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Human-dog communication -- breed as important as species
July 24, 2009Dog breeds selected to work in visual contact with humans, such as sheep dogs and gun dogs, are better able to comprehend a pointing gesture than those breeds that usually work without direct supervision. A series of tests, described in BioMed Central's open access journal Behavioral and Brain Functions, should caution researchers against making simple generalizations about the effects of domestication and on dog-wolf differences in the utilization of human visual signals.
Márta Gácsi, from Eötvös University, Hungary, worked with a team of researchers to examine the performance of different breeds of dogs in making sense of the human pointing gesture. Gácsi said, "It has been suggested that the study of the domestic dog might help to explain the evolution of human communicative skills, because the dog has been selected for living in a human environment and engaging in communicative interactions with humans for more than 10,000 years. However, this study is the first to reveal striking difference in the performance of breed groups selected for different characteristics."
The researchers found that gun dogs and sheep dogs were better than hunting hounds, earth dogs (dogs used for underground hunting), livestock guard dogs and sled dogs at following a pointing finger. They also out-performed mongrels. Moreover, breeds with short noses and centrally placed eyes were better at interpreting the gesture than those with long noses and widely spaced eyes, which can probably be connected to a more optimal retinal location of greatest visual acuity, that might help focus their attention. According to Gácsi, "Although these results may appear to be unsurprising, there is a common tendency to make assumptions about genetic explanations for differences in comprehension between 'dogs' and wolves. Our results show that researchers must be careful to control for animal breed when carrying out behavioral experiments."
BioMed Central
BioMed Central
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Renowned canine researcher puts dogs' intelligence on par with 2-year-old human
Although you wouldn't want one to balance your checkbook, dogs can count. They can also understand more than 150 words and intentionally deceive other dogs and people to get treats, according to psychologist and leading canine researcher Stanley Coren, PhD, of the University of British Columbia.
New research to help dogs with cancer may benefit people
A new study jointly conducted by Oregon State University College of Veterinary Medicine and the Oregon Health & Science University Cancer Institute may one day help not only our canine friends with cancer, but also people with the human form of the disease.
Dog DNA study yields clues to diverse size of breeds
From the smallest Chihuahua to the largest Great Dane, dogs dramatically vary in size, much more than most other animals. Now scientists have discovered a genetic basis for this diversity.
Contagious canine cancer
The source of a cancer that affects dogs around the world has been traced by scientists and vets at UCL (University College London) to a single wolf or dog, which probably lived in China or Siberia more than 250 years ago.
Dog genome sequence and analysis published in Nature
An international research team led by scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard announced today the completion of a high-quality genome sequence of the domestic dog, together with a catalog of 2.5 million specific genetic differences across several dog breeds.
Old World Origin of New World Dogs
When humans arrived to the New World they had dogs with them. This is the conclusion reached by a study published this week in the journal Science by evolutionary biologists at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Uppsala University, Sweden, in collaboration with zooarchaeologists from Mexico and Peru. Dogs have been present in the New World for a very long time. Archaeological remains suggest that they were in North America at least 9,000 to 10,000 years ago. They were the only domesticated species to have an Old and New World distribution before the arrival of Columbus to North America. Dogs were domesticated from gray wolves and therefore, a logical explanation for this long pre
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