Humanity’s Best Friend: A Dog-Centric Approach to Addressing Global Challenges

No other animal has a closer mutualistic relationship with humans than the dog (Canis familiaris). Domesticated from the Eurasian grey wolf (Canis lupus), dogs have evolved alongside humans over millennia in a relationship that has transformed dogs and the environments in which humans and dogs have co-inhabited. The story of the dog is the story of recent humanity, in all its biological and cultural complexity. By exploring human-dog-environment interactions throughout time and space, it is possible not only to understand vital elements of global history, but also to critically assess our present-day relationship with the natural world, and to begin to mitigate future global challenges. In this paper, co-authored by researchers from across the natural and social sciences, arts and humanities, we argue that a dog-centric approach provides a new model for future academic enquiry and engagement with both the public and the global environmental agenda

What are animals? Why anthropomorphism is still not a scientific approach to behavior

Before Darwin, the relationship of humans to the rest of creation was straightforward. Animals had instincts and habits: humans were blessed with rationality and language. Darwin’s recognition of the interrelatedness of all living things made this position untenable. Around the time of the publication of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, people began to use the term “anthropomorphism ” to describe the attribution of human qualities to nonhuman animals. The rise of Behaviorism (e.g., Watson, 1913) led to a concentration on observable phenomena and treated ‘anthropomorphism ’ only in a pejorative sense. Ethology, which arose in the 1930s, shared the Behaviorists ’ distaste for anthropomorphic and mentalistic explanations (e.g., Tinbergen, 1951). This reticence was punctured by Griffin in 1976. Griffin argued that all animal species are consciously aware and consequently, anthropomorphism is an entirely appropriate way of thinking about animals. Several contemporary authors have attempted to ‘tame ’ anthropomorphism into a respectable branch of psychology. Burghardt (1991) coined the term “critical anthropomorphism ” to distinguish the inevitable (“naïve”) anthropomorphic impulses that human beings uncritically bring to other species, from a sophisticated anthropomorphism. This latter type of anthropomorphism uses the assumption that animals have private experiences as an “heuristic method to formulate research agendas that result in publicly verifiable data that move our understanding of behavior forward ” (Burghardt, 1991, p. 86). I shall argue that, as I put it once before, “the reintroduction of anthropomorphism risks bringing back the dirty bathwater as we rescue the baby ” (Wynne, 2004). The study of animal cognition will only proceed effectively once it rids itself of pre-scientifi

Anthropomorphism Pro or Contra: A

Arguing about names for things is fun, and arguments about history are captivating and educational, but, if there is one thing all four commentaries and I can agree on, it is that what really matters is how best to move a scientific field forward

Quantity discrimination in canids: Dogs (Canis familiaris) and wolves (Canis lupus) compared

Accumulating evidence indicates that animals are able to discriminate between quantities. Recent studies have shown that dogs' and coyotes' ability to discriminate between quantities of food items decreases with increasing numerical ratio. Conversely, wolves' performance is not affected by numerical ratio. Cross-species comparisons are difficult because of differences in the methodologies employed, and hence it is still unclear whether domestication altered quantitative abilities in canids. Here we used the same procedure to compare pet dogs and wolves in a spontaneous food choice task. Subjects were presented with two quantities of food items and allowed to choose only one option. Four numerical contrasts of increasing difficulty (range 1-4) were used to assess the influence of numerical ratio on the performance of the two species. Dogs' accuracy was affected by numerical ratio, while no ratio effect was observed in wolves. These results align with previous findings and reinforce the idea of different quantitative competences in dogs and wolves. Although we cannot exclude that other variables might have played a role in shaping quantitative abilities in these two species, our results might suggest that the interspecific differences here reported may have arisen as a result of domestication

Deductive Reasoning in Pigeons

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