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do that,
too!
“smarts” to obtain what he wanted.
During the previous breeding season,
Sterling had pushed a barrel with his
muzzle to guide it against the fencing
of his enclosure. By jumping up on the
barrel, he had gained enough height to
then jump from the barrel over the top
of his fence to spend some quality time
with the female dingo in the adjoining
pen. Sterling’s degree of intelligent
problem solving point out a truism:
life with these smart animals is not
necessarily easy. For the people living
with them, a well-developed sense of
humor and respectful appreciation for
their animals’ abilities are essential.
In his Psychology Today blog, Marc
Bekoff remembered a dog named
Grendel. In 2002, her owner related
to Bekoff how Grendel had fashioned
a back scratching tool from a bone.
Because of Grendel’s long torso and
short legs, she couldn’t reach the
center of her back to scratch it. As
her owner explained to Bekoff, “One
day we gave her a bone which was
likely sawn from a large leg bone,
perhaps lamb, because it was quite
hard. It was cylindrical, with parallel
flat sides. About a week (at most) after
we gave her the bone, we noticed that
she had chewed it so that one side
was still flat, and the other side had
two raised ridges (shaped like a sine
wave going around the outer rim of
the bone). She would place the bone,
flat side down, on the floor, and roll
over onto the two raised ridges using
the protrusions to scratch the center of
her back. I was convinced that she had
made a tool, but in my mind I thought
that behavior had to be repeated to
be scientifically significant. She had
that first bone, as I recall it, for quite
a while, maybe a year. It disappeared.
We gave her another bone and within
days, or a week, she had carved the
second bone into a very similar shape,
and used it for the same purpose. She
had repeated the making of the tool.”
Grindel had definitely fulfilled the
requirements for making and then
using a tool. Bekoff believes that in
the coming years, more and more
such documented examples of tool use
by dogs will come forward now that
scientists have accepted this reality.
One more way in which dogs use
tools must be mentioned. Remember
that I told you a tool does not
necessarily have to be an inanimate
object? Well, one tool that dogs use
more successfully than any other canid
to achieve what they need and want
is quite alive – human beings! Dogs
are the only canid that have mastered
looking to humans for help in obtaining
what they want.
Several years ago, scientists at
Etvos University in Budapest wanted
to determine whether the social and
cognitive differences among dogs
and wolves were primarily genetic or
experiential. To do this, they hand-
raised a group of dog pups and a group
of wolf pups from birth, resulting in
roughly equivalent experiences. Any
differences between the two groups’
social cognitive skills, then, would be
attributable to genetics. At nine weeks
of age for both the dog puppies and the
wolf cubs, a plate of food was presented
to them. However, they couldn’t reach
the food without human intervention.
To cause the human to give them the
food, all the wolf and dog pups had
to do was make eye contact with the
experimenter and that person would
give them the food.
At first, of course, all the pups tried
in vain to reach the food by themselves.
After the second minute of trying, the
dog pups looked to the human for help.
This is no small feat; initiating eye
contact with the experimenter requires
that the animal refocus its attention
from the food to the human. Not only
did the wolf pups not spontaneously
initiate eye contact with the human
experimenter, but they also failed to
learn that eye contact was the key to
solving their problem. The experiment
was repeated when the pups and
wolves were nine and eleven months
old, and the results were the same.
The dogs spontaneously initiated a
communicative interaction with the
humans earlier, and maintained it
for longer periods of time, than did
the human-reared wolves, who all
but ignored their human caregivers.
Now wolves are not stupid animals
by any definition. What the results of
these experiments prove is that dogs
have evolved within their DNA a very
successful means of obtaining what
they want but can’t manage to get
on their own. Their partnership with
humans has become so engrained in
their psyches that dogs automatically
look to this most versatile of tools –
their human partners – to satisfy their
needs and wants.
In addition to being an intelligent,
emotional animal that has been our
faithful friend and companion for
thousands of years, dogs have also
proven that they have the cognitive
ability to make and use tools. They can
manipulate their environment when
necessary to attain what they want –
climb book shelves, open cabinet doors,
master the handles of French doors,
etc. – but dogs can also do what no
other canid can. They know that we
humans are their most efficient tool,
and they have learned how to best elicit
the desired response from us to get
what they want. That talent may make
them the most clever animal of all.
Until next time,
Sandra
r
esources
1.
thoughtful-animal/2012/04/30/dogs-but-
not-wolves-use-humans-as-tools/ – April
30, 2012; Jason Goldman
2.
/
blog/animal-emotions – Marc Bekoff,
December 8, 2011 in Animal Emotions.
3.
thoughtful-animal/2012/04/30/dogs –
April 30, 2012
ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS
• Sandra Murray
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