Dog Behavior Blog

Do Dogs Have Language?

In my recent book, Chasing Doctor Dolittle: Learning the
Language of Animals (http://tiny.cc/sam5nw), I show that a number of animal
species either have language or have language-like abilities.

Do dogs fall into the category of animals with language?

As we find out more and more about the behavior of dogs, we
find that they have elaborate body-language cues. Some of the large-scale cues
have been known for a long time. For example, the position of the tail, the
ears, the head, and the body torso have been known for a long time as signals
that dogs give to other dogs.

New research shows that within those large-scale cues, there
are more subtle ones, such as dogs laughing, or wagging their tails differently
to show their enjoyment.

We all know that dogs bark, but for a long time people
thought that the barking lacked any meaning. Now research is showing that dogs
give different barks in different contexts, and that other dogs can understand
the contexts from the barks.

Interestingly, we have a hard time understanding the meaning
of the barks, while some dogs seem to have no trouble understanding our words.
The border collie Chaser knows upwards of 1,000 words in English, and the
border collie Rico knows upward of 200 words in German.

And then there are the odor cues in anal glands and other
sources of odor. We have a hard time understanding the meaning encoded in
odors, but it is likely that anal glands can signal a considerable amount of
information to other dogs.

So the bottom line is, it is likely that dogs have a
language, just like the prairie dogs, dolphins, chickadees, honeybees, and ants
that I talk about in Chasing Doctor Dolittle have their own forms of language.

--Con Slobodchikoff

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Con Slobodchikoff: 7 Bizarre Animal Languages (PHOTOS)

Dr. Dolittle To the Rescue: Animals Do Indeed Have Language

Internationally Acclaimed Animal Behaviorist Con Slobodchikoff Reveals the Secret Language of Animals in New Book 'Chasing Doctor Dolittle'

Animal Behavior Course

What Would You Like To Know About Animal Behavior?

Would you like to know about why animals do what they do? Would you like to know why your dog does the things she does? Would you like to know how animals, including dogs, learn?

Now you can find out through my Animal Behavior Course, at www.animalbehaviorcourse.net.

It is an edited version of the lectures that I have been teaching to animal behavior classes for a number of years. I have edited it so that everything is people-friendly, with no big scientific terms or jargon.

You get a pdf file for $37. There are 11 modules in this file, and each module teaches you the highlights of what we currently know about the behavior of animals in areas such as learning, aggression, feeding, reproduction, migration, navigation, homing, communication, and social behavior.

You risk nothing in buying it. The course is sold through Clickbank, which has a 60 day return policy. So if you buy it and find that it is not right for you, Clickbank will return your money.

Also, if you haven't read it yet, I invite you to read my new ebook, Autobiography of a Poodle, which sells for $3.47 on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The book tells the story of Zephyr, a standard poodle, and offers in a painless and fun way a lot of advice on the training and behavior of dogs. You can find the Amazon version at:http://tinyurl.com/9de6g6p

Finally, I would like to invite you, if you are on Facebook and haven't yet visited it, to visit my new page called Dr Con (www.facebook.com/doctor.con). If you are interested in animal intelligence, animal abilities, or animal language, I talk about recent findings in all of those areas. Click on the Like button, check it out and let me know if you like it or if you have suggestions for what to include.

 

--Con Slobodchikoff

New Book: Autobiography of a Poodle

What kind of book would a dog write? In my new book,
Autobiography of a Poodle, I try to answer that question.

The book is an uplifting story about a standard poodle named Zephyr, and
chronicles his life from puppyhood on. All of the events described in the book
actually happened to Zephyr, an eternal optimist. 

• 
  He had to go through dog training classes
• 
  He went to a dog show
• 
  He had to adjust to living with a cat
• 
  He had to stay in a crate while his people slept
• 
  He ran off-leash some of the time
• 
  He had dog friends
• 
  He encountered a dog who bit him
• 
  He ate some poisoned food
• 
  He had to learn to live with another standard
  poodle who came into his life

Along the way, Zephyr shares his philosophy of life and how
dogs might see the world.

There are three possibilities for how this book was written:

1. 
   Zephyr wrote the book at night, typing on the
   computer while everyone was asleep
2. 
   Zephyr dictated the book to me, and I faithfully
   copied down every word
3. 
   I wrote the book based on events in Zephyr’s
   life and my knowledge of dog behavior

What you choose to believe is up to you.

--Con Slobodchikoff

Your Dog Can Talk To You

We have known for some time that animals such as chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas can be taught to communicate through using signs such as those of American Sign Language or using lexigrams on computer keyboards.  We also are becoming increasingly aware that dogs have the cognitive ability to understand human gestures such as pointing, and that dogs are keen observers of the body movements of humans. However, with dogs, this communication has often been a one-way street: We point, they respond, but we do not usually respond to their gestures. In her book, Dogs Can Sign, Too, Sean Senechal offers a step-by-step method of teaching both humans and dogs a way of communicating with one another through gestures (Senechal, Sean, 2009, Dogs Can Sign, Too: A Breakthrough Method for Teaching Your Dog to Communicate to You, Celestial Arts, Berkeley CA).

I first learned of Sean Senechal’s work from a story by Anne Fawcett in the May 27, 2011 Sydney Morning Herald, which talked about the progress we are making in communicating with animals. The story talked about my work with decoding prairie dog language, and also talked about the work that Sean Senechal was doing in devising a language that dogs can use to communicate with their people.

I was intrigued, and visited Sean at her California ranch to see her work for myself. She showed me how her horse could use the sign language to request different kinds of foods, and also how her dogs could use the language to indicate what kind of food they wanted, where things hurt on their body, and their wanting to go outside to play. I ordered her book from Amazon, and found the book to be both informative and fun to read.

There are ten chapters in this paperback book. The first chapter offers a brief statement of why dogs are a good candidate for learning a sign language that they can use to communicate with their humans. Consider, for example, all of the signs, gestures, and procedures that guide dogs have to learn in order to perform their duties for people who cannot see or cannot hear. The second chapter presents an overview of the K9Sign Language that Senechal has devised for communication, using gestures and body postures that are easy and natural for dogs. This language is rule-based with standardized moves: If a dog want to communicate “Potty,” the dog moves its hind legs out to a wide stance, while if a dog wants to communicate its desire for “Chicken” as a food item, the dog lifts its left paw up high and then lowers it down. The third chapter discusses how dog learn and some of the elements of learning theory, as an introduction to those who are not familiar with the basics, and as a reminder for those who know how other animals learn. Chapters 4 through 6 give some practical tips on what people should expect when they start to teach this language to their dogs, and how people can avoid the pitfalls and frustrations that are likely to befall them along the way. Chapter 7 gives specific information on how to teach human signs to dogs, and Chapters 8 and 9 talk about how to use and interpret the signs that dogs naturally have through their body language. Chapter 10 briefly sets out Senechal’s vision that eventually such signs can be used to communicate not only with dogs but with other animals as well, such as horses, as a way of strengthening the human-animal bond.

Throughout the book, Senechal provides photographs of the hand, arm, and face gestures that she uses with her dog Chal, and also provides extensive photographic documentation of the signs that Chal uses to communicate with Senechal. This makes it easy for a person learning K9Sign Language to learn the signs and also to learn what kinds of responses should be taught to a dog. Senechal also goes into extensive detail about the different signs, so that in addition to the visual aspect of the photographs, there is ample explanation of how to learn and teach this language.

In our attempts to communicate with other animals, Senechal’s book is a step in a good direction. Although there is increasing evidence that many animal species have sophisticated methods of communicating and language, decoding those communication methods is difficult and time-consuming. On the other hand, teaching animals a basic language that they can use to communicate with humans offers a path to increasing the well-being of both the animals and the people who otherwise have to guess what it might be that their animals want. This book is a “Must Read” for those who seriously want to communicate with their dogs.

--Con Slobodchikoff

Basics of Dog Adoption 101

According to the ASPCA, around 3 to 4 million dogs and cats are euthanized every year in the United States,  about  60 percent of the dogs and 70 percent of the cats that end up in shelters. Often these were animals who were part of a family, and because of some kind of change in circumstances, such as moving or financial troubles, they were turned over to a shelter.

Many of these animals would have loved to start a new life in another home. Few of them get that chance.

Adopting an animal saves a life.

But there are some challenges involved in adoption.  In my consulting practice I have often seen the kind of difficulties that can arise. Someone falls in love with an adorable dog in a shelter, and brings her home to live a happy life. For a while, things are great. The dog is very respectful, meek, and polite. This period lasts anywhere from a few days to a month or two.

Gradually the dog gains more confidence, and that is when potential problems can surface. Perhaps the dog is somewhat aggressive, guarding her food dish, or maybe pees and poops on the carpet, or maybe tugs hard on the leash while walking. Sometimes, problems arise that were the cause of the dog being put into the shelter in the first place. This is the time that people can start questioning whether they made the right decision to adopt a dog.  This is often the time that people seek advice from dog behavior professionals.

The best time to get advice about adoption, however, is before a dog is adopted. There are a lot of issues that have to be considered, such as dogproofing a house, getting the right food, finding a good vet, figuring out how to introduce the new dog to the resident animals and people, deciding whether to buy a crate for the dog, and planning a routine for the new animal to follow.  Without prior planning, chaos can ensue.

Now there is an excellent source of advice on adopting a dog, both for the planning stages and for the potential problems that can arise.

A new book by Drs. Patricia McConnell and Karen London addresses the entire adoption process. The book is called Love Has No Age Limit: Welcoming An Adopted Dog Into Your Home,  published by McConnell Publishing Limited, and available for $ 9.95 at Dr. McConnell’s website: http://www.patriciamcconnell.com/.  In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that Dr. Karen London, a coauthor of the book and a cowriter of this blog, provided me with a free copy for review. I should also say that if I did not like the book, I would have thanked Karen politely and simply would not have written a review.

The book reads very well and very quickly. It has 95 pages, so the amount of reading material is not overwhelming. But the contents go through all of the steps of adoption, from the planning stages, to the stages of building a relationship with your new dog, to a consideration of the possible behavioral problems that might arise.  It is a very enjoyable read,  and  the information is invaluable to anyone who is thinking about adopting a dog. In the future, when I am asked about dog adoptions by my clients, I am certainly going to recommend that they buy this book first.  For people who want to distribute this book more widely, there are quantity discounts offered on Dr. McConnell’s website.

And in the meanwhile, let’s not forget about the 70 percent of cats who are euthanized each year. Cats need good homes too.

--Con Slobodchikoff

A New Edition of “Canine Behavior: A Photo Illustrated Handbook.”

        In a previous post (September 7, 2008) I reviewed Barbara Handelman’s “Canine Behavior: A Photo Illustrated Handbook” (WoofandWord Press, 2008).  At the time, I reported that it is a very useful book, showing dogs in a variety of action photos doing many different behaviors. My only criticism was that many of the photos were very pale, lacking in crispness and definition.

        Barbara Handelman recently sent me a second edition of the book, in which the photos have been reprinted. In this edition, the photos have really good contrast, are crisp, and it is very easy to see the behaviors that the photos are illustrating.

        At the time of my original post, I thought that this was a terrific book for anyone who wanted to get a visual impression of dog behavior. I still think so.

As best I can tell, the only thing that has changed between the first and second editions is the way the photos have been printed. The book now is available through Dogwise, www.dogwise.com.

Here is what I said about the first edition:

The book, “Canine Behavior: A Photo Illustrated Handbook” by Barbara Handelman (copyright 2008, 347 pages, Woof and Word Press, Norwich VT, ISBN 978-0-9765118-2-3) is quite an impressive tome. The book cover says that the book has 1000 pictures, and although I did not count, I can well believe it. Each page has at least several black-and-white photos of dogs behaving.  Measuring 8.5x11 inches (21.5x28 cm), the book is large, with an attractive color cover of dogs performing a variety of behaviors.

The book is organized alphabetically, starting with “acquired bite inhibition” on page 1 and ending with “zoomorphism” on page 280.  Each entry provides a brief definition or description of a particular behavior. In places where the definition is not always easy to understand (such as learning), the book usually also has an example that is much more concrete and more comprehensible than the official definition. For example, “Counter Conditioning” (p 140) has a definition that is standard to the psychological literature, and an example that can be understood by those who get lost in the psychological jargon.

Pages 283 to 294 have 24 photos of dogs either interacting or showing different facial expressions, and the reader is asked to identify as many behaviors as possible in each photo. Pages 295 to 312 have detailed answers to the behaviors in each of the previous photos, and the reader can easily flip back to the alphabetically-organized subjects to get a more detailed look at each behavior.

At the very back of the book is an extensive section of references, titled “Works Cited,” and a topical bibliography, again alphabetized, that lists the more important books and other resources, starting with “Aggression” and ending with “Websites.”

The photographs in the book are provided by 9 different photographers, including Barbara Handelman. Most photos are action shots, with the dogs caught in the middle of some behavior that is featured in the text. A number of photos are of wolves, but many different dog breeds are represented as well.

Clearly, everything in the book has been well-thought-out and well-presented. The book is useful to everyone who is interested in dog behavior, both the seasoned professionals with lots of experience and the novices just starting out.

--Con Slobodchikoff

 

A Dog's View Of The World

I just finished reading a delightful book, Inside of a Dog, by Alexandra Horowitz (2009, Scribner, NY). In this book, Horowitz discusses what the world is like for dogs.

As a scientist with a Ph. D. in animal behavior, Horowitz brings in a considerable amount of information from experiments that have been done with dogs. However, she writes with an engaging, light-hearted style that kept me reading, turning over page after page to see what she would say next.

Many sections start with anecdotes of Horowitz interacting with her dog, Pumpernickel. Each of the anecdotes is short, but illustrates the point that Horowitz brings us in that section.
The anecdotes also show the profound feeling that Horowitz has for dogs. Unlike many animal behaviorists who view their study animals with a dispassionate eye as “subjects,”  Horowitz clearly likes dogs and honors dogs for who they are.

Although one would think that dogs have been studied to a great extent by now, the actual fact is that there are relatively few scientific studies of dog behavior, compared to studies of other animals such as rats. Horowitz has contributed to scientific dog knowledge with her studies of dog theory of mind. In case you are not familiar with the concept of theory of mind, it asks the question: does an animal (or a human for that matter) understand that other individuals have minds of their own?  In her work, Horowitz found that dogs have what she describes as rudimentary theory of mind, i.e., understanding that there is something going on behind the actions of other dogs and people.

This book provides a very readable entry into what science knows about dog behavior and dog senses.  However, rather than  presenting the information from a human’s point of view, Horowitz strives to present the information from a dog’s point of view: what is important to a dog, how a dog relates to humans and to other dogs, and how dogs are neither little humans in fur coats nor wolves one step removed from hunting elk on snow-swept plains.

I found this book to be both entertaining and informative, a rarity in most books. I enjoyed the sound of the words in my mind as I read, and I enjoyed the descriptions of experiments boiled down to their essence, free of circumlocutions and mind-numbing jargon. Most of all, I enjoyed the balanced presentation of what we do and do not yet know about dogs.

All told, a great read.

--Con Slobodchikoff

Do Dogs Understand Contagious Yawning?

When we yawn, it seems like the whole world yawns with us. Let one person start to yawn, and pretty soon everyone else is yawning too. Chimps also yawn contagiously, and possibly some other primates as well.

But what does yawning mean to a dog? Because dogs and humans have been associated for so long, is it reasonable to expect that when we yawn, our dogs will yawn along with us? These are the questions that are asked by two recent articles.

In one of the articles (Joly-Mascheroni et al. 2008. Dogs catch human yawns. Biology Letters 4:446-448) the authors had 29 dogs watching a human yawning, and recorded that 21 of the dogs yawned in response. The authors suggest that this represents a rudimentary form of empathy that dogs might feel for humans, causing the dogs to yawn after they see a human yawning.

In the other article (Harr et al. 2009. Do dogs (Canis familiaris) show contagious yawning? Animal Cognition DOI 10.1007/s10071-009-0233-0), the authors showed 15 dogs video clips of either humans yawning or dogs with either yawns or open mouths, and recorded how many dogs yawned under these circumstances. Only one dog yawned in response to the video clips, and this was to human yawns.

So here we have a difference. One article says that dogs yawn in response to human yawns, and the other article says that they don’t. How do we find our way out of this?

One problem is that there are a lot of unknown factors that could influence the interpretation of these results.

For example, can dogs see and understand video clips? My dog Raja seems utterly indifferent to what is happening on the TV screen, even when there are dogs bouncing around in commercials.

And even if they can see what is on the screen, can they interpret what they are seeing? The other day I came across a website that was talking about the work of Samuel Renshaw, a pioneer in human perception research. The website had a picture that Renshaw showed to people, asking them what the picture represented. I could not figure out what was in the picture until I saw the answer, and then it was obvious to me. If you are curious, take a look at the picture at: http://www.enter.net/~torve/critics/Renshaw/notassmart/notassmart1.html and see if you can identify what is there.

Also, when seeing real human faces yawning, are the dogs responding by yawning through empathy, or are they yawning because of discomfort?  In a book called On Talking Terms With Dogs: Calming Signals, Turid Rugaas describes a yawn as a calming signal that one dog gives to another (or to a human) signifying that the dog is not a threat, as a way of defusing a potentially stressful or aggressive situation.

When I first got Raja as a rescue dog, I would extend my hand to him to try to get him familiarized with my smell. He would often yawn in response. I understood this to mean that he was stressed and nervous, and I made sure that I did not push my attention onto him. Could the dogs watching yawning humans have responded by yawning because they were feeling stressed in the experimental situation?

What it comes down to is that some of the time, we know surprisingly little about why dogs do what they do.

--Con Slobodchikoff

Do Dogs Know Right From Wrong?

Yesterday, my Standard Poodle, Raja, got into the garbage while I was gone. The garbage can has a tight lid on it, opened by a foot treadle, and to make sure that the can was dogproof, I put a plastic gallon water jug on top of the lid whenever no one is in the house. Raja knocked over the garbage can, sending the water jug flying, and somehow pried open the lid to get at the contents of the can. Fortunately, there was nothing in there but wet paper towels, so he couldn’t hurt himself by eating decaying garbage. He did have a great time shredding the paper towels and scattering the shreds over the living room rug.

On previous occasions when this happened, I reprimanded Raja by scolding him in a deep, low voice, pointing to the shreds of garbage and telling him “No!” several times. I do not believe in hitting dogs, so the only punishment that Raja received was my stern and deep-voiced “No.” Throughout his life, Raja has gotten into the garbage perhaps once or twice a year, so this was a relatively unusual event, triggered perhaps by absolute boredom.

When I walked into the house, Raja greeted me with his usual enthusiastic tail-wagging at the door. I petted him, as is our usual custom, and then stepped into the living room, where I saw the shreds of paper.

I simply pointed to the garbage, and looked at Raja. He immediately started to cringe, crouching down low, with his tail between his legs. I did not say a word, but kept pointing to the papers scattered around. Raja then lay down on the floor and rolled over, exposing his belly, with his front feet folded up and his eyes closed.

When I have been asked about the proper thing to do with a dog who has gotten into the garbage hours or minutes before the dog’s people come home, I have always said that the best thing is to do nothing, because by then the dog does not remember having strewn things around, and punishing the dog after the fact would be counterproductive. I have always said that the dog does not at that point understand what the punishment is about, and would only get confused if punished. This is straight out of classical learning theory, where a response has to follow an event immediately for the lesson to be learned.

However, here was Raja clearly acting as if he knew that he had done something wrong. Not only that, but he was apparently remembering our last lesson about garbage from at least half a year previously.

Does that mean that he knows right from wrong? And, in the larger picture, do dogs in general know right from wrong? In Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals, a new book that is due to be released in March, Marc Bekoff and his coauthor Jessica Pierce argue that dogs and other animals have a sense of right and wrong, and a moral sense of fairness and empathy. Although the main thrust of the book deals with animals in general, Bekoff and Pierce have some examples from the behavior of dogs. They mention a case of a larger, stronger male dog playing with a smaller, weaker male and restraining his bites so as to not injure the smaller dog. They also mention the work of Friedericke Range and her colleagues in Austria, who have shown that dogs will refuse to work for food if they see that other dogs are getting more for doing the same thing. Bekoff and Pierce give a number of other examples, ranging from elephants to mice, that show that animals have a sense of morality, compassion, and a sense of right or wrong.

So how about Raja and the garbage? Does he have a sense of right and wrong? I would say yes. I think that he knows perfectly well that he is not allowed to get into the garbage, and perhaps feels a sense of remorse or shame when he is called on this issue. What’s more, he remembers prior scoldings, even though they happened a long time ago, and knows that they apply to the current situation.

Just like I still remember being scolded as a kid for getting into things that my parents told me not to touch.

--Con Slobodchikoff

A Rudimentary Theory Of Mind In Dogs And Other Animals

Note from Con Slobodchikoff: This is a guest post by Dr. Alexandra Horowitz, whose work on dog attention and theory of mind was featured in a post on this blog on October 8, 2008. Dr. Horowitz has written a book, "Inside Of A Dog," that will be published in September 2009 by Scribner. It is about what a dog's point of view might be like, using scientific results to help draw the picture.

It is notoriously difficult to test for theory of mind in animals. "Theory of mind" (ToM) refers to the attribution of mental states--particularly belief, desire, and knowledge--to others. Research shows that human children are not born with this understanding, but they develop it by age four. Many claim that ToM is wrapped up in what enables us humans to be (at times) so cooperative, so empathetic--in a word, so human. As a result, there is great interest in determining whether any non-human animal has a ToM.

The question of non-human ToM is vexed in a couple of ways. For one thing, tests to determine when children develop a ToM--for instance, the false-belief test, which asks if a child realizes that someone who's been out of the room doesn't know about any machinations that happened inside the room--require that the children use language to tell researchers what they know. So much for testing animals. For another, with the non-verbal tests that have been developed, the results with animals (mostly chimpanzees) have been mixed. Sometimes chimps act with seeming understanding of what others know; sometimes they act as though utterly oblivious.

It occurred to me that there is a problem with our concept of ToM. The implicit premise is that ToM is an "all or nothing", on-or-off ability, which pops "on" early in childhood, rather than developing in stages. This kind of conceptual definition reminds me of the Cartesian notion that an animate creature is either self-aware and conscious, or is merely an unthinking material form. Descartes led us to dualism, which we spent hundreds of years struggling out from under; but we retain his binary template of an animal being either insightful or mindless.

I propose, by contrast, that ToM is not best considered a unitary ability that one either has in spades, or one does not have at all. Instead, an individual may be able to realize that something connects all the behavior you see someone else doing--without specifically postulating a "mind" behind it. This step could be described as having a "rudimentary" theory of mind: more than acting instinctively, or as a behaviorist, but less than acting with the theoretical understanding characteristic of humans.

Formulated in terms of what we need to attribute to animals in order to explain their social behavior, we get the following hierarchy:

Theory of behavior: the understanding that certain behaviors lead to certain outcomes
Rudimentary theory of mind: the appreciation that there some overarching element which leads to seen behaviors
Theory of mind: extrapolating that what others' behaviors have in common is their root in a mind

Much of animal behavior requires only a "theory of behavior" to explain: an animal's action is based on simple associative conditioning, having learned that one event follows another. For instance, a dog who learns to sit at attention when a familiar person approaches him with a biscuit need not have posited anything about the mind of the biscuit-carrier; he need only have associated the fact of the biscuit being carried with his ultimate reward (biscuit-eating). The five-year-old child sitting waiting for some similarly valued reward from a parent has drawn the same association, surely--but also has a head full of conjectures about what the parent intends, thinks--in other words, what is on her mind.

The intermediate level allows for a middle ground between these poles. The dog who has learned not just to sit before the biscuit-carrier, but also to continue to adjust his sitting to always see her face; the dog who has generalized from the one biscuit-handling person to investigate whether other humans carry biscuits, but learns that not everyone can have biscuits extracted from them by sitting dutifully--these dogs have a more advanced theory of behavior. They are sensitive to salient elements of the behavior--the attention of the human, for instance--and use this knowledge to generalize to future contexts.

As Con has described in an earlier post, when I studied dogs' behaviors in dyadic rough-and-tumble play, I saw dogs behave in a way that I think is best explained by imputing to them a rudimentary theory of mind. They play-signaled--a request to play--only to dogs facing them, thus able to receive that request. When a dog paused in play, his play-partner used attention-getters to redirect him before signaling again. And, even more impressive, dogs used attention-getters matched to their partner's state of inattention: if a dog is looking at you, you needn't bite him on the rump to get his attention; a minor leap up will do. But if he is playing with another dog, the leap-up is ineffective; something on the order of a rump-bite is required.

What this demonstrates, I have suggested, is that the dogs were acting as though they understood that not only must you react to the presence of other dogs, not only must you communicate to the faces of other dogs--but you must also attend to an invisible feature of them--a feature that between humans we call "attention"--in order to communicate, and thus play together. Acting with sensitivity to attention is much more sophisticated than simply acting in response to seeing a stimulus: play-signaling whenever you see another dog, or using any attention-getter if you can't see a face. We simply cannot tell from the data whether the dogs actually have a theory of mind--a real understanding of the minds of others--but their behavior plainly shows us that they have more than just a theory of behavior.

I realize that many dog owners have no reluctance in asserting that their dogs have a theory of mind--and much more sophisticated cognition besides. "Dogs have the intelligence of three-year-olds", it's claimed. As discerning and sensitive companions as dogs are, I haven't seen the evidence yet. And I'd suggest that we owners, in turn, don't truly treat dogs as theorists of mind: we wouldn't dream of leaving a three-year-old alone with little to do for hours on end, the way we do our dogs; we ignore them when we're busy with other people or with work; we do nearly nothing to advance their intellect. Dogs are best served not by over-attributing to them but by acknowledging what they do know, and acting accordingly.