Picture-Sorting Dogs Show Human-Like Thought

ComputerDog writes "A new study shows they can sort photographs into categories in a similar way to humans. In experiments, dogs were shown photographs of a landscape and of a dog, and were rewarded if they selected the latter using 'a paw-operated computer touch-screen'. Later they were able to correctly categorize dogs shown on an unfamiliar background landscape. '' "

Birds

[Tablizer]

I saw a show on a Discovery-like channel in which during WW2 they successfully trained birds to recognize different makes of vessels and peck a steering panel in the right direction. They were trying to build a guided bomb. I don't remember why they canceled the program, but it was not due to the bird's skills.

Birds rely heavily on their eyesight to find or distinguish food and prey. Thus, they may be as good or better than dogs, who use mostly hearing and smell. Plus, dogs are partly color blind.
     

Re:Or rather ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dogs were bred by humans, so no.

It's pretty strange..

[Bones3D_mac]

Up until very recently, I always thought of dogs as generally being playful but incredibly stupid animals outside of spirit-breaking intensive training... at least, until we just got our recent dog, a pit bull/boxer mix. Unlike most dogs I've owned over the years, this one isthe first I known to preemptively develop strategies on the fly under ever-changing conditions. (In other words, she doesn't do the whole "repeat the same process over and over expecting a different result each time" thing.)

For example, take a piece of food being dropped on the floor just out of her reach behind a barrier. Most dogs would simply shove their snout under the barrier and root at it with their tongue for hours. With this dog though, she only did the snout rooting thing once, stopped, reached under the barrier with her paws trying to grip the food, stopped and finally removed the barrier itself to get at the food.

In my previous experience, only a cat would have ever made it to step 2.

Needless to say, the dog is now quite an escape artist, having deciphered how to use doors, removing collars like houdini and bypassing six foot tall chain-link fences.

Virtually the same experiment...

[Ieshan]

The project to which you are referring was the work of Skinner, and called Project Pigeon. It was canceled.

On the other hand, virtually the same experiment as the one conducted with dogs was conducted with pigeons, in 1964, by Herrnstein and Loveland. So, someone beat you to it. =)

Re:It's pretty strange..

[Scamwise]

We had a dog capable of opening all sorts of doors, he could even open the back door against the swing, ie: turn the handle and pull the door towards himself.
He also used to get agitated if you wore a hat because he couldn't recognise you if you did, he would even bark at my uncle if he was wearing a hat and stop immediately if he removed it.
Having been a building site dog he developed a strange habit of barking when you called "FIRING!" which they used to do before anyone used a nail gun, he would as a result bark on demand any time any place, quite an amusing party trick.
He also used to have what can only be described as a guilty look that he would give you when he had done something wrong, sometimes he would even give the look before doing something wrong and then go and do it!
All in all I think we are not giving dogs nearly enough credit on the smarts front.

Re:Turing Test

[Xtravar]

until then it's just trained repetition which is not human like at all

I disagree. Isn't pretty much everything "trained repetition" when you think of it? Look at neural nets... they train... by repetition... to do something "intelligent".

There's not much difference between training a dog to recognize photos of dogs and training a human child to recognize Latin characters. The only difference between us and dogs is neural capacity, learning rules, and societal environment.

What studies like this one do is help us to further understand what those hard-wired rules in animals are, allowing us to get a better grasp of the big learning picture across all forms of life.

Re:So...

[Z00L00K]

Reminds me of a dog my friend had once - she was growing up with a cat as a companion and that resulted in a dog that sometimes behaved as a cat - sitting in the window still, sleeping at the top of the backrest of the sofa, even found in the bookcase.

Mind that this was a Border Collie [wikipedia.org]. Even if she was small for her kind it caused some consternation among his friends seeing the dog in unfamiliar dog locations.

Cat behaviour in dogs

[CustomDesigned]

My dog growing up (a miniature collie) was raised by a cat who had lost her kittens (to the CO gas chamber). She used a litter box, or buried her business when relieving herself outside. She wouldn't go in lawns (too hard to dig), but looked for leaf or sand covered areas.

Tricks cats like to do

[CustomDesigned]

It is easy to teach a cat tricks - you just have to work within what cats naturally like to do. Farmers have been using cats to catch mice for a long time. In my own case, I've taught our cat several games that it loves to play - taking the initiative in getting a game started. His favorite is "who can sneak up on who". The human takes off shoes, and attempts to quietly sneak up on the cat. Watch out for shadows - any movement of your shadow in the cats field of vision will alert him to your position. Meanwhile, the cat attempts the same on you. If the cat gets close enough first (the usual case), he leaps out, and "tags" the calves of the human with a bat of his (claws retracted) paw. And then runs off to start another round. If the human manages to get close enough (a rare but not impossible occurrence), they reach out and give the cat a quick stroke down the back. The cat, generally miffed that the clumsy human managed to win the round, looks annoyed and grooms himself for a few seconds, then runs off to start another round.

Another good one is "monkey in the middle". Two humans sit 10 or 20 feet apart, with a small plush toy. One of the humans makes the plush toy wiggle like a small mammal, and peep temptingly from behind his leg or back. The cat crouches low to the ground, his tail lashing with small movements, and his eyes shifting back and forth. When you're least expecting it he springs, and if he caught you off guard, grabs the toy with his claws and stalks triumphantly with it in his teeth and drops it in the middle. The other human then takes the toy and makes it wiggle. If the human has managed to stay focused when the cat leaps, he tosses the toy over the cats head to the other human. The cat then leaps high into the air in an attempt to intercept it - often succeeding [gathman.org].

Re:So...

[ceoyoyo]

I had a cat whose mother disappeared right after she was born. So the dog raised the kitten. It was a very interesting cat. She taught herself to hunt... used to sit in trees and wait for birds. If the tree wasn't yielding any kills she'd jump like a squirrel from tree to tree.