now like fine
Speaker 1: tuned with them that we're reading their cues just as
Speaker 1: much as they're reading ours. It's kind of like it's say,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like we're both actors in a play
Speaker 1: and we've both forgotten that it's a play. It's an
Speaker 1: imperfect metaphor. But no, no, I'm going with it. I'm
Speaker 1: going with it. Um. Yeah, you're like Dustin Hoffman, and
Speaker 1: for weeks after when your roles you continue to to
Speaker 1: act as though you're autistic. Yeah, that's right. You argue
Speaker 1: that he never got over the rain Man thing. Now,
Speaker 1: I know, I think it comes out in spurts sometimes.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was a fine performance, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: but anyway to to your knowledge, so, I don't know
Speaker 1: that it gets us to this point where we can't
Speaker 1: definitively say does your dog actually love you? We know
Speaker 1: there's a lot of oxytose in flowing. Yeah, the the
Speaker 1: the naturally generated drugs in our body kind of complicate things.
Speaker 1: But yeah, but that can be said pretty much everything
Speaker 1: that we do. Yeah, And on a personal level, I
Speaker 1: can say that my my my dog Ted, I certainly
Speaker 1: loved she was a wonderful dog, and I felt that
Speaker 1: way to her. And I think as a child even
Speaker 1: read to her. I loved her so much. Did she
Speaker 1: pick up anything? Were you able to? No? She was?
Speaker 1: She was no clever Hans or what was the other
Speaker 1: dog's name, chase Er? She was. Yeah. Now there's that.
Speaker 1: There's that cat that writes mystery novels with its owner.
Speaker 1: I forget the author's name. Oh my goodness. That is
Speaker 1: probably the best case of ampomorphization I've ever. I wish
Speaker 1: I could remember her name. I have not read any
Speaker 1: of her work, but if I remember correctly, she used
Speaker 1: to write like kind of saucy literature. Of course, and
Speaker 1: then suddenly she did she started writing, and then she
Speaker 1: started writing mystery novels with her cat, and and has
Speaker 1: continued ever since. Been a great one of those great
Speaker 1: literary partnerships. So yeah, there you go. Well, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: I think I have a little listener mail here. Let's
Speaker 1: see what we have. Ah. Yes, both of these are
Speaker 1: related to our Germ Free Dirty Hippies episode which recently
Speaker 1: went live. Um first we heard from Luke, and Luke writes, Hey,
Speaker 1: Julian Robert, I just listened to the Germ Free Dirty
Speaker 1: Hippies episode. You guys touched on the idea that of
Speaker 1: not using shampoo. I wanted to let you know that
Speaker 1: I haven't used Sam shampoo since November seventeen, two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: and my hair has never been healthier. I used to
Speaker 1: have lots of dandruff and a very since their scalp.
Speaker 1: Now my hair looks healthy, doesn't itch, isn't oily, and
Speaker 1: doesn't smell. It got really oily for the first three
Speaker 1: weeks or so of not using shampoo, but then it
Speaker 1: seemed to balance out. I have so much shorter hair,
Speaker 1: and it's about two inches long on top, so I'm
Speaker 1: sure this makes it easier than if I had had
Speaker 1: really long hair. I know some people who don't use
Speaker 1: shampoo rents it out every so often with a mix
Speaker 1: of apple cider, vinegar and water. I'm not sure what
Speaker 1: this does. Maybe it helps, uh get rid of oil. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I've never thanked YouTube for the awesome show, so I
Speaker 1: thought i'd take this opportunity to write in and say
Speaker 1: thanks for making me smarter. Well, if you're welcome, that's stuff.
Speaker 1: That's great. Yeah, and actually we've got a lot of
Speaker 1: anecdotal evidence about this, I would say, if you can
Speaker 1: call it evidence. And um, it was actually really hurtening.
Speaker 1: I was like, wow, people are really it's not just me.
Speaker 1: Who's who's interested in this shampoo question. Yeah, I've cut down.
Speaker 1: I'm going like two days at a time without actually
Speaker 1: shampooing my hair. Her coat looks very shiny, I mean
Speaker 1: in a good way. Look, well that I also had
Speaker 1: bacon this morning. You know, well that'll do. That's a
Speaker 1: machine they can do. But um oh, and we also
Speaker 1: have another email. This one is from Thomas, and Thomas
Speaker 1: writes in about this and uh, this is a rather
Speaker 1: long email, so I'm just gonna read part of it.
Speaker 1: He says. Anyway, let's just say that in the past
Speaker 1: twelve months, I've probably used shampoo maybe six or seven times.
Speaker 1: Until two weeks ago, I had a use shampoo and
Speaker 1: probably six months. Generally speaking, I only use shampoo if
Speaker 1: I go to the beach or swimming a heavily chlorinated pool,
Speaker 1: though I do use condition about once a month. Let
Speaker 1: me just say my hair is a gorgeous That's probably
Speaker 1: the most narcissistic sentence the twenty year old male can either.
Speaker 1: But it is random. Women, that's right, plural have stopped
Speaker 1: me just to say, hey, I've seen you around the
Speaker 1: office and I just wanted to say, I don't know
Speaker 1: what you do, but you have gorgeous hair. Well, I
Speaker 1: think we both can can relate to that absolutely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: get it in the break room all the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Jerry had to lock the door to keep the women
Speaker 1: out the otherwise they'd be in here complimenting us on
Speaker 1: our hair right now anyway, um Thomas continues, you can't
Speaker 1: imagine the speed with which a human face can transition
Speaker 1: to object horror. When I quote how long it's been
Speaker 1: since I've used shampoo, it's quite a site. The worst
Speaker 1: part of terminating your relationship with shampoo is the first
Speaker 1: two months or so. During that two month period, your
Speaker 1: scalp seems to freak out and overproduce oils lots of
Speaker 1: warm showers and scalp massaging, like Julie mentioned, help a
Speaker 1: great deal, but it's still kind of grows there. You go,
Speaker 1: that's the secret to healthy hair. Yeah, so you know,
Speaker 1: if you have any more anecdotes of your own experiences
Speaker 1: going with the No Pooh method of hair care, UM,
Speaker 1: let us know. I mean, we can't. That's short for shampoose.
Speaker 1: Anybody's confused about that. Um, if you have any other
Speaker 1: No Pooh situations, let us know about that. We're always
Speaker 1: game for scatological content. Uh and uh and uh. And
Speaker 1: if you have anything to add about this dog episode,
Speaker 1: let us know. I'm sure, I'm I know that a
Speaker 1: number of you were dog owners and uh and and
Speaker 1: if you're like me as a cat owner, then you
Speaker 1: you probably spend a lot of time just trying to
Speaker 1: figure out this weird situation in which a furry quadruped
Speaker 1: lives in your home, sleeps on your bed and uh
Speaker 1: and we act like it's the most normal thing in
Speaker 1: the world. It's not. It's pretty weird. And you occasionally
Speaker 1: dressed up as a pirate. I mean that's yeah, they
Speaker 1: want to hear about that. Yes, So so let us know.
Speaker 1: It's it's fascinating and uh uh, and I'm curious to
Speaker 1: see what everybody's in particular thoughts on it are. You
Speaker 1: can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. We're blow
Speaker 1: the Mind on both of those, and you can drop
Speaker 1: us a line at blow the Mind at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To learn
Speaker 1: more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in
Speaker 1: the upper right corner of our homepage. The How Stuff
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