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(108,903 posts) Fri Dec 27, 2013, 10:13 AM Dec 2013

What Does Your Dog Want for Christmas? (Op-Ed)

http://www.livescience.com/42147-what-your-dog-wants-for-christmas.html

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Apparently, dogs want whatever you want for Christmas, according to a study detailed in the journal Dognition.

What does your dog want for Christmas? Anything you want, apparently. In new results from our research at Dognition, it seems that dogs are heavily influenced by their owners when it comes to choosing toys, objects and even food.

It's already well established that dogs pay close attention to human social cues. When I started studying dogs 15 years ago, I noticed that if there were two identical cups, my pet dog Oreo would always choose the cup I pointed at, touched or singled out in some way. Granted, he knew I had hidden food in one of the cups and was using my social cues to find it, but as every dog owner has experienced, Oreo much preferred to play with the toy I was playing with, even if there was an identical toy nearby.

In the latest results from Dognition, we found that this preference even extended to food. When dogs were asked to choose between two identical treats, they much preferred to choose the treat their owner was standing behind. It became even more interesting to see what happened when the stakes got higher.

Dogs may not be capable of algebra, but they can definitely quantify — or at least estimate quantities. Dogs pass tests that researchers use to show that five-month-old human infants have basic counting skills. For instance, they know that four pieces of food is more than two pieces of food, and that five is more than three. They have a more difficult time when the difference between the two quantities is smaller, so two versus three, and three versus four.