Heart of Dogness

This Just In: Dog learns 1,022 proper nouns

This story from the New York Times tells the tale of Chaser, a Border Collie from Spartanburg, SC, with a vocabulary of 1,022 proper nouns. This tops the old record of over 200, held by Rico, another Border Collie in Germany.

It's worth noting that all dogs aren't this smart. JoJo, for example, needs to be re-taught "sit" almost daily. And some of the remarks about horses are tendentious; I studied mathematics with Dr. Cleverhans and found him to be a very astute teacher.

"Pill-Popping Pets" in today's New York Times

Prozac for Fido? Eli Lilly's Reconcile is essentially beef-flavored chewable Prozac. Novartis's Clomicalm for dogs is chemically identical to its Anafranil for humans. This story in today's New York Times Magazine details how Americans are spending millions of dollars on psychiatric pharamceuticals for their pets, and how the major drug companies are salivating at the prospect of all those new patients.

"Surveys by the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association found that 77 percent of dog owners and 52 percent of cat owners gave their animals some sort of medication in 2006, both up at least 25 percentage points from 2004."

I'm a little ambivalent about this. In the abstract, it feels like we're projecting human problems and human solutions onto non-human subjects who can't tell us to buzz off. But before I climb onto that high horse, I'm reminded that we've given Gus alprazolam, which is the generic of Xanax, as part of our ongoing effort to get him to stop chewing his tail, his leg, and whatever other body part he may target for assassination. I'm also reminded of the National Geographic story "Animal Minds", in which researchers say that human intelligence appears to have evolved from animal intelligence.

I'm going to try to keep an open mind on this.

"Animal Minds" in National Geographic

There's a wonderful story in the March 2008 National Geographic called "Animal Minds". Turns out even critters that aren't primates can plan, count, lie, cheat, steal, make tools, and perform simple household repairs. Which, except for the lie-cheat-steal thing, is more than most people can do. The star, for me, is Betsy the Border Collie (that's her pretty face at the top of the story). She has a vocabulary of 340 words and, when show a picture of a frisbee, can go get the frisbee from the next room. If you don't find this impressive, try getting a toddler to pick up a toy.

A quote from the story illustrates that Darwin called this game early and he called it right:

Charles Darwin, who attempted to explain how human intelligence developed, extended his theory of evolution to the human brain: Like the rest of our physiology, intelligence must have evolved from simpler organisms, since all animals face the same general challenges of life.

Too bad Gus can't play at this level.