12/27/2023 0 Comments Thoughts of dog journalThis attitude was driven in part by the mistaken belief that domestication had dumbed dogs down. Scientists who study animals have tended to turn their noses up at dog cognition. They confide their deepest secrets, rearrange vacation schedules to accommodate their idiosyncrasies and shower them with gifts and luxuries such as dog houses and rawhide. alone is home to an estimated 90 million pooches (roughly one for every four Americans), many of whom have owners who treat them like mini people, dressing them in raincoats, sweaters and booties (the global pet clothing market topped $5.2 billion in 2021). Humans have been domesticating dogs for at least 32,000 years-more than 10,000 years longer than horses. Tiffany Kelly/Noble Soul Photography/Getty Flashpop/Getty Dogs Are No Dummies The new dog science is also addressing the issue most prominently on the minds of Bern and dog owners everywhere: Does my dog really love me?įrom left, an elder Chihuahua and fluffy pup with a human. ![]() They're able to read and assess human emotions with great accuracy, can understand some language and are even capable of making rudimentary signals. Over the millennia, they have evolved to be cooperative animals, endowed with the neural machinery to understand abstract ideas and complex social dynamics. Far from being dumb creatures with good noses, as previously thought, they're actually smart in specific ways that make them ideal human collaborators and companions. The insights emerging are confirming things many dogs owners have long suspected and are fundamentally changing what scientists thought they knew about dogs. A new international consortium called the ManyDogs Project, with researchers in Austria, Poland, Italy, Canada, the U.S., Argentina and a number of other countries, recently completed its first major collaborative study and plans to publish it later this year. Today there are Canine Cognition labs at Yale, Duke, University of Arizona, University of Portsmouth, Barnard College, University of Florida and a wide array of leading scientific institutions around the globe-and the study of dogs in general is one of the fastest growing areas in the broader field of animal behavioral science. Read more Puppy love: Newsweek readers share adorable photos of their furry best pals
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