Why Is That Dog Looking at Me?
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
They should try tests involving something other than food that inspires dogs - like attempting to get access to a female in heat, and see if the dogs bother looking at humans in that scenario.
When my 5 month old labrador rolls her ball under the couch (again), she tries for 5 seconds to get it herself, after that, she starts staring at me.
When she needs to "go", she will sit by the door and start staring at me.
Both of which are events that are not rewarded by food, but something she will enjoy by herself. (playing with a ball, and "relief"), even though in the latter case, I am very pleases she is going outside :).
For an example, some dogs prefer to chase an object, but dogs bred for hunting might prefer carrying over chasing.
This makes a difference if you want to reward them, for the chasing dog you should throw the ball, but for the carrying of the object you should just give them the ball and let them walk around with it.
When you have determined what type of reward that work with your dog, your training become very effective.
> He asked what color he was, and learned "grey" after being told the answer six times. This made him the first and only non-human animal to have ever asked an existential question.
There's a little evidence[1] to suggest that the influence of a sentient (or intelligent) species can, to some degree, rub off. You could definitely cherry-pick specific traits of any species that would imply that it is not intellectual, including humans (e.g. war, intolerance). Maybe dogs don't have an intellectual reason for looking at us but that's not conclusive as to the intellectual capacity of the species.
At the end of the day I think it's inconceivable for a person to form an emotional bond with an animal such as a baboon - yet we do that with dogs and that's got to mean something, even if it's not scientifically quantifiable.
Are they just trying to do anything to keep their job? What kind of university lets its well qualified staff do things so far beneath their ability?
A couple of years back, i visited the wolf science center in Ernstbrunn/Austria, where they have wolves and feral dogs, and they also perform these kinds of behavioral experiments. It was quite eye-opening to see how much effort is needed for such seemingly simple experiments.
Obviously, just ensuring safety is quite complex when working with wolves, but there's also a lot of effort that goes into making sure the experiments work. You can only work with animals for a limited time, you don't have infinite number of animals, etc.
There was a PhD student at the center who was trying to design an experiment to simulate cooperation during hunting on a giant treadmill; not exactly trivial stuff...
I don't think experiment design is something scientists are necessarily very good at or needed for. Just look at the recent articles pointing out the large proportion of bad results - probably coming from bad experiment design. A hobbyist on the other hand, could try again when it fails and fix problems.
Could it be the hard part is writing it up and submitting to a journal? That's not something you could just hack together without a lot of probably uninteresting self-teaching.
The most curiosity and passionate about a topic of research often tend to go into academic research.
Likewise for dogs and wolves raised by their biological parent (assuming dogs treat their owner as a surrogate parent).
WHY is that dog looking at me? - the standard version
Why IS that dog looking at me? - a reply to the above; I'm wondering the same thing!
Why is THAT dog looking at me? - why not the other dog?
Why is that DOG looking at me? - why not the cat?
Why is that dog LOOKING at me? - why is it just looking, not sniffing etc?
Why is that dog looking AT me? - why not look past me at the food on the table? (okay, this one's a stretch)
Why is that dog looking at ME? - why not you?They have selfs learned that if i look at a human the human will eventually fix my problems for me.