How high does a dog's mental ability go?

 Very well said Ron and I agree!

One common test to prove a "theory of mind" is the knower/guesser game in which a treat is hidden in one of two or several locations with the dog not seeing the location where the treat was hidden.  Two experimenters are involved with this test.  One the dog "knows" saw the treat being hidden and the other the dog "knows" did not see the treat hidden.  Then the two experimenters point to different locations and they see what location the dog goes to.  If the dog has a "theory of mind" it should go to the location which is being indicated by the "knower," not the "guesser."  In this experiment, the dog did not show a clear preference to follow the indication of the "knower" and the conclusion was that this showed that dogs do not have a "theory of mind." 

However, it has been shown (as I mentioned before) that the genetic tendency of a dog is to follow the directives of a human even if it runs counter to its own logical knowledge of the location of a treat.  It seems that this tendency would sorely affect the results of the knower/guesser experiment.  It will be very interesting to see what research will discover next.

That's what I'm trying to get at, too. That dog, even better than some animals, can take cues from the human. My friend, Lee, who actually owned a cat and a snake, thought dogs more suitable to humans than cats. You point and the cat looks at your finger. The dog will look to where you are pointing. Which seems, on the surface, to imply that the dog is viewing what you intend him to view, which would seem like the dog has a knowledge or view that you have a view that is separate from him and valid enough for him to consider. A rudimentary theory of mind.

Though I could be wrong.

I was listening to Calling All Pets one time and McConnell referenced a fascinating study that was done with elephants.  People have felt for a long time that elephants have a pretty advanced sense of self.

They put up a mirror in the elephant's area at a zoo and then watched the elephants go through the usual routine we've all seen our dogs (and cats) do with a mirror, figuring that, minimally, "That's not a real  . . ." fill in the blank.  Because the mirror of course brings up the question of, what do they think that is in the mirror? 

They then stuck little adhesive dots on their foreheads.  Some, not all, of the elephants noticed the dot.  Many of those used the mirror to "explore" the dot - first trying to touch it "through" the mirror, then most figuring out that the dot was on THEM.  And there were a very small number who, amazingly, used the mirror to remove the dot.

I believe that not only dogs, but also many other animals have a sense of self (many birds, sea mammals, sharks, octopi, equines, many primates, large land mammals, large land predators, many prey animals) .  Some more rudimentary than others, but it's still there. 

Not only that, but I believe that for any animal with that mental capacity, and several others, it can be developed through interaction with those that are more advanced in those areas.  In the wild, the predator/prey interaction selects for the sharpest tools in the box, so to speak.  Competition among top-of-the-food-chain individuals stretches the genetic potential of those gene pools.  And humans can manipulate non-human minds, both within the lifetime of an individual animal, and also increasing the mental capacity of a population as a whole. 

I'm no expert on these topics.  But, my years working with using Border collies to interact with sheep, poultry, and wild fowl, have given me a healthy respect for the mental ability of non-humans.

To address the topic question specifically, I wouldn't think of it as "high", but rather, what types of abilities to they have?  

Their sense of objective numeration is very rudimentary if it exists at all above the instinctive/adaptive level.  Ie, I don't think dogs "count,"  though they can sense groupings of objects.  One thinks of the shearer's dog who knows to go back and get four sheep to fill the pen when it's empty.  But the dog doesn't think "four" - I think there's just a sense of that grouping being part of the job.  If the dog were counting then he'd be flummoxed when he went back the last time and there were only three or two left over.

Gus is an amazing dog and is not the first we've had like him.  I wonder sometimes what that thing is, that makes him seem like such a joker.  Trane is a big joker too though it's more annoying to me (I am such a not-Aussie person, won't someone please adopt this wonderful dog?  ) .  But what is this trait that makes Gus do things that just make us laugh out loud, all the time, even when he's as bad as can be?  It's such an odd thing.

What makes a dog fling itself in the path of a bull that's threating his owner?  Sustain severe injuries doing it, then later on do exactly the same thing in the same place?  This happened with a friend and her dog - she showed me the place and the steel gate the bull broke in two while mashing on her dog.   Logically, self preservation instincts would make him avoid that situation the next time.  But for the rest of his life, my friend had to tie up Harvey if she was working chutes.  And Harvey's not the only dog like that - that's the rule not the exception.  Ben's come to my aid before when a ram knocked me down.

What part of a dog is it drawing on, when it works until it literally drops unconscious from exhaustion?  Or works while injured, then wants to go work again fresh out of the doctor.  We are often advised not to give our Border Collies pain killers, because it's the only way to keep them quiet other than tranquilizers.  That's such a non-adaptive trait it's not funny.  Oh, and there's the fact that one of these dogs will work side-by-side with a bitch in heat, and have no desire to breed.  What odd mental makeup allows them to overcome the desire to reproduce?  We select for this trait, but what trait is it?  We call it "work ethic" in the BC world, but that's a really weird term to apply to a dog, if you think about it.

brookcove

What part of a dog is it drawing on, when it works until it literally drops unconscious from exhaustion

That line reminds me so much of my BIL's Blue Merle Aussie, Cassie. She is naturally born cutting dog. She lives to herd and cut the sheep from the flock, even though that sheep is actually a ball. She will run along side, direct it, then stop it and hold it until you get there. And she will do this until she drops from exhaustion. And yet, do it one more time. We had to get my nephew to do something else and let her rest, otherwise she would have continued. She'll take treats well enough. But she lives to cut. It was one of the few times I was around a true working dog.

ron2

Have we not defined ToM as the knowledge or opinion of a creature than another creature possesses an awareness separate from their own? That we can view the same thing and it might mean the same thing to us? Now, I could be cheeky and ask you or anyone to prove that ToM is not there.

 

More or less. Obviously it's difficult to prove ToM is not there, but I think it behooves us to assume it isn't until we can prove it rather than assume it is. I think that because I don't think there are many animals in the world that have a need for it in the first place, and probably not the type of brain that could do it, so better to err on the side of caution and stick with the more likely scenario until proven otherwise.

I've mentioned before the pinon jays that are thought to possibly have a ToM. The experiment goes, pinon jay is in a flock. It fights with pinon jay 1 for some reason and loses. It watches pinon jay 1 later fight with pinon jay 2 and PJ2 wins. The original PJ when it comes into conflict with PJ2, gives way immediately, presumably because it knows it loses to PJ1 and knows PJ2 can beat PJ1 so PJ2 will win so may as well not fight. This was done in a controlled environment, I believe, and the subject PJ had no prior contact with PJ2. I think it challenged a lot of people, but I don't think anyone was quite prepared to say that PJs have a ToM.

A similar study is the one with ravens that when caching food, look for any observers and make sure there is some visual obstacle between them and an observer before caching. It suggests they are at least aware that they may lose their cache if someone is watching them. In the wild, they watch wolves caching and raid the caches. The wolves never caught on, and if I remember correctly, the ravens did not hide caching behaviour from the wolves, but did hide caching from other ravens. ToM was carefully skirted around in that paper.

ron2

But if he only does it with you, it is a communication directed specifically at you in terms you can understand. Understand enough to chide yourself for an oversight. Which, at face value, would seem that the hare is taking into account your sphere of understanding, to some degree, and acting in way commensurate with the physical abilities of a hare, to communicate a problem. Maybe I am saying that communication is a sign of ToM.

 

He does only do it with me, but I believe that's because I've provided for him his whole life and he knows I'm the one that has supreme control over food and water in ways that my domestic rabbit does not seem to appreciate. I don't think it would ever occur to her that I could fix a broken water bottle. She would just sit there helplessly and wait for it to start working again. In fact, she has done that. More than once. I have some things to say to the makers of these water bottles that keep failing! Anyway, it took him a long time to learn how to talk to me in ways that I would understand and he learnt through trial and error. He hits on something I notice and if I respond in the way he wants me to, that one is a keeper. It's just simple OC. I don't think he needs to appreciate my sphere of understanding to have learnt this. If it can be explained without a ToM, I'm happy to assume there isn't one. I believe tailored, inter-specific communication can be explaind without ToM.

I think the knower and the guesser game is not a well-designed experiment to find ToM in dogs. I think you have to take humans out of the equation.  

Good answers to difficult questions. Another tough one - do you think the mentality and limits thereof, including any possibility of ToM, are the same for both hares and dogs? Is there a sliding scale of various gradations for ToM? Granted, it might be safer to assume that ToM is not there until definitively proven. So, what counts as proof for a ToM in humans?

That was 3 questions. Sorry.

Another question related to this topic. QM consciousness theories. There is yet to be a defining line between levels of consciousness on the QM level of things. One of the popular theories is that the neuron has a series of microtubuli that act on a quantum level of expanding and collapsing, creating quantum events of energy transfer which relays information, as it were. But there is no way to define that a human has this many and that a dog has less. While the theories do not directly address ToM, they do attempt to describe an act of consciousness. Nor is the function of a neuron dependent on a frontal lobe. It is dependent on certain chemicals and electrical activity. Also, without a well defined function of gravity in QM, it will be incomplete since we don't know yet what effect gravity has on the changing states of the microtubuli or if gravity is the chief causal relationship in the QM events at the synapse, let alone what is happening in the post synaptic region of a neuron. And how this all creates an act or event on a macroscopic level, i.e., the overall effect.

Unscrewing the inscrutable on a Sunday morning.

 Currently the world's best neurologists are sharply divided on the subject of consciousness and ego (ie, the physical structures of the brain which we are currently capable of measuring, do not account for all the events of mind which we are also able to observe and quantify).  I think it's wise to wait until there's better information about this most basic question to try to make a judgment on how a dog "measures up" to human capabilities of ego and very high states of conscious thought.  We are still very much in the data collection phase of this question.

Although we, as dog savvy people, are perfectly able to look at proposed differences and see "otherness," too many would see evidence of comparative value, and conclude that the exploitation of "lower" animals is okay.  Historically, we have seen it so many times in the past.

I personally believe that states of mind lead, rather than follow, physical development.  So, if we find that mind is extra-physical, that advanced states of consciousness do not depend strictly on the human paradigm of so many synapses, so much MRI activity, etc - then the evolution of the non-human mind is an easy thing to imagine. 

Here's another interesting question.  Where do acts of will fit in to human versus animal consciousness paradigms?  The fact is, that the jury's still out on the concept of "will" also.  Not just choices that we make, but also matters like preferences, expectations, desires, hopes and dreams.

I think acts of expectant will are much more expanded in people, because of our more objective view of time.  But, whatever this thing we call "will" is, I believe dogs and many other animals have it as well. 

What exactly is "humor" to a dog, I wonder?

one of my danes came up behind me and deliberately bumped me with his huge head, sending me tumbling down a short incline. I swear he was laughing at me as he stood at the top of the hill wagging his tail and gazing down at me.

ron2

Another tough one - do you think the mentality and limits thereof, including any possibility of ToM, are the same for both hares and dogs? Is there a sliding scale of various gradations for ToM? Granted, it might be safer to assume that ToM is not there until definitively proven. So, what counts as proof for a ToM in humans?

 

That's a hard question and I'm not sure I wholly understand it. I think that wild animals and domestic animals think differently. I think wild animals as a whole are better at problem solving and more likely to think that things can be changed if they can only find a way. That's not to say dogs can't have these traits. I think my hare is better than my dog at reading body language, which makes sense to me because he's a prey animal that lives in the open with no shelter. Hares must rely on knowing when to run. But that goes two ways. They also must know when not to run. I think they make these decisions based on the behaviour of whoever is approaching them. I've looked down and seen a wild hare lying motionless but ready to bolt not one large step away from me. He was a big one! He was waiting for me to realise he was there. He left it later than most hares do, but he wouldn't have got that big by making bad choices. Bolting takes a lot of energy and might actually draw a predator's attention when the predator wasn't even aware a hare was there.

My dog on the other hand, is a long way from a wild animal. She wouldn't chase a rabbit if it dashed out in front of her. She wouldn't survive a week in the wild. She's very good at body language, but it's not as important to her than it is to my hare, who's very life depends on it.

Having said all this, my hare is hopeless at verbal communication. He knows his name and that's about it after 3 and a half years of talking to him. My dog sometimes seems like she speaks English. She's been bred to understand humans. 

As for ToM... I don't see an evolutionary advantage for a hare to have a ToM. They are solitary creatures in the wild and need only know when to run and when not to run. When they run, they switch off and run a long way before they stop. I do see an evolutionary advantage for animals that live in close contact with one another to have a ToM, most especially if they are unrelated. Competition creates some really incredible things.

I think maybe I still haven't answered any questions. Suffice to say, I think the mind of a solitary prey animal and that of a social predator are very different and designed to best suit what life throws at each. We suspect the octopus is so intelligent because they live in complex reefs and are both formidable predators and much sought after prey. So in a way, maybe any brain is capable of evolving to the point where a ToM develops and nature will dictate whether it does or not. Evolution is not known for producing things fixed in a population that don't benefit an organism. It tends to streamline over time.

In humans, I remember seeing the experiment on TV where they bring a child in and put buttons in a piggy bank. They ask the child that if their friend outside came in right now, what would they think was in the piggy bank? The children that had not developed a ToM said buttons, assuming that the kid outside knows what they know. The children that had developed a ToM said money, understanding that if they had not seen the buttons go in, they would think money was in the piggy bank, so if their friend hadn't seen it.... hooray, child is able to put themselves in someone else's shoes! The children that said money thought it was a pretty funny joke, so maybe humour and higher social intelligence go hand in hand. I guess this all brings up the empathy thing. I think a ToM is a prerequisite for empathy.

corvus

As for ToM... I don't see an evolutionary advantage for a hare to have a ToM.

And there may not be an evolutionary advantage to ToM in an hare and a hare may not have it. Even if the hare had it, evolutionary advantage would not necessarily figure into it. That is, if one follows non-radial adaption, which states creatures don't evolve something from a need to survive. A successful mutation survives. A hare could have a ToM, whether that is a hindrance, asset, or null result in evolutionary fitness. We sitll have an appendix, which doesn't really do anything. But nature doesn't evolve something away from lack of need, either. So, we're stuck with it until a mutation born without appendix comes along.

A pandemic virus could come along and wipe out 95 percent of humanity. And the people who lived to progenate simply had a natural immunity. And also tended to have appendixes that never caused them a problem (unrelated, just happenstance).

A ToM might not be necessary to our survival. For all of our poetry, frontal lobe, ToM business, etc., we could be gone in a few days. An asteroid could hit the Earth and kill us all and ToM might be a hindrance. The notion that we are the only sentient beings, period. No bother looking in space, no bother spending on the space program. Everyone gripes about it when we do. So, fine, no one builds a system of detection and reaction. And we die, entirely sure of our superior intelligence.

But my digression doesn't answer the question, either. Only to show that evolution may as blind or astigmatic as "justice" or other templates of perception we cast upon the world. And it might very well be that no other animal has ToM, by our definition, from our viewpoint. But, if we're going to measure against ourselves, ala the king's foot, then let's decide what we are talking about in ourselves, then determine if another animal shows that. I don't think it necessarily involves structure. Survival of the fittest - wise, man is weak. Weaker than a dog and certainly weaker than a mountain gorilla. A sled dog can pull 4 times or more his own weight. Many humans barely cart their own around. Man is the slowest animal. The world's top athletes, after a decade or so of practice and training, can achieve 20 (?) mph for a short burst while a Siberian Husky can run between 30 and 40 for ten minutes or more and can average 20 mph for hours. Yet, who is the dominant species on the planet? At least in our estimation.

ron2

And there may not be an evolutionary advantage to ToM in an hare and a hare may not have it. Even if the hare had it, evolutionary advantage would not necessarily figure into it. That is, if one follows non-radial adaption, which states creatures don't evolve something from a need to survive. A successful mutation survives. A hare could have a ToM, whether that is a hindrance, asset, or null result in evolutionary fitness. We sitll have an appendix, which doesn't really do anything. But nature doesn't evolve something away from lack of need, either. So, we're stuck with it until a mutation born without appendix comes along.

That's a fair point, but there aren't many things in nature that can't be explained by "that trait makes an individual of that species better at surviving". And there aren't many things in nature that exist when there's no need for it. We don't know at what cost we have a ToM. Does it give us empathy? Does that make us feel bad about killing other animals to eat them? Does it take a lot of energy to grow a brain that can develop a ToM? Does it take a long time in which we have to get along without it? It could well be a costly trait to possess, and the very fact that we are slow and weak and vulnerable could be the fact that makes having a ToM worth it where it isn't worth it in so many other animals.  

And dogs are omnivorous in spite of having teeth that seem suited for carnivorous diet, though they do have a coronoidal process in the mandible and zygomatic arch that is markedly different than wolves, who also exhibit omnivorous behavior. I stand by my statement that evolution is not necessarily a master designer. Crap happens and an organism either survives or doesn't and it's possible to have a reproduced mutation that is good for nothing but doesn't hurt anything, either. And so there it stays until it has an effect, or not.

That is what many people hate about evolution. The sheer happenstance of it all.

Oops, fogot about this thread.

I don't disagree that random mutation produces things that aren't beneficial but also aren't detrimental and so stick around. I'm just not convinced that there is no cost to having a ToM that would make it more detrimental than it is beneficial. I believe mutation rate is probably a lot higher than population geneticists currently maintain, thanks to a lady called Mirriam who can explain peacocks if only population geneticists would accept how she explains them. Anyway, the point is not whether things stick around when they are not beneficial so much as the cost of things that might not be beneficial. Even a tiny tiny cost will affect an individual's fitness. For example, when doing my honours project I found a nesting association between two birds, yet in my one season of data, there was no way to explain the benefit of that nesting association to either species. However, a pair only has to raise one extra brood to fledging in its entire life to make that association beneficial and you wouldn't detect that in one season. Sort of an example anyway, just reversed.

The other thing is a lot of things that are useless get left behind in evolution. So something that seems like it's just turned up and hasn't gone away may have been useful once, but isn't anymore, but it's not at very costly. Like a reproductive tract in a female bedbug that is never used because males don't bother with them and just jab the sperm through the female's body wall. And venomous spurs in echidnas that aren't actually connected to the venom sacks anymore, so are essentially useless. A lot of echidnas don't even have the spurs. And wisdom teeth in humans. It's quite possible any or all of these things are on their way out anyway, as evolution is rarely a fast thing.

Anyway, it's not crap coming up in evolution that I have troubles with, it's the assumed cost-free status of a ToM. Although I do think evolution tends to streamline. Because things don't have to be very costly or beneficial at all to make a difference. But that's because I'm an ecologist rather than a geneticist. Geneticists tend to have more faith in random mutation than selection pressures. Ecologists spend their lives looking for costs and benefits to explain what they see.