'Genius of Dogs' author talks dog cognition
Published: 2/7/2013 2:23 PM
Last Modified: 2/7/2013 2:23 PM
(Amazon)
Hare gave USA Today an interview about everything from canines and physics to training service dogs. Here is a quick bite from it:
USA Today: How do you know dogs can retain thousands of words?
Hare: The interesting finding there is that from a scientific standpoint, it's not amazing. What's amazing is how the dogs learned the words. They learned it through inferential reasoning, the same process kids learn words. ... You can put a dog in a room full of toys and put new ones in, and give the new ones odd names. The dog will bring back the toy it's never seen before because it's called by a name he's never heard before.
Read the rest of the interview.
Here's a video from the school's lab, and check out Dognition, which launched earlier this week. The site offers dog owners a series of tests "to determine their pooch's relative strengths and weaknesses in various thinking skills, from empathy to cunning to memorization." And the site's landing page has just the cutest little pooch on it, too.
Written by
Bravetta Hassell
Scene Writer
