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A new study carried out by the Department of Psychology at Barnard College in the U.S. used a sniff test to evaluate the ability of dogs to recognize themselves. The results have been published in the journal Behavioural Processes.
The experiment confirms the hypothesis of dog self-cognition proposed last year by Prof. Roberto Cazzolla Gatti of the Biological Institute of the Tomsk State University, Russia. Dr. Alexandra Horowitz, the lead researcher, wrote, "While domestic dogs, Canis familiaris, have been found to be skillful at social cognitive tasks and even some meta-cognitive tasks, they have not passed the test of mirror self-recognition (MSR)."
Prof. Horowitz borrowed the "Sniff test of self-recognition (STSR)" proposed by Prof. Cazzolla Gatti in 2016 to shed light on methods of testing for self-recognition, and applied it to 36 domestic dogs accompanied by their owners.
This study confirmed the previous evidence proposed with the STSR by Dr. Cazzolla Gatti showing that "dogs distinguish between the olfactory 'image' of themselves when modified: Investigating their own odour for longer when it had an additional odour accompanying it than when it did not. Such behaviour implies a recognition of the odour as being of or from 'themselves.'"
Prof. Cazzolla Gatti firstly suggested the hypothesis of self-cognition in dogs in a 2016 pioneering paper entitled after the novel by Lewis Carroll "Self-consciousness: beyond the looking-glass and what dogs found there."
As the Associate Professor of the Tomsk State University anticipated: "this sniff-test could change the way some experiments on animal behaviour are validated." Soon, the study of Dr. Horowitz followed.
"I believe that dogs and other animals, being much less sensitive to visual stimuli than humans and many apes, cannot pass the mirror test because of the sensory modality chosen by the investigator to test self-awareness. This in[sic] not necessarily due to the absence of this cognitive ability in some animal species," says Cazzolla Gatti.
Source: https://phys.org/news/2017-09-stsr-dogs-self-awareness.html
More information: Alexandra Horowitz, Smelling themselves: Dogs investigate their own odours longer when modified in an "olfactory mirror" test, Behavioural Processes (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.beproc.2017.08.001
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Shimitar on Friday September 08 2017, @08:25AM (3 children)
Exactly my tought. A dog doesn't care about mirror because... well, because he/she is more "advanced" than us with senses. A dog cannot be fooled by an image. It's lacking smell and sound. Simple as that. No need for research.
My dog sleep in front of a mirror every night. The first night, she was interested in it... after smelling the mirror, she decided it was not important at all.
And indeed she can recognize my car when i come home. From how far i cannot say, but she never barks to our own cars... Only to strangers car approaching, and this happens before she can see it, as part of the road is blocked by view. More over, when she does the "i want to play" bark and a car is approaching out of view, i know already it's my SO arriving and i rush to open the gate without even looking. Never failed so far.
... a notable exception is when the dog is asleep.. She will wake up in a fraction of second as soon as the car pull up in front of the gate and start barking before being on all fours... then stops as soon as her brain "wakes up" enough to tell her she is barking to us. Now talk about the power of instinct over reason!
Dogs are smarter than they have credit for. Maybe not all dogs, but it's true for humans as well.
Let's not talk about dogs dreaming, it's another fun fact and often hilarious. Never noticed your dog "running" and "woffing" muffled in the sleep, while laying on a side on the floor? I guess she was finally catching that rabbit from today's afternoon fruitless chase...
Coding is an art. No, java is not coding. Yes, i am biased, i know, sorry if this bothers you.
(Score: 2) by Shimitar on Friday September 08 2017, @08:30AM (2 children)
Forgot to add...
My dog knows her smell, and she knows it's hers. When we travel we bring her pillow with us.
When we get to the new place, she wait for the pillow, smell it properly, then settle down.
Maybe it's just recognition of her "property" in a way...
but, so why assume she can't recognize herself and try to prove it, instead of assuming she CAN recognize herself and try to prove it false?
I'm saying this kind of research is biased toward "us" being the only "smart, intelligent" creatures on earth, and so we need to prove it.
Coding is an art. No, java is not coding. Yes, i am biased, i know, sorry if this bothers you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 08 2017, @10:15AM (1 child)
I'd say assume neither and test both ways.
positive test succeeded → dog is self aware
negative test succeeded → dog is not self-aware
neither test succeeded → we still don't know
(Score: 2) by Shimitar on Friday September 08 2017, @10:45AM
I wonder how many humans would pass these tests...
Coding is an art. No, java is not coding. Yes, i am biased, i know, sorry if this bothers you.