Of Barks And Bites

Dogs have been living with humans for at least 14,000 years. In this time the dog has picked up some human traits.  Number one is a capacity for joint attention.  This means that a dog can look at what you're looking at, and know that you're looking at it, too.

Simple, right?  Wrong.  Most animals--even our closest relatives like chimps and dull uncles--have only a tiny capacity for joint attention.

At Harvard Brian Hare tested the joint attention of chimps, wolves and dogs by hiding food in a container and having the creature guess where the treat was.  The trick of this experiment was that the experimenter stayed in the room with the animal, hinting vigorously towards the correct container--either by tapping it or staring at it.  Dogs--even puppies--could follow their human friend's attention to find the treat.  Chimps could not, and neither could wolves.

But while the dog curls at humanity's collective feet as we read our collective newspaper, we must sometimes wonder--what really goes on in that floppy-eared head?  What dog-dreams make dog legs twitch?  What dog words are dogs saying when they bark?

Bad Dogs

In an elegant experiment, Alexandra Horowitz at Barnard University in New York has figured out a way to peek into doggy brains.  Her subject is this.

This is the guilty look.  It is as common a pose in dogs as it is in humans when--in our roughs and tumbles--we happen to break a mug, or eat every piece of chocolate in the house even though we are told not to.  To figure out whether dogs are actually feeling guilt when they look guilty, Horowitz lied.

She brought fourteen dog owners and their dogs into a room with a tasty treat, and got the dog owners to tell the dogs not to eat the treat.  Then, the dog owners left the room.  Half of the dogs were allowed to eat the treat.  The other half were not.

But Horowitz told all the dog owners that their dogs had eaten the snack against their master's prohibition.  Predictably, the dog owners scolded their dog.  The dogs responded with the guilty look.

But all the dogs displayed the guilty look--even the dogs that hadn't eaten the forbidden treat.  This suggests that the dogs weren't feeling what we would call guilt--that is, remorse at doing something wrong.  How can you be guilty of something you have not done?  What we see as guilt in dogs must be some other kind of emotion--submission in the face of an irate master, perhaps?  A cringe at being yelled at?  But not guilt.

This is an enticing hint that what happens in doggy brains is different than we imagine.  But it is only a hint.  Now we will turn to the doggy bark.

Bark and Bite

Every dog on the planet barks, from Alaska to Australia.

But there is mystery, even in this truism.  While dogs bark, adult wolves don't.  This suggests that the bark is something essential that separates dogness from wolfness.  Sometime in the very earliest period of dog-development, dogs who barked were heavily selected for.

But the question is, why?  Barking is no good for hunting.  A bark--no matter how well-timed--just alerts your prey that you are coming.  And it's not like early humans enjoyed the sound of dog barks, even though they couldn't get the latest Okkervil River album.

It could be that dogs were neolithic security alarms.  Ancient humans might have put dogs on the outskirts of their camps, using their bark as a signal that a stranger was approaching.

Coda

And yet, for all this trouble trying to figure out the essence of dogginess, Pixar said it best.




My main sources for this post were Brian Boyd's On The Origin of Stories and Nicholas Wade's Before The Dawn.

Why Gossip Is Good For You

Ever since humanity first distinguished itself from other species, we have wondered what it is exactly that marks the line between man and beast.  Here's a brief survey of failed attempts to find humanity's unique quality:

Tool use. But tons of animals use tools.  Woodpecker finches use cactus pines to pin tasty grubs.  Chimps fish for ants using stalks of grass.  Octopuses build homes from coconut shells.  Pigs can even learn to play pong.  Examples abound.

Language?  Nope.  Dolphins give themselves unique names, chimps and gorillas can learn sign language, and bees do a funny waggle dance to inform other bees about whatever it is bees need to know.

Even hedonism is not safe from animal emulation, as this video of actual real-life drunken monkeys can attest.



But humans do something unique on this crooked earth.  We gossip.

Children start to gossip as soon as can speak.  And only 10% of gossip is about good deeds.  Maybe that's why so many religions have taken a stand against gossip.  Historical punishments for gossiping include such special-ordered torture devices as the Dunking Stool and the Gossip's Bridle.

Why do we gossip if we think it's bad?  One reason might be that gossip as a kind of low-cost punishment to people who break social norms.  Instead of going up and hitting Ugbert on the head after he got too drunk at my feast, I can just talk smack about him behind his back.  I don't risk getting hit by Ugbert (unless he gets wind of my gossip) and everyone finds out that he's a bit of an ass after he's had a few brews.

Gossip is also educational.  It gives us examples about what our communities disapprove of, at the same time as it informs us about who in our communities is doing the deeds that need disapproving.  If my bitchy story about Ugbert and the twelve-steins-of-beer goes viral, and people start calling Ugbert Professor Twelve-Stein behind his back, it reinforces the social norm of holding your alchohol, and also shows us that Ugbert is a notorious breaker of this norm.

Finally, gossip is a great way of making friends.  When I gossip with Tugmert about Ugbert's regrettable projectile vomiting at my feast, I'm showing Tugmert that I trust her so much that I'm not scared that she's going to gossip to Ugbert about my gossiping.  I'm also showing that Tugmert is the person I gossip to, not the person I gossip about.

So next time you start polishing up your Dunking Stool looking to punish a gossip, please--forgive the poor gossip.  They're only being human.

My sources today are an article on the social psychology of gossip in In Mind Magazine--which has more than you ever needed to know about gossip, and the book On The Origin of Stories by Brian Boyd.