Study Aims To Read Dogs' Thoughts 154
jjp9999 writes "A new study at Emory University is trying to figure out what dogs think. The study uses functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to scan the dogs' brains while they're shown different stimuli. Results from the first study will be published by the Public Library of Science, where the dogs were shown hand signals from their owners. 'We hope this opens up a whole new door for understanding canine cognition and inter-species communication. We want to understand the dog-human relationship, from the dog's perspective,' said Gregory Berns, director of the Emory Center for Neuropolicy and lead researcher of the dog project."
Re:Ignoring the more important question.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably the case with any relationship, actually. Do we really want to know what other people are thinking? Or cats?
Squirrel! (Score:5, Insightful)
Scrabble tiles (Score:4, Insightful)
Have they tried Scrabble tiles?
It's about time, we can learn from other species. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this is a very good idea and there should be lots of research in this area. If we discover that animals have thoughts similar enough to ours then we will have to give them rights. Depending on how complex the thoughts they might require person status.
This would at least in theory suggest we will need to consider animal rights when making political or economic decisions. Dogs in specific if they could communicate with us could completely change the relationship humans have with them.
Although I'm going to be honest I don't expect talking dogs anytime soon.