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Why We're Not Anthropomorphising Dogs
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28-05-2009 2:51pm#1
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That's a lovely part of your post....I grew up with dogs. There hasn't been a time in my life when I haven't had one except when travelling. I have seen them get angry and frustrated, get snappy and irritated when in a bad mood, go through depression when another dog or a human passed, share in my excitement and joy, become defensive of me and my family, become suspicious of certain new faces and welcoming of others, become guilty when I haven't even noticed anything's amiss yet. They have comforted me when I was inconsolable or sick. They have missed people when they leave for awhile. This is not anthropomorphism. This is the trait of an incredibly special animal like no other creature in the world.
I'm not sure they understand us per se. I think they can be incredibly perceptive though.
Here here!Here's to our dogs, and the world of joy and delight they bring to us. May they forever be considered man's best friend, and may their underestimation cease.
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Their motives are unselfish
And that is the biggest antropomorphism of them all.
Yes, dogs have evolved to be more or less perfect companions for humans. They have learned to read and understand us often better that we read and understand ourselves. They dream, they have moodswings, they have (limited) emotions and a rake of other wonderful traits.
But they are not unselfish, much to the contrary.
By having abandoned the wild as source for food and ultimately survival and having attached themselves to us, dogs as a "species" were under the evolutionary pressure to wring as much favour out of us as they could in order to survive.
Dogs pretty much totally depend on us (and over their history with us have become ever more dependent) and rely on us for an awful lot. Food, shelter, care, protection, etc. It is in their interest that we not only tolerate them but love and indulge them. In their short but turbulent evolution from wolf to lapdog human selection has seen to it that only those survived and propagated that were the most agreeable to us. The species dog has had a genetical advantage in being "nice" to us and only the most endearing dogs (or the most effective workers) made the grade on the survival stakes.
Dogs are genetically selfish (like any other being)
But they are also individually selfish. Next time you see your dog, look at it with a cold eye ...it does things for you because it wants things form you. It will look at you with "those" eyes, not becaue it loves you or adores you, but because it wants you to move your butt so it can lie on the sofa as well.
It doesn't come to to express its undying love for you, but to get your attention ..a very valuable commodity in the doggy world.
When you're sick and your dog "consoles" you, it doesn't do that out of worry for you, instead it senses that something is wrong and on the mere suspiscion that it may have been the cause (and now out of favour) it cozies up to you. (doesn't make it any less enjoyable or endearing)
Dogs are hard wired for social interaction and to be integrated into a social structure. They will do everyting in their power to be a good member of the "pack". Not out of civility or a sense of duty ...but simply because they are miserable when they feel outcast.0 -
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Amen, amen, amen.
Wonderful post.
The art of course is to love and cherish them as they really are. As with cats also. Not to mak them out to be what they are not
And to think more of humans also.
Many of whom are utterly unselfish in spite of all their basic instincts.
This is probably why some think of dogs as so great; because they have been let down by people.
And they thus distort the dog.And that is the biggest antropomorphism of them all.
Yes, dogs have evolved to be more or less perfect companions for humans. They have learned to read and understand us often better that we read and understand ourselves. They dream, they have moodswings, they have (limited) emotions and a rake of other wonderful traits.
But they are not unselfish, much to the contrary.
By having abandoned the wild as source for food and ultimately survival and having attached themselves to us, dogs as a "species" were under the evolutionary pressure to wring as much favour out of us as they could in order to survive.
Dogs pretty much totally depend on us (and over their history with us have become ever more dependent) and rely on us for an awful lot. Food, shelter, care, protection, etc. It is in their interest that we not only tolerate them but love and indulge them. In their short but turbulent evolution from wolf to lapdog human selection has seen to it that only those survived and propagated that were the most agreeable to us. The species dog has had a genetical advantage in being "nice" to us and only the most endearing dogs (or the most effective workers) made the grade on the survival stakes.
Dogs are genetically selfish (like any other being)
But they are also individually selfish. Next time you see your dog, look at it with a cold eye ...it does things for you because it wants things form you. It will look at you with "those" eyes, not becaue it loves you or adores you, but because it wants you to move your butt so it can lie on the sofa as well.
It doesn't come to to express its undying love for you, but to get your attention ..a very valuable commodity in the doggy world.
When you're sick and your dog "consoles" you, it doesn't do that out of worry for you, instead it senses that something is wrong and on the mere suspiscion that it may have been the cause (and now out of favour) it cozies up to you. (doesn't make it any less enjoyable or endearing)
Dogs are hard wired for social interaction and to be integrated into a social structure. They will do everyting in their power to be a good member of the "pack". Not out of civility or a sense of duty ...but simply because they are miserable when they feel outcast.0 -
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I suggest reading the following, and googling for others;
Dogs have souls, but you already knew that By Electa Draper
The Denver Post
DENVER — For centuries, humans have imagined they are the only animals with morals. But humans are not alone in the moral arena, a new breed of behavior experts says.
Natural historian Jake Page said some scientists are acknowledging what pet owners have told their canines all along: "Good dog."
Dogs are full of natural goodness and have rich emotional lives, said animal behaviorist Marc Bekoff, professor emeritus at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
A dog's code of ethics is on display daily in parks, backyards and family rooms.
"We're not trying to elevate animals," Bekoff said. "We're not trying to reduce humans. We're not saying we're better or worse or the same. We're saying we're not alone in having a nuanced moral system."
Page, author of "Do Dogs Smile?," said biology no longer dismisses dogs and other animals as "furry automatons" driven by instinct and food.
"People like Bekoff have figured out how to measure these things," Page said. "It's a whole new ballgame for studying dog personalities and emotions."
Bekoff, co-author of "Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals," spent thousands of hours observing coyotes, wolves and dogs. He analyzed videotapes frame by frame. The work convinced him these animals possess empathy and compassion, the emotions upon which moral sense is built.
While much the same can be said of monkeys, wolves, elephants, dolphins, whales and other social animals, dogs are special cases; they share in human lives, he said.
"Dogs know they are dependent. They learn to read us," Bekoff said. "Dogs develop this great sense of trust. We're tightly linked, and there is something spiritual about that unity."
This intimacy and mutual influence prompted Harvard University to open a Canine Cognition Lab, where researchers attempt to gain insight into the psychology of humans and dogs.
"I'm convinced many animals can distinguish right from wrong," Bekoff said.
He said looking for the roots of morality in animals is a difficult scientific undertaking. It begins with looking for emotions central to morality, such as empathy: understanding of another's situation, feelings and motives.
In humans, emotions are centered in specific brain structures and are affected by chemicals called neurotransmitters. Mammals possess the same brain structures, affected by the same chemicals as humans.
"Dogs apparently laugh," Page said. The same brain structures show the same activity in laughing humans and in dogs that are enjoying themselves. A dog's laugh is a rhythmic pant.
Play is necessary for healthy brain development in animals and is seen in many mammalian, and some avian, species, Bekoff said.
Play hones cognitive skills and later helps in hunting and mating. And play would not be possible without cooperation and trust.
"Virtue is its own reward," Bekoff said. "Fairer is fitter."
To prevent any misunderstanding, a dog will signal to another dog that the imminent jostling, nipping and chasing are "just play" rather than aggression, he said.
The game is initiated with the "play bow." A dog, wolf or coyote will crouch on its forelimbs while keeping its rear upright.
Any hard-biting cheats find themselves excluded from games.
"Dogs are thinking animals," Bekoff said. "They seek the outcomes they want. They avoid the ones they don't. They solve problems. They have expectations. They have hopes."
Critics skeptical about some research trends in animal thinking, emotion and morality downplay the evidence as often anecdotal and anthropomorphic, that is attributing human motivation or characteristics to animals.
Bekoff countered that thousands of anecdotes equal data. And anthropomorphism, he said, is a misleading label for what is a shared evolutionary history.
Humans and dogs share most of their genes and a great deal of physiology and behavior. Bekoff sees that shared heritage extending into the spiritual realm.
"If we have souls, our animals have souls. If we have free choice, they have it," Bekoff said. "If we can't know this for sure, let's give them the benefit of a doubt."
and
Dogs can read emotion in human faces
By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent
Last Updated: 4:54PM GMT 10 Nov 2008
Dogs are the only animals that can read emotion in faces much like humans, cementing their position as man's best friend, claim scientists.- Dogs have a sense of right and wrong
- Dogs 'may be able to read their owner's minds'
- Dogs display aspects of human intelligence
When humans look at a new face their eyes tend to wander left, falling on the right hand side of the person's face first.
This "left gaze bias" only occurs when we encounter faces and does not apply any other time, such as when inspecting animals or inanimate objects.
A possible reason for the tendency is that the right side of the human face is better at expressing emotional state.
Researchers at the University of Lincoln have now shown that pet dogs also exhibit "left gaze bias", but only when looking at human faces. No other animal has been known to display this behaviour before.
A team led by Dr Kun Guo showed 17 dogs images of human, dog and monkey faces as well as inanimate objects.
Film of the dogs' eye and head movement revealed a strong left gaze bias when the animals were presented with human faces. But this did not occur when they were shown other images, including those of dogs.
"Guo suggests that over thousands of generations of association with humans, dogs may have evolved the left gaze bias as a way to gauge our emotions," New Scientist magazine reported.
"Recent studies show that the right side of our faces can express emotions more accurately and more intensely than the left, including anger. If true, then it makes sense for dogs - and humans - to inspect the right hand side of a face first."
Surprisingly, when the dogs in the study were shown an upside-down human face, they still looked left. In contrast, humans lose their left gaze bias altogether when shown an inverted face.
This may be because the right side of a dog's brain, which processes information from the left visual field, is better adapted to interpreting human facial emotion than the left side, the scientists believe.
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Dogs have become more intelligent, and even learnt a sense of right and wrong, through spending time with humans, a study shows.
Although still controversial, recent research is beginning to support the view that an owner is perfectly correct when they pat their pet and coo "who's a clever boy then?"
Because of the way owners have selected smarter and more empathic dogs down the generations, these pets now appear to have a limited "theory of mind", the capacity that enables us to understand the desires, motivations and intentions of others, New Scientist reports today.
A decade ago, most scientists would dismiss the claims of dog owners that their precious pets could experience pain, excitement and other "human emotions" as sentimental claptrap that anthropomorphises the abilities of animals.
Now that dismissive view has been challenged by studies presented a few weeks ago at the first Canine Science Forum in Budapest, Hungary, which back the idea that the 10,000 years that the descendants of grey wolves have spent evolving alongside humans have had a remarkable effect on dog cognition.
In a remarkable experiment to probe canine cognition, Prof Ludwig Huber and colleagues at the University of Vienna put dogs through a classic experiment done with children in which an instructor demonstrates to a toddler how to turn off a light using her forehead, once with her hands clearly visible and once when wrapped in a shawl, so that she can't use them.
When invited to turn the light off for themselves, toddlers who were shown the first version use their heads, but those shown the second use their hands.
The standard interpretation is that the first group conclude that there must be a good but non-obvious reason for using the forehead method, as otherwise the instructor would have used her hands. Dogs do the same thing in Prof Huber's experiments, where they had to pull a lever to obtain a reward, lending support to the idea that dogs have a rudimentary "theory of mind."
They possess a moral compass too, in order to negotiate the complex social world of people, adds Prof Marc Bekoff from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
He argues that the fact that rough-and-tumble dog play rarely escalates into full-blown fighting shows that the animals abide by rules and expect others to do the same. In other words, they know right from wrong.
Dr Friederike Range from the University of Vienna, Austria, has found in experiments where one pooch was given a treat and another denied it that dogs possess a sense of fairness too, though she stresses that the data are not yet published.
"Dogs show some aversion to inequity," she says. "I prefer not to call it a sense of fairness, but others might."
Barking is rare among feral dogs, suggesting that it evolved during domestication to allow dogs to communicate with us, says Prof Péter Pongrácz from Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. His team has even found a way to use a computer program to understand what dogs are trying to tell us, and can disern whether a pet is barking at a ball, or wants to play with greater accuracy than their owners.
Akiko Takaoka from Kyoto University, Japan, played dogs recordings of unfamiliar voices - both male and female - with each voice followed by a photo of a human face on a screen. If the gender of the face did not match that of the voice, the dogs stared longer, a sign that the image did not match their expectations and yet more evidence that they have been honed to communicate with people.
Meanwhile, Dr Juliane Kaminski at the University of Cambridge has examined how dogs can use human gestures such as pointing and gazing to find hidden food or toys and concludes that dogs do understand that we are trying to tell them something. "Domestication seems to have shaped dogs in a way which enables them to use these gestures from as early as six weeks," she tells New Scientist.
and
Dogs 'may be able to read their owner's minds'
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 11:02PM GMT 10 Nov 2008
Comments 20 | Comment on this article
Evidence that dogs may be able to read the mind of their owners comes today with a study that shows that dogs can "catch" human yawns.
Scientists have known for decades that yawns are infectious among people, so much so that simply reading or thinking about them can trigger a chain reaction of gaping mouths in what they call "contagious yawning".
Yawns can spread in a similar way among chimpanzees and macaques too, though not among people with autism, and is thought to be linked with empathy and the ability to read the thoughts of another individual.
Now the first ever study to report that human yawns induce yawning in dogs is published today in the journal Biology Letters by a team led by Dr Atsushi Senju of Birkbeck College, University of London.
They presented 29 dogs with yawning humans and also with a control movement, where people just opened their mouths.
Even though a wide variety of breed was represented, such as Dobermans, Yorkshire Terriers, Dachshund, Spaniels, Labradors and more besides, they found that 21 of the dogs yawned in response, showing that "dogs possess the capacity for a rudimentary form of empathy."
This supports recent research, said Dr Senju. "Other studies also demonstrated that dogs follow human pointing, more likely to tell humans the location of hidden objects when they didn't see the object being hidden, and tend to steal food when the humans are looking away or closing their eyes."
The reason that dog and man are best friends is that they were domesticated 15,000 or more years ago when our ancestors started to produce more food than they could consume and befriended wolves, probably animals that liked to spend time in human company.
Fido's great-great-grandmother was a grey wolf who took more interest in humans than her peers did. Subsequent selection of those dogs that were more communicative and aware of human emotions probably helped them to be so empathic.
"As the dog's amazing skills to read human communication cues are thought to have been selected by human over last 15,000 years, it is also possible that the same evolutionary process affected their skills to empathise with humans," he said.
But he said more work must be done to prove this conjecture. "Another possibility is that contagious yawning (and possibly empathy) could be a more widespread characteristics among mammals."
The former explanation, that they are empathic, would back other work that shows that ill and elderly people do better with pets. "It is possible that such contagion coordinate the mood status between the dogs and humans. We may even feel like that "(my) dog understand my feelings" based on their contagious behaviour."
But surprisingly little is known about the mechanisms underlying this common expression of tedium, with some arguing it is a mere reflex and others that it shows we empathise with another person.
The yawn is primal, being present in a vast range of creatures: mammals and most other animals with backbones yawn as well as fish, turtles, crocodiles and birds. But the fundamental reason we yawn remains mysterious.
It does not always mean an individual is tired - it could help increase the state of alertness, may help keep the brain cool and is linked with being nervous too.
and
Dogs display aspects of human intelligence
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 6:51PM GMT 29 Nov 2007Training stimuli: Images of dogs and landscapes are used to test dogs' recognition of abstract concepts
Dog lovers have long claimed that their pets are smarter than many of us realise.
New evidence to back that view comes from research published today which concludes that, like us, our canine friends are able to form abstract concepts.
Friederike Range and colleagues from the University of Vienna, Austria, show for the first time that dogs are able to learn how to classify complex colour photographs and place them into categories in the same way that humans do.
"Dogs were for a long time considered to be just pets - so showing that they are able to also form abstract concepts maybe gives their cognitive abilities more credit," she said.
However, the abstract concept they were able to grasp in this pioneering experiment was rather familiar, that of "dog."
The team reports in the journal Animal Cognition a clever way to show that the dogs are not picking up subtle signals from their handlers: the dogs successfully demonstrate their learning through the use of computer touch-screens, eliminating potential human influences.
Four dogs were shown both landscape and dog photographs simultaneously and were rewarded with food if they selected the dog picture on the touch screen.
Then they were shown a new set of dog and landscape pictures. They continued to reliably select the dog photographs, demonstrating that they could transfer their knowledge gained in the training phase to a new circumstance, even though they had never seen those particular pictures before.
In a second test, the dogs were faced with a choice between a new dog pasted on a familiar landscape and a completely new landscape with no dog, In this case, they reliably selected the landscape with the dog.
"These results show that the dogs were able to form a concept, that is 'dog', although the experiment cannot tell us whether they recognized the dog pictures as actual dogs," said Dr Range.
"Using touch-screen computers with dogs opens up a whole world of possibilities on how to test the cognitive abilities of dogs."
The dogs that took part were a Border Collie (Maggie), one Border Collie mix (Lucy), one Australian Shepherd (Bertl), and one mongrel (Todor). Two dogs were male (Bertl, Todor), two were female (Maggie, Lucy).
In earlier work, the team showed striking similarities between humans and dogs in the way they imitate others, showing they do more than copy. They also interpet what they see.0 -
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I suggest reading the following, and googling for others;
It may have escaped your notice, but all your quoted articles (if not in the body of the article, then in the heading) are antropomorph-ing/-isizing in that they mix cold scientific facts with a uniquely human interpretation.
A typical doggy play invitation gesture now means that they have "souls"?
They can read our emotions and that makes them our "understanding best friends" ?
Having rules of engagement for inter-doggy play suddenly provides them with a "moral compass"?
The yawn one is the real killer! Yawning is a calming signal among dogs...when they get yawned at they'll yawn back ...but this article credits them with "mind reading" capabilities
The last one is just as much of a howler: Dogs can recognise the abstract shape of another dog ..whoopdeedoo, whaddasurprise ... but it's enough for the editor to credit them with "aspects of human intelligence" in the heading ...as if intelligence on its own wasn't good enough.
Which brings us neatly back to the reason why antropomorphisizing is wrong ...it discredits the dogs and all their wonderful capabilities because it only calls them wonderful if they can somehow be construed to be similar to ours.
Balls to that !0 -
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PeakOutput wrote: »my point was that everything you are saying and quoting is anthropomorphising the animals
mine too
and just to clarify: I am not disputing the scientific findings in the quoted articles, but I take umbrage with the way they are interpreted.0 -
It may have escaped your notice, but all your quoted articles (if not in the body of the article, then in the heading) are antropomorph-ing/-isizing in that they mix cold scientific facts with a uniquely human interpretation.
A typical doggy play invitation gesture now means that they have "souls"?
They can read our emotions and that makes them our "understanding best friends" ?
Having rules of engagement for inter-doggy play suddenly provides them with a "moral compass"?
The yawn one is the real killer! Yawning is a calming signal among dogs...when they get yawned at they'll yawn back ...but this article credits them with "mind reading" capabilities
The last one is just as much of a howler: Dogs can recognise the abstract shape of another dog ..whoopdeedoo, whaddasurprise ... but it's enough for the editor to credit them with "aspects of human intelligence" in the heading ...as if intelligence on its own wasn't good enough.
Which brings us neatly back to the reason why antropomorphisizing is wrong ...it discredits the dogs and all their wonderful capabilities because it only calls them wonderful if they can somehow be construed to be similar to ours.
Balls to that !
I think you're missing my points actually. And took the "soul" and "mind-reading" thing too literally
Of course they're not human. Of course they perceive things differently to humans. But generally when people anthropomorphise it's to degrade the intelligence of a beast and consider it just that-- a mindless beast.
My point is they do think, they do feel, they do have their own version of morals, they do relate to us and they do have emotions in a very similar and relatible way to our own that should not be discredited as "well they're only just an animal." They're not like other animals, they're the single animal that has evolved as a species to specifically to suit, communicate with, and understand us.
It's a stand against people who think they're just dumb animals who only do things for themselves and that they only stick around for food or other selfish reasons-- which is completely not true, look at all the horribly loyal and affectionate dogs who get starved and beaten by their owners. They're obviously not just in it for themselves, are they?0 -
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This, especially the last paragraph, shows clearly that you are totally seeing a dog in human terms.
yes, they stay loyal even to those who abuse them. Our dog Sandy loved her abusers so that they could nto see that they had abused her.
Because they, lik you, were interpreting her response as if she were a human and was assessing them, saying they were fine.
Dogs bond early to their owners; and from them on they have no choice. This is why we value them; they show unswerving devotion. Blindly, doggedly.
I had a pet goose that did the same; I had helped him hatch and he bonded to the first moving creature he saw. There was no chosen loyalty. It is programmed into them to do that for survival. Had it seen a cat or a dog that would have been theirs.
A dog is the same once it bonds; because it needs a protector in the unnatural world we have made for them.
It is survival
We choose; they do not.
And they do not have souls, or morals. Of any kind.
You are anthropomorthising 100 % here and it amazes.
I see your points; but again it is misinterpretation. Assessing in human terms.
Animals are capable of so much love; and maybe the opposite happens, that they pick up traits from us? I know pet lambs become much more acute and aware than wild ones.
And there are things about them that will always be a mystery.I think you're missing my points actually. And took the "soul" and "mind-reading" thing too literally
Of course they're not human. Of course they perceive things differently to humans. But generally when people anthropomorphise it's to degrade the intelligence of a beast and consider it just that-- a mindless beast.
My point is they do think, they do feel, they do have their own version of morals, they do relate to us and they do have emotions in a very similar and relatible way to our own that should not be discredited as "well they're only just an animal." They're not like other animals, they're the single animal that has evolved as a species to specifically to suit, communicate with, and understand us.
It's a stand against people who think they're just dumb animals who only do things for themselves and that they only stick around for food or other selfish reasons-- which is completely not true, look at all the horribly loyal and affectionate dogs who get starved and beaten by their owners. They're obviously not just in it for themselves, are they?0 -
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