April 7, 2011 • 38 mins
It's often said that dogs are man's best friend -- but does science support this claim? In this episode, Robert and Julie examine the science behind human-canine relationships. Tune in to learn whether or not your pooch is sincere.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
you know, Julie, the title of today's podcast is does
my dog really Love Me? Or something to that effects. Yeah,
(00:25):
we just nailed it down, but over forgot it. But
but the original title that I had pitched was your
dog doesn't love you? And we decided not to go
with that because, uh, it's it's a little anti dog
and I didn't want to come up with this dog
hating cat person. Well, and the jury is a little
bit out on that, right. Yeah, we can't definitively say
your dog doesn't love you, because there's some interesting data.
So I just want to point out that if you're
(00:46):
Josh Clark, you can apparently definitively say that dogs are
man's best friend and quote, even if you're strictly a
bona fied cat lover, it's nearly impossible not to be
moved by the brand of loyalty unique to dogs. That's
from Josh's How to Work's article um is Our Dogs
trully Man's Best Friends, which is worth reading but but,
but Josh has a bit of a thing and for cats.
(01:08):
I think he was licked by them as a child
or something. I think so too, he was afraid they
were going to steal his breath. Yeah, but but I
admit I I tend to side more with the with
the cat uh on the on the cat's side of
of the old dogs versus cat's argument. And I'm not
trying to stir up a big debate because I think
there's a lot of crossover between the affinity we have
for our animals and the the the the often ridiculous
(01:33):
ideas we get in our head about what they are
and what our relationship with him consists of. Oh, you're
talking about anthropomorphosizing, where we project all of our feelings
onto cat, dogs, sometimes a robot you name it. Yeah,
And there's but the interesting things, there's been a lot
of studies and exactly what's going on beyond beyond the
whole This dog is my child, this dog is my friend, um,
(01:56):
you know that they're There's been some actual studies into
what's going on in the brain when we inter act
with dogs. What's what's going on in the dog's brain
when it's interacting with us, and uh and and and
you know, there's no denying that these are amazing creatures.
And in the relationship they have with us is is
pretty bizarre. Uh and and and pretty incredible. They've You
(02:16):
have you have a a a species that just lives
throughout the world, often in luxurious environment. Well sometimes they're
not so luxurious environments. But but you have some dogs
that are really living well and and really benefiting from
from all the fruits of human culture without actually having
to do any work. Yeah, well, let me just spring
this little stat on you. According to the Nova documentary
(02:38):
Dogs Decoded, there are more pet dogs than babies in
the world, nearly half a billion. So yeah, of course
they've got their own clothes and furniture, and you know,
they've got their own little dinner plates. And according to
um Um The World Without Us author Alan Wiseman, if
humans civilization were to stop, tom most of these dogs
(03:01):
would just vanish, because it's it's we'll not vanished, you know,
like it's not like not like the you know, the
Second Coming and the Rapture and all that. But but
they would they would die out pretty because pretty steadily
in most cases, because they wouldn't be able to support themselves.
They wouldn't be able to feed themselves in the environment
like that depend on Yeah, they depended on us. I
mean likewise with the cats, most a lot of the
(03:21):
cats would die and others would just become feral because
we've created these these artificial environments and we've propped up
these these species and allow them to just run wild,
you know, around the world, even if running wild is
only in your living room, in your backyard, right right,
I mean we can't help it because we look at
these dogs, we look at puppies, and we instantly feel
a connection. Right. We already know that this is scientifically proven. Yes,
(03:44):
we've in fact, we've we've seen the release of oxytocin
in the brain when well in two cases. One when
we're just interacting with their dogs and we're making a
long gaze um eye interaction, which is like we lock eyes. Yeah.
There's a two thousand and nine um Japanese study and
they took fifty five dog owners, all right, they brought
(04:06):
them in and they had all the dog owners peanut
up and then they tested that sounds nice, tested the
urine for oxytocin levels, and then they put them in
the playroom, let them play with their dogs all right,
and then they observed how they're interacting with their pets.
Then the dog owners came back in and they took
another yearine sample um which I guess they had to
have a drink while they're in there playing with their dogs.
(04:27):
I don't think i'd be able to go twice like that.
And and and they were able. And they also had
a control group where some owners sat in a room
with their dog and we're told to completely avoid looking
at their animal. So uh so that that they found
that that there was a increase in oxytocin levels. And
the people who made long gaze eye contact with their dog,
(04:49):
that's where they're looking on average, you know, two and
a half minutes of eye contact during play. And uh
and and so the people were benefiting from this, from
this this relation ship. They're feeling really good about it.
It's mutually beneficial to them. And then also we should
talk a little bit about oxytocin. This is that feel
good hormone that is released and a lot of people
(05:10):
think about it more in the example of an infant
and its mother during the breastfeeding process, because that's when
oxytocin is released for for both um for both the
mom and the baby, and they're both feeling all lovey
dovey and content. And oxytocin is great because it's an
incredible stress reducer. And they have actually found that people
who are dog owners are less likely to have heart attacks.
(05:33):
And if they do have a heart attack and they
are a dog owner, they're three to four times more
likely to actually survive that heart attack. That's how powerful
oxytocin is and a possible reason why we feel such
a bond to our animals, in particular dogs. Now, of
course it's worth knowing that if you don't survive that
(05:53):
heart attack, dogs are cats will probably eat your feet.
But that's that just goes with the territory. Yeah, yeah,
a very at least lick them. Yeah, well it starts
with licking and then it becomes eating because they can't
help themselves. This is the situation where they just then
I'll go ferrell and yeah, and then then they go
they go ferrell in the living room. Yeah, they run around.
(06:14):
So you know, we know that the oxytocin and and
this sort of connection makes us want to cuddle and
care for them. And again and Nova's dogs decoded. There
was a section um in which they featured psychologists Morton Kringelbach,
and he put adults in a make scanner, which is
like a supercharged neuroimager, and then he showed them photos
(06:34):
of adult faces, infant faces, and puppy faces, nothing else,
just like the big face looming in the background or
without dark background. And what he found is that within
one seventh of a second, their orbital frontal cortex, which
is involved in emotional responses, started to light up. And
it showed activation only when people looked at infants and puppies,
(06:56):
not other adults. And he called this that the parent instinct. Yeah,
or it's I mean, it's basically the cute factor. It's
why people love like cute overload. It's why if you're
if you like Peter or somebody, you're gonna put a
baby seal on the cover of your your promotional material,
or a half naked woman. But but but in many
cases Green Piece or various organizations, you'll see that like
(07:19):
the white baby seal is the one to put on
because its face looks so much like an infant. You
look at cute cartoon characters and you can see like
the big eyes and the you know, in the small
head and in the various uh um, some measurements that
didn map up with a with a baby's face. Yeah.
And you've actually even mentioned this when we've talked about
robots and and having robots in the service industry, that
(07:43):
they're in Japan, that they've got the really super cute
looking robots that actually to us, look, you know us
here in the West look kind of creepy because it
does look like cartoon character giant robots. Um. But so yeah,
there's there's definitely something to that. Um. So, I mean,
there you go that the basis a very good scientific
basis for why we feel the way we do about dogs.
(08:06):
So Okay, we've got the bond with them, right, Um,
and we know from fossil records that we have a
really long history with dogs, right this, This didn't just
start up in the last hundred years. Yeah, yeah, no,
this is like a hundred thousand years ago. We can
we know that we started to hang out with them,
But why would we hook up with canine familiars anyway? Well,
the most immediate um answer that comes to mind is
(08:28):
that we're we're probably in a situation where we were
either competing with the wolves for food, or the wolf
or the wolves were food or both. And uh, and
after you've killed a whole bunch of the adult wolves,
you might find all these little baby, cuddly wolves, all right,
and you go there and your first instinct, well, you
probably have two competing instincts. One is, hey, let's fry
(08:49):
these puppies up because there because because the tribe is hungry,
and these look delicious. But then on the other hand,
they look kind of like human babies. So it's your
belly is full and your bellies full, and they're harmed.
They're unlike the adult wolves you just strangled to death
on the primeval plane, you know, or you know, are
beat to death with a stone. Um. These things aren't
(09:10):
attacking you. There may be licking your hand, and that
they look cute. So you've been like, all right, let's
take these back to the camp and play with them
for a little bit. Yeah, and so this and then
this sort of bond could have developed. And then all obviously,
wolves we know are the closest relative to dogs, right,
so at some point dogs separated from wolves. Um, so
(09:32):
it's very likely that we began to see the wharf
and having these little pups around that then became really
good hunters along with us. And if you look at
dog domestication, which happened around fift years ago, that's about
the same time that we quit doing the whole nomadic
hunter gatherer thing and switched over to being a grarian's
(09:53):
so you know, then we're much more localized and it
makes sense to have a dog around that can help
you hunt. That's really fat us inefficient with with their
own food consumption and how they use it as fuel, right,
so they don't have to eat a whole lot themselves
and they can guard right, right, and that in turn
makes us much more successful as a species, right and
(10:14):
you can and uh, it's also worth noting that there's
a show on Discovery and BBC called Human Planet, and
it's a great example of this whole um hunting and
then raising the young kind of situation with the Owa
Guagi Guaga people of the eastern Amazon, and they hunt
and kill monkeys, which they eat and they make them
(10:36):
do a delicious looking stewins. Well that's I don't know
about eating brains, but they're definitely stewing up some monkeys.
But then they'll bring the baby monkeys back to camp
and they'll they'll not only raise them as pets, but
in some cases they'll actually breastfeed the really young baby
monkeys um, which is you know, even more than more
oxy uh toastin released into the system through that. But
(10:58):
but it's an interesting it's such an interesting glimpse into
how humans work. Just the idea that you could on
one hand kill and eat this particular species, but then
also raise it up as a pet. And then they
in this case, they don't actually eat um eat the
monkeys that they raise pets, so there's a difference there.
But but then you have situations, I mean, clearly you
have people who are really attached to baby goats that
(11:21):
may grow up to be become a food source. So
that you see plenty of examples in human culture where
where there's even this divide between the baby and the
edible adult, it will become right. Yeah, And just to
go back to oxytocin again, and I have read this
before that it's it's actually pretty addictive um apparently for
for new moms, and then it does give you a
(11:42):
big rush. So it's sort of interesting that you know,
you see those instances of surrogate um breastfeeding happening like
like a wet nurse is could be an oxytocin addict.
Really yeah, yeah, I mean you think it is an
altruistic doct but you have to wonder, you know, if
they're just doing it for the rush. So maybe you know,
this is completely unproven, but but maybe the situation was
(12:04):
we domesticated um dogs and are working on monkeys because
you have, like you have these these oxytocin addicted nurse
maids who are running wild through the woods and give
me some puppies. Let me breastfeed some puppies, you know,
because I gotta get that rush. Wow, I'm saying, like
this pulp fiction movie like set fift years ago, I'm yeah,
thinking about Darryl Hannah now as as a crazy wit nurse.
(12:27):
This is not good. Yeah, and we gotta get back. Yeah,
that's totally unproven. Do not use that as an answer.
We gotta get back your students. Yeah. But but then
another reason that we would hang out with canines and
domesticate them is their sense of smell, which again would
help with hunting um and in fact, cancers apparently have
a smell that dogs can be trained to detect according
(12:48):
to a growing body of research. Um and actually they've
had some small trials which have shown canines capable of
detecting melanoma in a person's skin and lung and breast
cancers by chemical que was in the person's breath. The trick,
according to Auburn University veterinarian Larry Myers, is the ability
of dogs to smell the multiple layers of chemicals. So
(13:09):
it's so much more nuanced and sophisticated rather than the
way that we detect smells. They've they've got a lot
more parts to their system, so to speak. So all
of this adds up to the fact that we that
that dogs have definitely helped us to become successful and
our survival and and certainly dogs themselves have become very
successful in their survival right. And it's it's interesting to
(13:31):
to look at, Okay, just on the surface things. Dogs
definitely have emotion, whether whether or not they can there's
this thing called love, and they can feel it. That's
that's a different issue. But but definitely emotion is it
has evolved as an adaptation and numerous species. Uh. It
bonds animals to one another. It catalyzes and regulates a
(13:52):
wide variety of social encounters among both friends and competitors,
and it permits animals to protect themselves adaptively. And with
the dogs that the curious thing is that dogs have
are much more social and say cats because I mean,
like my cat doesn't want any part of another cat
except to chase them off and uh, and they're just
(14:12):
not social for some reason. It may want to live
with she man want to live with humans. But the
heck with all the cats, dogs however, much more social.
They have a much more social mind and uh. And
therefore there's this they have this whole alpha uh situation
where one alpha can dominate the others and there's this
dominant and passive thing in there. And then the way
they behave so we've been able to interject ourselves into
(14:35):
their into this this uh, this this system where we
can eat where we either become the dominant master of
the dogs or we become this thing that the dog
is possessive of. Um, which is generally not the ideal situation,
but you see it all the time. Yeah, and that's
interesting again to draw those parallels and see how we
are more alike than different than dogs in the sense
(14:57):
that we are really social creatures, and certainly fifteen years
ago we were you know, carnivorous. Um, not all of
us are now, but and we really relied on hunting. Yeah.
So same thing with dogs, right, Yeah, you had this
suddenly this dogs like growing up among people, and there's
this this guy and he's like saying, hey, I'm the
pack leader. Let's go catch ourselves some food, and the
(15:18):
dogs like, yeah, I'm game for that. That's totally what
I've evolved to do. So let's yeah, let's let's make
it happen. And by the wather like thirty of you guys,
five of us. Yeah, you guys have the clubs, you
can be the pack master. Fine, you know so part
of it is like you kind of wonder how much
the dogs are going along in their own survival. Yeah,
and then you you get into all this uh, this,
this these other weird areas who were like you take
(15:39):
a dog's natural hunting instinct and then you you you
kind of perverted over the over the ages to to
create say a hurting animal where you're like saying, hey,
you guys are really good at catching these animals, but
let's work on you not killing them, but just moving
them around, uh, in exactly the place I want them
to be, right, yeah, when you're talking you gent x right,
(16:01):
yeah yeah, so yeah, I mean actually eugenics became pretty
popular in nineteenth century Europe, right, So there's this drive
to perfect and design our environments, including pets, and of
course you have this sort of newish technology too, and eugenics, um,
so they applied that to dogs through selective breeding. So
you're like, in the scenario you were talking about, that's
(16:21):
like a border collie, right, um. And so this allowed
us to to basically breed out traits and breeding traits
as you said, and and and you know, of course
now we have our little tiny um toy poodles and
every from that to like a mastiff, right, and you
can take everything in between and sort of mush it
up and see which you can get. So it is
(16:42):
amazing to think that right now, um, of dog breeds
are modern breeds that we created. So that's four hundred
genetically distinct dog breeds. This presentation is brought to you
by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow. So in many of these cases,
(17:07):
we are breeding, selectively breeding animals to encourage particular traits
that that allow them to perform a task, and as
those tasks disappear, we end up then in breeding them
selectively to encourage physical traits that we identify with that
particular breed. Right, so you have like situations like with boxers,
(17:28):
where you no longer actually need boxers to perform the
task they were bred for, and instead you just breathe
them to look even more and more like a cartoon
character of themselves in the ring. Yeah, and then there's
the there's the whole the longer the ring. Um. I
believe they were used to control cattle and like, I
think it's like slaughterhouse situation. Um, so we have robots
(17:51):
for that now, So instead you're just like, hey, let's
breed them, make them look funny and stand on the
side of a football field. Likewise, even with with with
the with with sheep herding dog, like my my family
has a as a herding dog and they don't have
sheep or anything. So the dog just loves to run
around and barket trees and attempt to herd things like
tractors or or branches in a tree or hawks flying overhead,
(18:16):
and and you just think, wow, we've really screwed this
one up. We we we've we've we've taken this animal's
natural hunting instinct turned it into something that benefits us
and then say all right, we're eliminating that job. But
you guys stick around and uh and just go crazy. Yeah,
And that's actually where the problem comes in, right, because
I mean, you know, it sounds like in this scenario,
at least your dog can go out and hang out
(18:38):
in the yard, but some of those types of dogs
are you know, confined to apartments and they just go
run and running circles and basically then the next thing
you know, they're on zoloft. So um. But what allows
us to do this to to breed these traits is
that they have such a great plasticity of jeans, and
it takes just twenty five years to create some sort
of breed that you want, which, if you've get evolutionary terms,
(19:01):
is like supercharged evolution in a sense, right. Um. And
there's actually a good example of this is a dog
called the dogo Argentino and it has something like, you know,
twelve different breeds that they tinkered with over two and
a half decades to create the perfect dog that could
take down wild boars. Without killing the boars, but could
(19:23):
also hang out with kids, you know, and be all cuddly. Wow,
that was an interesting checklist when they were putting that
one together. It's like, I needed to be able to
take down a boar, but I wanted to hang out
with my kid too. Yeah, And in twenty five years
and and and and taking everything from like a mastiff too.
I think there was actually, um, maybe a bull terrier
in there somewhere in the mix, and just tinkering around
(19:45):
with it, and then finally they had something that Again,
this was helping them at the time because they really
didn't have this wild boar problem that was eating all
the crops, and so they wanted to take them down
without killing them. And this was a good solution. But
it's also a little bit frightening to that we could
do this to such a degree, right, hence the eugenics part,
which you know, that's a whole other two sides to
(20:07):
the eugenics coin for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And then of
course the other problem with this, or you know, a
problem in the sense when it's not used, um perhaps
with the best of ethical intentions, is when you have
someone who's a disreputable breeder who is continuing to breed
so aggressively that there are a lot of defects that
(20:29):
the dog might be born with. Right do you end
up with in some cases a genetic neurological problems? Um, Like,
for instance, there's the whole feigning goat thing. Um if
you're anyone familiar with the feigning goat, these are goats
that they just happened to uh through breathing. They have
this neurological condition where they'll you'll frighten them and they'll
fall over. And for a number of reasons, people decided
(20:53):
that the breeders decided, hey, let's keep let's keep this.
This is a good trait to having a dog, even
though it's it's not really i mean, in a goat,
even though it's not really good trait. And there are
some but there are some breeds of dogs that have
similar conditions just because they've been they've been they've been
this sort of narrow branch on the tree as they've
continually bread to encourage various various traits that are part
(21:17):
of that breed. Yeah. So, I mean, there's there's a
lot going on here that can actually tell us about
ourselves too. Of course, we always as humans figure out
how we can get some data off of you know,
other scenarios and so if there are certain diseases and dogs,
like the boxer genome has been decoded, so that's been
really helpful and saying, okay, on this marker we find
this disease, let's now flip over to the human genome
(21:39):
and see if we can find it there and see
what it can tell us about this disease. So that's
actually helpful. Yeah, So okay, so we know this, we
know about the genics part, we know why we hooked
up with them. But my question is, you know, how
well do dogs really know us and how well do
we actually know them? Is their data there? You know,
our our dogs at good as reading our emotions as
(22:00):
we think they are. Well, it's interesting that they can
definitely communicate with us that they are a that I
mean not every species can do this. Um. For instance,
you have the case of Chaser, the border collie from
Spartan Bird, South Carolina that apparently knows A thousand and
twenty two perhaps more. Now, who knows this is? I
think this article is from like a year ago. A
(22:21):
thousand and twenty two nouns um and and it can
also identify verbs like like the owner was able to
teach it to understand commands like fetch ball, fetch frisbee,
fetch it all and and and it was understanding both
the verb and the noun. So that's I mean, that's
that's pretty amazing. And she knew categories to right, yes,
like you know, she knew like the balls, the toys
(22:43):
and so on and so forth, so she could be
directed even at a greater level. And then from what
I remember to in that article, the owner had worked
with her for like five to six hours a day,
repeating words sometimes forty times, like a new word forty
times every which is insane. And if you think about
this too, um, we as humans learned something like ten
(23:07):
new words a day until we reach I believe, the
twelfth grade, in which case we then have something like
sixty thousand words at our disposal. That here's this border
collie getting forty new words a day to our ten
words a day. So that is actually a a particularly
strange situation. This is, you know, most dogs know something
(23:27):
around the order of a hundred and fifty words. Yeah,
but but then again, six like six hours a day
with this uh, with this old dude in his apartment. Yeah.
You know, it's like if if I was stuck with
him and he was coaching me on vocabulary, I'm sure
I would learn all these fabulous new words. And I know,
I know, I think we all should just go spend
a week with them. Um. But the other thing about dogs,
(23:48):
and this is something that's been proven out, is that
they really have learned to read our emotions. Uh. And
and this is was found again in the Nova Dogs
Decoded documentary. Uh. What they said is that when humans
spress emotions, they do so asymmetrically. And what that means
is if I express anger or joy, if you if
you go down the middle of my face and cut
(24:08):
it in half and and examine it, you'll see that
it's not symmetrical in the way that I expressed those emotions.
So one part of my face is gonna be different
than the other. Okay, it's not going to be, of course,
like too crazy looking. It's it's pretty nuanced, like like
whatever the face is when like if you smile on
one side of your face and frown on the other,
you're talking like even a normal what we might on
(24:28):
the surface think of as a normal smile is still
not a completely symmetrical Yeah, what looks cohesive really isn't.
Um So, and that's that's again, that's such a nuanced thing.
But what they did is they said, Okay, for humans,
when we're looking at the emotions, are reading emotions, we
start on the left hand side, and then we got
left to right, so we have a left hand bias.
So what they did is they want to see if
(24:49):
dogs did the same thing. So low and behold. They
put them in front of a screen and they watched
the dog's reactions. They filmed the dog, and they saw
that the dogs did the same thing. They went from
left to right, although when dogs look at each other,
they do not read from left to right. And as
far as they know, dogs are the only species that
can read human emotions in that way and the way
(25:10):
that we do. So they know they know that, like
this is how you read a human space. You have
to look left or right. Yeah, yeah, in order to
to pick up on the nuance of okay, well that's
the emotion that I think that is being expressed by
my owner right now, which is really pretty interesting. Um So, again,
there's this idea that dogs have evolved to read a
human space and that that makes dogs understand us in
(25:33):
a way that other species don't. And again hence the
bomb that we feel with them, that they can actually
feel our emotions. Um. And they also respond to gestural
cues like pointing yes though it's it's it's interesting that
there was a study UM from the Department of Comparative
and Developmental Psychology at the the map Plank Institute for
(25:53):
Revolutionary Anthropology in Germany Max Plank. Yeah, they have, they've
come out before UM where they looked at a ra
tional and rational acts UM. Here like, here's the example
you have in human infants and a mother. Like if
the mother is is say, I don't know turning on
the coffee maker, we know, well, I guess nothing to pay. Well,
(26:13):
we're gonna roll with this analogy, all right. So the
baby sees the mom using her hand to turn on
the coffee maker, all right, and then that they'll on
some mobile connect and say that's that's a good use
of that hand. That's irrational use. But and then they
see the mother, well, say, with an armload of clothing,
she doesn't have a free hand, but she needs to
turn on the coffee maker. So she uses her forehead
to do it or knows I don't know. Um, and
(26:35):
then the child will be like, all right, we'll give
them this situation. That makes total sense. But if the
if the mother were to walk in with nothing in
her hands too free hands, and then reached over and
turned on the coffee maker where there with her forehead
or nose, that the child would not see this as irrational.
That's coconuts. Yeah, but the dog, there's no coconuts with
with the dog. The dog would just accept either act.
(26:56):
There's no difference between irrational and irrational. Okay, So that's
a case in which we might be projecting ourselves onto
whether or not a dog can can make those sort
of judgments, right, I mean, and another thing is the
whole like, oh my dog did something bad and uh
and and and now he's sorry or she's she's sorry
a little catter, she's so ashamed of herself. But that's
(27:17):
just a submissive behavior. They're not really ashamed of anything.
There was an interesting study into that that was actually
profiled on the Radio Lab episode Animal Minds, which is
a good listen for more of a broader animal emotional
uh um thing and uh and but but you had
these people that you know, we're claiming all my dog
thinks that thinks it did something bad. He knows it
(27:39):
did something bad, and that's why it's ashamed. But they
found that that that that dogs in a control group
would behave the same way even if there had been
no mischief in the living room, um et cetera. Yeah,
and that's why animal behavior is so tricky, right, because
you've got the whole fact that your dog is so
tuned into you that you can't help but think that
the dog is with you in lockstep and the way
(28:01):
that you're thinking and acting. And in fact, that they
called the Clever Hans effect. And Clever Hans was actually
a horse in the nineteen hundreds that could use his
hoof to count um and answer mathematical questions. And he
was just like the star of the animal world. Right,
everybody was astounded by his knowledge. But a psychologist picked
(28:21):
up on the fact that the horse answered correctly only
when the questioner knew the answer. So what was happening
is that the horse would count up until the point
in which they observed that the questioner began to relax
when when when they had read when clever Hans had
reached the correct number. And again it's that that nuance
of being able to read body language and say, okay
(28:44):
that the human is fine, Now this must be the
right answer and all quit you know, stomping my hoof.
So they've they've talked about that with dogs as well.
Is that, you know, there's there's that fine line of
you know, how much is the dog just trying to
read your your um emotions and your your gestures as
opposed to really cogitating. Yeah, there's it's like there's this
(29:06):
fiction we create with this with this dog, is this
friend or this this this child in our lives? And uh,
but the animals participating in this fiction as well. And
I find that really fascinating. I mean, it's not I
don't think it it downplays the what's amazing about the relationship.
But but it's it's it's kind of like blind men
(29:28):
and elephants, or one is touching one part of the
elephant and the others touch in the other and they
both have certain ideas about what's going on, but neither
one is the correct. Uh, neither one is the the
the actual image of the elephant. Well, and we we've
talked about symbiosis before, right, and parasites, and this reminds
me of that this is sort of like the mutually
beneficial parasitic relationship, right right. I mean, your your dog
(29:51):
is pretty much like, well, you know, I'm sure that
your dog gives you a lot of love or perceived love,
but your dog is really kind of you know, just
hanging out on your couch, eating your food, watching your TV. Uh,
not necessarily contributing to the household income, right right, but
but maybe participating to your feeling of of of of
(30:14):
of safety in your house, or or elevating your emotions.
So there, I mean there's a different benefit. Maybe it's
barking at strangers, or if you're really on the ball,
maybe it actually does work around the house overthing you
have like seeing eye dogs and helper animals, where there's
a definite case to be made for this. This and
this symbiotic relationship is really um, you know, working on
(30:35):
all cylinders. Yeah, and see, I think that the two
are so entangled. That's really hard to look at this
and say, you know, is there a definitive love or
you know or not? Right? And what complicates it is
the way that we actually react to dogs as well. Uh.
Dr Adam mcclowsky, at a research center in Hungary recorded
(30:56):
six different scenarios in which a dog was barking. And
this isn't parton because dog barks, we often hear and
then we think, oh, the dog is feeling this way
or that way. And so what he had observed a
lot of humans saying, oh, well, my dog does this
mewing sound or actually it's like a cat, right, but
this complaining kind of whiney sound. You know, she's she's
hungry or so on and so forth. So he wanted
(31:18):
to see if he could actually corroborate that. So he
had these six different scenarios in which a dog was barking,
and a couple examples is as you actually mentioned, is
um barking at the door, barking at the gate when
they're a stranger approached, and he recorded that bark. And
then another example was when the owner put the dog
on a leash and then left the dog and the
(31:39):
dog started barking as to say, you know, don't leave
or whatnot. And he took these six different recordings and
played them for dog owners, not the dog owners that
the dogs are attached to but totally random dog owners,
and those dog owners could, almost without fail, each time, say, oh,
I can you know I think that that dog is
(32:01):
going to be lonely, or that dog wants to play fetch,
but someone is withholding the ball. I mean, they got
it really very you know, these specific details right, which
amazed him that they could map the emotion to the bark,
which begs the question, are we so now like fine
tuned with them that we're reading their cues just as
(32:21):
much as they're reading ours. It's kind of like it's say,
it's kind of like we're both actors in a play
and we've both forgotten that it's a play. It's an
imperfect metaphor. But no, no, I'm going with it. I'm
going with it. Um. Yeah, you're like Dustin Hoffman, and
for weeks after when your roles you continue to to
act as though you're autistic. Yeah, that's right. You argue
(32:44):
that he never got over the rain Man thing. Now,
I know, I think it comes out in spurts sometimes.
I mean, it was a fine performance, don't get me wrong,
but anyway to to your knowledge, so, I don't know
that it gets us to this point where we can't
definitively say does your dog actually love you? We know
there's a lot of oxytose in flowing. Yeah, the the
the naturally generated drugs in our body kind of complicate things.
(33:07):
But yeah, but that can be said pretty much everything
that we do. Yeah, And on a personal level, I
can say that my my my dog Ted, I certainly
loved she was a wonderful dog, and I felt that
way to her. And I think as a child even
read to her. I loved her so much. Did she
pick up anything? Were you able to? No? She was?
She was no clever Hans or what was the other
(33:30):
dog's name, chase Er? She was. Yeah. Now there's that.
There's that cat that writes mystery novels with its owner.
I forget the author's name. Oh my goodness. That is
probably the best case of ampomorphization I've ever. I wish
I could remember her name. I have not read any
of her work, but if I remember correctly, she used
to write like kind of saucy literature. Of course, and
(33:50):
then suddenly she did she started writing, and then she
started writing mystery novels with her cat, and and has
continued ever since. Been a great one of those great
literary partnerships. So yeah, there you go. Well, hey, you know,
I think I have a little listener mail here. Let's
see what we have. Ah. Yes, both of these are
related to our Germ Free Dirty Hippies episode which recently
(34:13):
went live. Um first we heard from Luke, and Luke writes, Hey,
Julian Robert, I just listened to the Germ Free Dirty
Hippies episode. You guys touched on the idea that of
not using shampoo. I wanted to let you know that
I haven't used Sam shampoo since November seventeen, two thousand seven,
and my hair has never been healthier. I used to
have lots of dandruff and a very since their scalp.
(34:33):
Now my hair looks healthy, doesn't itch, isn't oily, and
doesn't smell. It got really oily for the first three
weeks or so of not using shampoo, but then it
seemed to balance out. I have so much shorter hair,
and it's about two inches long on top, so I'm
sure this makes it easier than if I had had
really long hair. I know some people who don't use
shampoo rents it out every so often with a mix
of apple cider, vinegar and water. I'm not sure what
(34:54):
this does. Maybe it helps, uh get rid of oil. Anyway,
I've never thanked YouTube for the awesome show, so I
thought i'd take this opportunity to write in and say
thanks for making me smarter. Well, if you're welcome, that's stuff.
That's great. Yeah, and actually we've got a lot of
anecdotal evidence about this, I would say, if you can
call it evidence. And um, it was actually really hurtening.
(35:15):
I was like, wow, people are really it's not just me.
Who's who's interested in this shampoo question. Yeah, I've cut down.
I'm going like two days at a time without actually
shampooing my hair. Her coat looks very shiny, I mean
in a good way. Look, well that I also had
bacon this morning. You know, well that'll do. That's a
machine they can do. But um oh, and we also
(35:35):
have another email. This one is from Thomas, and Thomas
writes in about this and uh, this is a rather
long email, so I'm just gonna read part of it.
He says. Anyway, let's just say that in the past
twelve months, I've probably used shampoo maybe six or seven times.
Until two weeks ago, I had a use shampoo and
probably six months. Generally speaking, I only use shampoo if
I go to the beach or swimming a heavily chlorinated pool,
(35:57):
though I do use condition about once a month. Let
me just say my hair is a gorgeous That's probably
the most narcissistic sentence the twenty year old male can either.
But it is random. Women, that's right, plural have stopped
me just to say, hey, I've seen you around the
office and I just wanted to say, I don't know
what you do, but you have gorgeous hair. Well, I
think we both can can relate to that absolutely. Yeah,
(36:20):
get it in the break room all the time. Yeah,
Jerry had to lock the door to keep the women
out the otherwise they'd be in here complimenting us on
our hair right now anyway, um Thomas continues, you can't
imagine the speed with which a human face can transition
to object horror. When I quote how long it's been
since I've used shampoo, it's quite a site. The worst
part of terminating your relationship with shampoo is the first
two months or so. During that two month period, your
(36:43):
scalp seems to freak out and overproduce oils lots of
warm showers and scalp massaging, like Julie mentioned, help a
great deal, but it's still kind of grows there. You go,
that's the secret to healthy hair. Yeah, so you know,
if you have any more anecdotes of your own experiences
going with the No Pooh method of hair care, UM,
(37:04):
let us know. I mean, we can't. That's short for shampoose.
Anybody's confused about that. Um, if you have any other
No Pooh situations, let us know about that. We're always
game for scatological content. Uh and uh and uh. And
if you have anything to add about this dog episode,
let us know. I'm sure, I'm I know that a
number of you were dog owners and uh and and
(37:25):
if you're like me as a cat owner, then you
you probably spend a lot of time just trying to
figure out this weird situation in which a furry quadruped
lives in your home, sleeps on your bed and uh
and we act like it's the most normal thing in
the world. It's not. It's pretty weird. And you occasionally
dressed up as a pirate. I mean that's yeah, they
want to hear about that. Yes, So so let us know.
(37:47):
It's it's fascinating and uh uh, and I'm curious to
see what everybody's in particular thoughts on it are. You
can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. We're blow
the Mind on both of those, and you can drop
us a line at blow the Mind at how stuff
works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To learn
(38:09):
more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in
the upper right corner of our homepage. The How Stuff
Works iPhone app has a RYE. Download it today on iTunes.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
you know, Julie, the title of today's podcast is does
my dog really Love Me? Or something to that effects. Yeah,
(00:25):
we just nailed it down, but over forgot it. But
but the original title that I had pitched was your
dog doesn't love you? And we decided not to go
with that because, uh, it's it's a little anti dog
and I didn't want to come up with this dog
hating cat person. Well, and the jury is a little
bit out on that, right. Yeah, we can't definitively say
your dog doesn't love you, because there's some interesting data.
So I just want to point out that if you're
(00:46):
Josh Clark, you can apparently definitively say that dogs are
man's best friend and quote, even if you're strictly a
bona fied cat lover, it's nearly impossible not to be
moved by the brand of loyalty unique to dogs. That's
from Josh's How to Work's article um is Our Dogs
trully Man's Best Friends, which is worth reading but but,
but Josh has a bit of a thing and for cats.
(01:08):
I think he was licked by them as a child
or something. I think so too, he was afraid they
were going to steal his breath. Yeah, but but I
admit I I tend to side more with the with
the cat uh on the on the cat's side of
of the old dogs versus cat's argument. And I'm not
trying to stir up a big debate because I think
there's a lot of crossover between the affinity we have
for our animals and the the the the often ridiculous
(01:33):
ideas we get in our head about what they are
and what our relationship with him consists of. Oh, you're
talking about anthropomorphosizing, where we project all of our feelings
onto cat, dogs, sometimes a robot you name it. Yeah,
And there's but the interesting things, there's been a lot
of studies and exactly what's going on beyond beyond the
whole This dog is my child, this dog is my friend, um,
(01:56):
you know that they're There's been some actual studies into
what's going on in the brain when we inter act
with dogs. What's what's going on in the dog's brain
when it's interacting with us, and uh and and and
you know, there's no denying that these are amazing creatures.
And in the relationship they have with us is is
pretty bizarre. Uh and and and pretty incredible. They've You
(02:16):
have you have a a a species that just lives
throughout the world, often in luxurious environment. Well sometimes they're
not so luxurious environments. But but you have some dogs
that are really living well and and really benefiting from
from all the fruits of human culture without actually having
to do any work. Yeah, well, let me just spring
this little stat on you. According to the Nova documentary
(02:38):
Dogs Decoded, there are more pet dogs than babies in
the world, nearly half a billion. So yeah, of course
they've got their own clothes and furniture, and you know,
they've got their own little dinner plates. And according to
um Um The World Without Us author Alan Wiseman, if
humans civilization were to stop, tom most of these dogs
(03:01):
would just vanish, because it's it's we'll not vanished, you know,
like it's not like not like the you know, the
Second Coming and the Rapture and all that. But but
they would they would die out pretty because pretty steadily
in most cases, because they wouldn't be able to support themselves.
They wouldn't be able to feed themselves in the environment
like that depend on Yeah, they depended on us. I
mean likewise with the cats, most a lot of the
(03:21):
cats would die and others would just become feral because
we've created these these artificial environments and we've propped up
these these species and allow them to just run wild,
you know, around the world, even if running wild is
only in your living room, in your backyard, right right,
I mean we can't help it because we look at
these dogs, we look at puppies, and we instantly feel
a connection. Right. We already know that this is scientifically proven. Yes,
(03:44):
we've in fact, we've we've seen the release of oxytocin
in the brain when well in two cases. One when
we're just interacting with their dogs and we're making a
long gaze um eye interaction, which is like we lock eyes. Yeah.
There's a two thousand and nine um Japanese study and
they took fifty five dog owners, all right, they brought
(04:06):
them in and they had all the dog owners peanut
up and then they tested that sounds nice, tested the
urine for oxytocin levels, and then they put them in
the playroom, let them play with their dogs all right,
and then they observed how they're interacting with their pets.
Then the dog owners came back in and they took
another yearine sample um which I guess they had to
have a drink while they're in there playing with their dogs.
(04:27):
I don't think i'd be able to go twice like that.
And and and they were able. And they also had
a control group where some owners sat in a room
with their dog and we're told to completely avoid looking
at their animal. So uh so that that they found
that that there was a increase in oxytocin levels. And
the people who made long gaze eye contact with their dog,
(04:49):
that's where they're looking on average, you know, two and
a half minutes of eye contact during play. And uh
and and so the people were benefiting from this, from
this this relation ship. They're feeling really good about it.
It's mutually beneficial to them. And then also we should
talk a little bit about oxytocin. This is that feel
good hormone that is released and a lot of people
(05:10):
think about it more in the example of an infant
and its mother during the breastfeeding process, because that's when
oxytocin is released for for both um for both the
mom and the baby, and they're both feeling all lovey
dovey and content. And oxytocin is great because it's an
incredible stress reducer. And they have actually found that people
who are dog owners are less likely to have heart attacks.
(05:33):
And if they do have a heart attack and they
are a dog owner, they're three to four times more
likely to actually survive that heart attack. That's how powerful
oxytocin is and a possible reason why we feel such
a bond to our animals, in particular dogs. Now, of
course it's worth knowing that if you don't survive that
(05:53):
heart attack, dogs are cats will probably eat your feet.
But that's that just goes with the territory. Yeah, yeah,
a very at least lick them. Yeah, well it starts
with licking and then it becomes eating because they can't
help themselves. This is the situation where they just then
I'll go ferrell and yeah, and then then they go
they go ferrell in the living room. Yeah, they run around.
(06:14):
So you know, we know that the oxytocin and and
this sort of connection makes us want to cuddle and
care for them. And again and Nova's dogs decoded. There
was a section um in which they featured psychologists Morton Kringelbach,
and he put adults in a make scanner, which is
like a supercharged neuroimager, and then he showed them photos
(06:34):
of adult faces, infant faces, and puppy faces, nothing else,
just like the big face looming in the background or
without dark background. And what he found is that within
one seventh of a second, their orbital frontal cortex, which
is involved in emotional responses, started to light up. And
it showed activation only when people looked at infants and puppies,
(06:56):
not other adults. And he called this that the parent instinct. Yeah,
or it's I mean, it's basically the cute factor. It's
why people love like cute overload. It's why if you're
if you like Peter or somebody, you're gonna put a
baby seal on the cover of your your promotional material,
or a half naked woman. But but but in many
cases Green Piece or various organizations, you'll see that like
(07:19):
the white baby seal is the one to put on
because its face looks so much like an infant. You
look at cute cartoon characters and you can see like
the big eyes and the you know, in the small
head and in the various uh um, some measurements that
didn map up with a with a baby's face. Yeah.
And you've actually even mentioned this when we've talked about
robots and and having robots in the service industry, that
(07:43):
they're in Japan, that they've got the really super cute
looking robots that actually to us, look, you know us
here in the West look kind of creepy because it
does look like cartoon character giant robots. Um. But so yeah,
there's there's definitely something to that. Um. So, I mean,
there you go that the basis a very good scientific
basis for why we feel the way we do about dogs.
(08:06):
So Okay, we've got the bond with them, right, Um,
and we know from fossil records that we have a
really long history with dogs, right this, This didn't just
start up in the last hundred years. Yeah, yeah, no,
this is like a hundred thousand years ago. We can
we know that we started to hang out with them,
But why would we hook up with canine familiars anyway? Well,
the most immediate um answer that comes to mind is
(08:28):
that we're we're probably in a situation where we were
either competing with the wolves for food, or the wolf
or the wolves were food or both. And uh, and
after you've killed a whole bunch of the adult wolves,
you might find all these little baby, cuddly wolves, all right,
and you go there and your first instinct, well, you
probably have two competing instincts. One is, hey, let's fry
(08:49):
these puppies up because there because because the tribe is hungry,
and these look delicious. But then on the other hand,
they look kind of like human babies. So it's your
belly is full and your bellies full, and they're harmed.
They're unlike the adult wolves you just strangled to death
on the primeval plane, you know, or you know, are
beat to death with a stone. Um. These things aren't
(09:10):
attacking you. There may be licking your hand, and that
they look cute. So you've been like, all right, let's
take these back to the camp and play with them
for a little bit. Yeah, and so this and then
this sort of bond could have developed. And then all obviously,
wolves we know are the closest relative to dogs, right,
so at some point dogs separated from wolves. Um, so
(09:32):
it's very likely that we began to see the wharf
and having these little pups around that then became really
good hunters along with us. And if you look at
dog domestication, which happened around fift years ago, that's about
the same time that we quit doing the whole nomadic
hunter gatherer thing and switched over to being a grarian's
(09:53):
so you know, then we're much more localized and it
makes sense to have a dog around that can help
you hunt. That's really fat us inefficient with with their
own food consumption and how they use it as fuel, right,
so they don't have to eat a whole lot themselves
and they can guard right, right, and that in turn
makes us much more successful as a species, right and
(10:14):
you can and uh, it's also worth noting that there's
a show on Discovery and BBC called Human Planet, and
it's a great example of this whole um hunting and
then raising the young kind of situation with the Owa
Guagi Guaga people of the eastern Amazon, and they hunt
and kill monkeys, which they eat and they make them
(10:36):
do a delicious looking stewins. Well that's I don't know
about eating brains, but they're definitely stewing up some monkeys.
But then they'll bring the baby monkeys back to camp
and they'll they'll not only raise them as pets, but
in some cases they'll actually breastfeed the really young baby
monkeys um, which is you know, even more than more
oxy uh toastin released into the system through that. But
(10:58):
but it's an interesting it's such an interesting glimpse into
how humans work. Just the idea that you could on
one hand kill and eat this particular species, but then
also raise it up as a pet. And then they
in this case, they don't actually eat um eat the
monkeys that they raise pets, so there's a difference there.
But but then you have situations, I mean, clearly you
have people who are really attached to baby goats that
(11:21):
may grow up to be become a food source. So
that you see plenty of examples in human culture where
where there's even this divide between the baby and the
edible adult, it will become right. Yeah, And just to
go back to oxytocin again, and I have read this
before that it's it's actually pretty addictive um apparently for
for new moms, and then it does give you a
(11:42):
big rush. So it's sort of interesting that you know,
you see those instances of surrogate um breastfeeding happening like
like a wet nurse is could be an oxytocin addict.
Really yeah, yeah, I mean you think it is an
altruistic doct but you have to wonder, you know, if
they're just doing it for the rush. So maybe you know,
this is completely unproven, but but maybe the situation was
(12:04):
we domesticated um dogs and are working on monkeys because
you have, like you have these these oxytocin addicted nurse
maids who are running wild through the woods and give
me some puppies. Let me breastfeed some puppies, you know,
because I gotta get that rush. Wow, I'm saying, like
this pulp fiction movie like set fift years ago, I'm yeah,
thinking about Darryl Hannah now as as a crazy wit nurse.
(12:27):
This is not good. Yeah, and we gotta get back. Yeah,
that's totally unproven. Do not use that as an answer.
We gotta get back your students. Yeah. But but then
another reason that we would hang out with canines and
domesticate them is their sense of smell, which again would
help with hunting um and in fact, cancers apparently have
a smell that dogs can be trained to detect according
(12:48):
to a growing body of research. Um and actually they've
had some small trials which have shown canines capable of
detecting melanoma in a person's skin and lung and breast
cancers by chemical que was in the person's breath. The trick,
according to Auburn University veterinarian Larry Myers, is the ability
of dogs to smell the multiple layers of chemicals. So
(13:09):
it's so much more nuanced and sophisticated rather than the
way that we detect smells. They've they've got a lot
more parts to their system, so to speak. So all
of this adds up to the fact that we that
that dogs have definitely helped us to become successful and
our survival and and certainly dogs themselves have become very
successful in their survival right. And it's it's interesting to
(13:31):
to look at, Okay, just on the surface things. Dogs
definitely have emotion, whether whether or not they can there's
this thing called love, and they can feel it. That's
that's a different issue. But but definitely emotion is it
has evolved as an adaptation and numerous species. Uh. It
bonds animals to one another. It catalyzes and regulates a
(13:52):
wide variety of social encounters among both friends and competitors,
and it permits animals to protect themselves adaptively. And with
the dogs that the curious thing is that dogs have
are much more social and say cats because I mean,
like my cat doesn't want any part of another cat
except to chase them off and uh, and they're just
(14:12):
not social for some reason. It may want to live
with she man want to live with humans. But the
heck with all the cats, dogs however, much more social.
They have a much more social mind and uh. And
therefore there's this they have this whole alpha uh situation
where one alpha can dominate the others and there's this
dominant and passive thing in there. And then the way
they behave so we've been able to interject ourselves into
(14:35):
their into this this uh, this this system where we
can eat where we either become the dominant master of
the dogs or we become this thing that the dog
is possessive of. Um, which is generally not the ideal situation,
but you see it all the time. Yeah, and that's
interesting again to draw those parallels and see how we
are more alike than different than dogs in the sense
(14:57):
that we are really social creatures, and certainly fifteen years
ago we were you know, carnivorous. Um, not all of
us are now, but and we really relied on hunting. Yeah.
So same thing with dogs, right, Yeah, you had this
suddenly this dogs like growing up among people, and there's
this this guy and he's like saying, hey, I'm the
pack leader. Let's go catch ourselves some food, and the
(15:18):
dogs like, yeah, I'm game for that. That's totally what
I've evolved to do. So let's yeah, let's let's make
it happen. And by the wather like thirty of you guys,
five of us. Yeah, you guys have the clubs, you
can be the pack master. Fine, you know so part
of it is like you kind of wonder how much
the dogs are going along in their own survival. Yeah,
and then you you get into all this uh, this,
this these other weird areas who were like you take
(15:39):
a dog's natural hunting instinct and then you you you
kind of perverted over the over the ages to to
create say a hurting animal where you're like saying, hey,
you guys are really good at catching these animals, but
let's work on you not killing them, but just moving
them around, uh, in exactly the place I want them
to be, right, yeah, when you're talking you gent x right,
(16:01):
yeah yeah, so yeah, I mean actually eugenics became pretty
popular in nineteenth century Europe, right, So there's this drive
to perfect and design our environments, including pets, and of
course you have this sort of newish technology too, and eugenics, um,
so they applied that to dogs through selective breeding. So
you're like, in the scenario you were talking about, that's
(16:21):
like a border collie, right, um. And so this allowed
us to to basically breed out traits and breeding traits
as you said, and and and you know, of course
now we have our little tiny um toy poodles and
every from that to like a mastiff, right, and you
can take everything in between and sort of mush it
up and see which you can get. So it is
(16:42):
amazing to think that right now, um, of dog breeds
are modern breeds that we created. So that's four hundred
genetically distinct dog breeds. This presentation is brought to you
by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow. So in many of these cases,
(17:07):
we are breeding, selectively breeding animals to encourage particular traits
that that allow them to perform a task, and as
those tasks disappear, we end up then in breeding them
selectively to encourage physical traits that we identify with that
particular breed. Right, so you have like situations like with boxers,
(17:28):
where you no longer actually need boxers to perform the
task they were bred for, and instead you just breathe
them to look even more and more like a cartoon
character of themselves in the ring. Yeah, and then there's
the there's the whole the longer the ring. Um. I
believe they were used to control cattle and like, I
think it's like slaughterhouse situation. Um, so we have robots
(17:51):
for that now, So instead you're just like, hey, let's
breed them, make them look funny and stand on the
side of a football field. Likewise, even with with with
the with with sheep herding dog, like my my family
has a as a herding dog and they don't have
sheep or anything. So the dog just loves to run
around and barket trees and attempt to herd things like
tractors or or branches in a tree or hawks flying overhead,
(18:16):
and and you just think, wow, we've really screwed this
one up. We we we've we've we've taken this animal's
natural hunting instinct turned it into something that benefits us
and then say all right, we're eliminating that job. But
you guys stick around and uh and just go crazy. Yeah,
And that's actually where the problem comes in, right, because
I mean, you know, it sounds like in this scenario,
at least your dog can go out and hang out
(18:38):
in the yard, but some of those types of dogs
are you know, confined to apartments and they just go
run and running circles and basically then the next thing
you know, they're on zoloft. So um. But what allows
us to do this to to breed these traits is
that they have such a great plasticity of jeans, and
it takes just twenty five years to create some sort
of breed that you want, which, if you've get evolutionary terms,
(19:01):
is like supercharged evolution in a sense, right. Um. And
there's actually a good example of this is a dog
called the dogo Argentino and it has something like, you know,
twelve different breeds that they tinkered with over two and
a half decades to create the perfect dog that could
take down wild boars. Without killing the boars, but could
(19:23):
also hang out with kids, you know, and be all cuddly. Wow,
that was an interesting checklist when they were putting that
one together. It's like, I needed to be able to
take down a boar, but I wanted to hang out
with my kid too. Yeah, And in twenty five years
and and and and taking everything from like a mastiff too.
I think there was actually, um, maybe a bull terrier
in there somewhere in the mix, and just tinkering around
(19:45):
with it, and then finally they had something that Again,
this was helping them at the time because they really
didn't have this wild boar problem that was eating all
the crops, and so they wanted to take them down
without killing them. And this was a good solution. But
it's also a little bit frightening to that we could
do this to such a degree, right, hence the eugenics part,
which you know, that's a whole other two sides to
(20:07):
the eugenics coin for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And then of
course the other problem with this, or you know, a
problem in the sense when it's not used, um perhaps
with the best of ethical intentions, is when you have
someone who's a disreputable breeder who is continuing to breed
so aggressively that there are a lot of defects that
(20:29):
the dog might be born with. Right do you end
up with in some cases a genetic neurological problems? Um, Like,
for instance, there's the whole feigning goat thing. Um if
you're anyone familiar with the feigning goat, these are goats
that they just happened to uh through breathing. They have
this neurological condition where they'll you'll frighten them and they'll
fall over. And for a number of reasons, people decided
(20:53):
that the breeders decided, hey, let's keep let's keep this.
This is a good trait to having a dog, even
though it's it's not really i mean, in a goat,
even though it's not really good trait. And there are
some but there are some breeds of dogs that have
similar conditions just because they've been they've been they've been
this sort of narrow branch on the tree as they've
continually bread to encourage various various traits that are part
(21:17):
of that breed. Yeah. So, I mean, there's there's a
lot going on here that can actually tell us about
ourselves too. Of course, we always as humans figure out
how we can get some data off of you know,
other scenarios and so if there are certain diseases and dogs,
like the boxer genome has been decoded, so that's been
really helpful and saying, okay, on this marker we find
this disease, let's now flip over to the human genome
(21:39):
and see if we can find it there and see
what it can tell us about this disease. So that's
actually helpful. Yeah, So okay, so we know this, we
know about the genics part, we know why we hooked
up with them. But my question is, you know, how
well do dogs really know us and how well do
we actually know them? Is their data there? You know,
our our dogs at good as reading our emotions as
(22:00):
we think they are. Well, it's interesting that they can
definitely communicate with us that they are a that I
mean not every species can do this. Um. For instance,
you have the case of Chaser, the border collie from
Spartan Bird, South Carolina that apparently knows A thousand and
twenty two perhaps more. Now, who knows this is? I
think this article is from like a year ago. A
(22:21):
thousand and twenty two nouns um and and it can
also identify verbs like like the owner was able to
teach it to understand commands like fetch ball, fetch frisbee,
fetch it all and and and it was understanding both
the verb and the noun. So that's I mean, that's
that's pretty amazing. And she knew categories to right, yes,
like you know, she knew like the balls, the toys
(22:43):
and so on and so forth, so she could be
directed even at a greater level. And then from what
I remember to in that article, the owner had worked
with her for like five to six hours a day,
repeating words sometimes forty times, like a new word forty
times every which is insane. And if you think about
this too, um, we as humans learned something like ten
(23:07):
new words a day until we reach I believe, the
twelfth grade, in which case we then have something like
sixty thousand words at our disposal. That here's this border
collie getting forty new words a day to our ten
words a day. So that is actually a a particularly
strange situation. This is, you know, most dogs know something
(23:27):
around the order of a hundred and fifty words. Yeah,
but but then again, six like six hours a day
with this uh, with this old dude in his apartment. Yeah.
You know, it's like if if I was stuck with
him and he was coaching me on vocabulary, I'm sure
I would learn all these fabulous new words. And I know,
I know, I think we all should just go spend
a week with them. Um. But the other thing about dogs,
(23:48):
and this is something that's been proven out, is that
they really have learned to read our emotions. Uh. And
and this is was found again in the Nova Dogs
Decoded documentary. Uh. What they said is that when humans
spress emotions, they do so asymmetrically. And what that means
is if I express anger or joy, if you if
you go down the middle of my face and cut
(24:08):
it in half and and examine it, you'll see that
it's not symmetrical in the way that I expressed those emotions.
So one part of my face is gonna be different
than the other. Okay, it's not going to be, of course,
like too crazy looking. It's it's pretty nuanced, like like
whatever the face is when like if you smile on
one side of your face and frown on the other,
you're talking like even a normal what we might on
(24:28):
the surface think of as a normal smile is still
not a completely symmetrical Yeah, what looks cohesive really isn't.
Um So, and that's that's again, that's such a nuanced thing.
But what they did is they said, Okay, for humans,
when we're looking at the emotions, are reading emotions, we
start on the left hand side, and then we got
left to right, so we have a left hand bias.
So what they did is they want to see if
(24:49):
dogs did the same thing. So low and behold. They
put them in front of a screen and they watched
the dog's reactions. They filmed the dog, and they saw
that the dogs did the same thing. They went from
left to right, although when dogs look at each other,
they do not read from left to right. And as
far as they know, dogs are the only species that
can read human emotions in that way and the way
(25:10):
that we do. So they know they know that, like
this is how you read a human space. You have
to look left or right. Yeah, yeah, in order to
to pick up on the nuance of okay, well that's
the emotion that I think that is being expressed by
my owner right now, which is really pretty interesting. Um So, again,
there's this idea that dogs have evolved to read a
human space and that that makes dogs understand us in
(25:33):
a way that other species don't. And again hence the
bomb that we feel with them, that they can actually
feel our emotions. Um. And they also respond to gestural
cues like pointing yes though it's it's it's interesting that
there was a study UM from the Department of Comparative
and Developmental Psychology at the the map Plank Institute for
(25:53):
Revolutionary Anthropology in Germany Max Plank. Yeah, they have, they've
come out before UM where they looked at a ra
tional and rational acts UM. Here like, here's the example
you have in human infants and a mother. Like if
the mother is is say, I don't know turning on
the coffee maker, we know, well, I guess nothing to pay. Well,
(26:13):
we're gonna roll with this analogy, all right. So the
baby sees the mom using her hand to turn on
the coffee maker, all right, and then that they'll on
some mobile connect and say that's that's a good use
of that hand. That's irrational use. But and then they
see the mother, well, say, with an armload of clothing,
she doesn't have a free hand, but she needs to
turn on the coffee maker. So she uses her forehead
to do it or knows I don't know. Um, and
(26:35):
then the child will be like, all right, we'll give
them this situation. That makes total sense. But if the
if the mother were to walk in with nothing in
her hands too free hands, and then reached over and
turned on the coffee maker where there with her forehead
or nose, that the child would not see this as irrational.
That's coconuts. Yeah, but the dog, there's no coconuts with
with the dog. The dog would just accept either act.
(26:56):
There's no difference between irrational and irrational. Okay, So that's
a case in which we might be projecting ourselves onto
whether or not a dog can can make those sort
of judgments, right, I mean, and another thing is the
whole like, oh my dog did something bad and uh
and and and now he's sorry or she's she's sorry
a little catter, she's so ashamed of herself. But that's
(27:17):
just a submissive behavior. They're not really ashamed of anything.
There was an interesting study into that that was actually
profiled on the Radio Lab episode Animal Minds, which is
a good listen for more of a broader animal emotional
uh um thing and uh and but but you had
these people that you know, we're claiming all my dog
thinks that thinks it did something bad. He knows it
(27:39):
did something bad, and that's why it's ashamed. But they
found that that that that dogs in a control group
would behave the same way even if there had been
no mischief in the living room, um et cetera. Yeah,
and that's why animal behavior is so tricky, right, because
you've got the whole fact that your dog is so
tuned into you that you can't help but think that
the dog is with you in lockstep and the way
(28:01):
that you're thinking and acting. And in fact, that they
called the Clever Hans effect. And Clever Hans was actually
a horse in the nineteen hundreds that could use his
hoof to count um and answer mathematical questions. And he
was just like the star of the animal world. Right,
everybody was astounded by his knowledge. But a psychologist picked
(28:21):
up on the fact that the horse answered correctly only
when the questioner knew the answer. So what was happening
is that the horse would count up until the point
in which they observed that the questioner began to relax
when when when they had read when clever Hans had
reached the correct number. And again it's that that nuance
of being able to read body language and say, okay
(28:44):
that the human is fine, Now this must be the
right answer and all quit you know, stomping my hoof.
So they've they've talked about that with dogs as well.
Is that, you know, there's there's that fine line of
you know, how much is the dog just trying to
read your your um emotions and your your gestures as
opposed to really cogitating. Yeah, there's it's like there's this
(29:06):
fiction we create with this with this dog, is this
friend or this this this child in our lives? And uh,
but the animals participating in this fiction as well. And
I find that really fascinating. I mean, it's not I
don't think it it downplays the what's amazing about the relationship.
But but it's it's it's kind of like blind men
(29:28):
and elephants, or one is touching one part of the
elephant and the others touch in the other and they
both have certain ideas about what's going on, but neither
one is the correct. Uh, neither one is the the
the actual image of the elephant. Well, and we we've
talked about symbiosis before, right, and parasites, and this reminds
me of that this is sort of like the mutually
beneficial parasitic relationship, right right. I mean, your your dog
(29:51):
is pretty much like, well, you know, I'm sure that
your dog gives you a lot of love or perceived love,
but your dog is really kind of you know, just
hanging out on your couch, eating your food, watching your TV. Uh,
not necessarily contributing to the household income, right right, but
but maybe participating to your feeling of of of of
(30:14):
of safety in your house, or or elevating your emotions.
So there, I mean there's a different benefit. Maybe it's
barking at strangers, or if you're really on the ball,
maybe it actually does work around the house overthing you
have like seeing eye dogs and helper animals, where there's
a definite case to be made for this. This and
this symbiotic relationship is really um, you know, working on
(30:35):
all cylinders. Yeah, and see, I think that the two
are so entangled. That's really hard to look at this
and say, you know, is there a definitive love or
you know or not? Right? And what complicates it is
the way that we actually react to dogs as well. Uh.
Dr Adam mcclowsky, at a research center in Hungary recorded
(30:56):
six different scenarios in which a dog was barking. And
this isn't parton because dog barks, we often hear and
then we think, oh, the dog is feeling this way
or that way. And so what he had observed a
lot of humans saying, oh, well, my dog does this
mewing sound or actually it's like a cat, right, but
this complaining kind of whiney sound. You know, she's she's
hungry or so on and so forth. So he wanted
(31:18):
to see if he could actually corroborate that. So he
had these six different scenarios in which a dog was barking,
and a couple examples is as you actually mentioned, is
um barking at the door, barking at the gate when
they're a stranger approached, and he recorded that bark. And
then another example was when the owner put the dog
on a leash and then left the dog and the
(31:39):
dog started barking as to say, you know, don't leave
or whatnot. And he took these six different recordings and
played them for dog owners, not the dog owners that
the dogs are attached to but totally random dog owners,
and those dog owners could, almost without fail, each time, say, oh,
I can you know I think that that dog is
(32:01):
going to be lonely, or that dog wants to play fetch,
but someone is withholding the ball. I mean, they got
it really very you know, these specific details right, which
amazed him that they could map the emotion to the bark,
which begs the question, are we so now like fine
tuned with them that we're reading their cues just as
(32:21):
much as they're reading ours. It's kind of like it's say,
it's kind of like we're both actors in a play
and we've both forgotten that it's a play. It's an
imperfect metaphor. But no, no, I'm going with it. I'm
going with it. Um. Yeah, you're like Dustin Hoffman, and
for weeks after when your roles you continue to to
act as though you're autistic. Yeah, that's right. You argue
(32:44):
that he never got over the rain Man thing. Now,
I know, I think it comes out in spurts sometimes.
I mean, it was a fine performance, don't get me wrong,
but anyway to to your knowledge, so, I don't know
that it gets us to this point where we can't
definitively say does your dog actually love you? We know
there's a lot of oxytose in flowing. Yeah, the the
the naturally generated drugs in our body kind of complicate things.
(33:07):
But yeah, but that can be said pretty much everything
that we do. Yeah, And on a personal level, I
can say that my my my dog Ted, I certainly
loved she was a wonderful dog, and I felt that
way to her. And I think as a child even
read to her. I loved her so much. Did she
pick up anything? Were you able to? No? She was?
She was no clever Hans or what was the other
(33:30):
dog's name, chase Er? She was. Yeah. Now there's that.
There's that cat that writes mystery novels with its owner.
I forget the author's name. Oh my goodness. That is
probably the best case of ampomorphization I've ever. I wish
I could remember her name. I have not read any
of her work, but if I remember correctly, she used
to write like kind of saucy literature. Of course, and
(33:50):
then suddenly she did she started writing, and then she
started writing mystery novels with her cat, and and has
continued ever since. Been a great one of those great
literary partnerships. So yeah, there you go. Well, hey, you know,
I think I have a little listener mail here. Let's
see what we have. Ah. Yes, both of these are
related to our Germ Free Dirty Hippies episode which recently
(34:13):
went live. Um first we heard from Luke, and Luke writes, Hey,
Julian Robert, I just listened to the Germ Free Dirty
Hippies episode. You guys touched on the idea that of
not using shampoo. I wanted to let you know that
I haven't used Sam shampoo since November seventeen, two thousand seven,
and my hair has never been healthier. I used to
have lots of dandruff and a very since their scalp.
(34:33):
Now my hair looks healthy, doesn't itch, isn't oily, and
doesn't smell. It got really oily for the first three
weeks or so of not using shampoo, but then it
seemed to balance out. I have so much shorter hair,
and it's about two inches long on top, so I'm
sure this makes it easier than if I had had
really long hair. I know some people who don't use
shampoo rents it out every so often with a mix
of apple cider, vinegar and water. I'm not sure what
(34:54):
this does. Maybe it helps, uh get rid of oil. Anyway,
I've never thanked YouTube for the awesome show, so I
thought i'd take this opportunity to write in and say
thanks for making me smarter. Well, if you're welcome, that's stuff.
That's great. Yeah, and actually we've got a lot of
anecdotal evidence about this, I would say, if you can
call it evidence. And um, it was actually really hurtening.
(35:15):
I was like, wow, people are really it's not just me.
Who's who's interested in this shampoo question. Yeah, I've cut down.
I'm going like two days at a time without actually
shampooing my hair. Her coat looks very shiny, I mean
in a good way. Look, well that I also had
bacon this morning. You know, well that'll do. That's a
machine they can do. But um oh, and we also
(35:35):
have another email. This one is from Thomas, and Thomas
writes in about this and uh, this is a rather
long email, so I'm just gonna read part of it.
He says. Anyway, let's just say that in the past
twelve months, I've probably used shampoo maybe six or seven times.
Until two weeks ago, I had a use shampoo and
probably six months. Generally speaking, I only use shampoo if
I go to the beach or swimming a heavily chlorinated pool,
(35:57):
though I do use condition about once a month. Let
me just say my hair is a gorgeous That's probably
the most narcissistic sentence the twenty year old male can either.
But it is random. Women, that's right, plural have stopped
me just to say, hey, I've seen you around the
office and I just wanted to say, I don't know
what you do, but you have gorgeous hair. Well, I
think we both can can relate to that absolutely. Yeah,
(36:20):
get it in the break room all the time. Yeah,
Jerry had to lock the door to keep the women
out the otherwise they'd be in here complimenting us on
our hair right now anyway, um Thomas continues, you can't
imagine the speed with which a human face can transition
to object horror. When I quote how long it's been
since I've used shampoo, it's quite a site. The worst
part of terminating your relationship with shampoo is the first
two months or so. During that two month period, your
(36:43):
scalp seems to freak out and overproduce oils lots of
warm showers and scalp massaging, like Julie mentioned, help a
great deal, but it's still kind of grows there. You go,
that's the secret to healthy hair. Yeah, so you know,
if you have any more anecdotes of your own experiences
going with the No Pooh method of hair care, UM,
(37:04):
let us know. I mean, we can't. That's short for shampoose.
Anybody's confused about that. Um, if you have any other
No Pooh situations, let us know about that. We're always
game for scatological content. Uh and uh and uh. And
if you have anything to add about this dog episode,
let us know. I'm sure, I'm I know that a
number of you were dog owners and uh and and
(37:25):
if you're like me as a cat owner, then you
you probably spend a lot of time just trying to
figure out this weird situation in which a furry quadruped
lives in your home, sleeps on your bed and uh
and we act like it's the most normal thing in
the world. It's not. It's pretty weird. And you occasionally
dressed up as a pirate. I mean that's yeah, they
want to hear about that. Yes, So so let us know.
(37:47):
It's it's fascinating and uh uh, and I'm curious to
see what everybody's in particular thoughts on it are. You
can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. We're blow
the Mind on both of those, and you can drop
us a line at blow the Mind at how stuff
works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To learn
(38:09):
more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in
the upper right corner of our homepage. The How Stuff
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