Parlor Spider...Step In, Little Fly

Insightful thoughts and/or rants from atop the soapbox from one who wishes to share the "right" opinion with everyone.

Monday, February 11, 2013

Smarter Than Some People, No Doubt

I am definitely not a cat person.I dislike their aloof behavior, the smelly litterbox and the clawed up furniture and drapes. I especially don't like the way cats seem drawn to me like I'm wearing catnip underwear whenever I visit someone who owns a cat. I suppose since I've never owned a cat but always had dogs, I might be somewhat biased; however, it always seemed to me that dogs had a personality more suited to people than did cats...whose expression might have been a permanent, "meh."
Now comes a degree of proof that dogs are possessed with a degree of flexible understanding that we had not thought possible prior to the study done by Dr. Juliane Kaminski of the University of Portsmouth in ?England. Her research points obliquely to the fact that dogs have an ability to understand changes in their owners' perspective.
In her study of 84 dogs, Kaminski found that dogs were four times more likely to steal "forbidden" food-even in the owner's presence-wen the lights were turned out as they were when they could see the owner in the room. According to Kaminski, this means that the dogs were able to sense a change in the owner's perspective...meaning that the dogs knew the owners couldn't see them and they were thus free to alter their behavior and take food that the owners had withheld from them in the lighted room.
The report, published in the journal Animal Cognition also potentially helps to explain why dogs have a great capacity to interact closely with people in their work as guide dogs or sniffer dogs.
The downside of this finding, however, is that now it's not just our significant others who can think for us...now the darn dog can do it, too!

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