Dogs can extend word meanings to new objects based on function, not appearance

skinnydipper

skinnydipper

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My not so bright dog will bring me either a stuffed cartoon style soft toy donkey or a stuffed cartoon style soft toy horse from their basket of toys if we ask her to fetch wonky donkey, the name we gave the donkey when she first got it. The toy horse came much later but she will often bring that instead of wonky donkey. My only conclusion is that like most human toddlers she does not know the difference between a donkey or a horse! 😊 She wouldn't dream of bringing the stuffed pig or the sheep stuffed toys instead of the equines.

In the toy box there are about 6 different balls. If we ask the other dog to bring 'best ball' she will bring her favourite. If we just ask her to fetch the ball she will return with any random ball, not her favourite one. But we can then tell her no, go and get the 'best ball'. She will drop the random ball and excitedly go and get her favourite.

Not sure what all the above means in the grand scheme of dog training but it keeps me and them amused on a wet day stuck indoors. 😅
 
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And maybe this will make you laugh, have a Jack Russell terrier, and 4 rescue hens who are properly free range….terrier knows hens are not to be touched hassled in anyway whatsoever which actually led to terrier not coming through kitchen door if hens are taking their ease outside it…..This morning has actually seen me feeling quite sorry for terrier,,he was given a rather large knuckle bone by my butcher, chewed away at it most of last evening, but obviously decided this morning it needed buried to “mature” he does that quite often…as he walked through kitchen door with said bone, chief hen spotted him…then started a chase and it’s not easy to run with a large bone as all 4 hens pursued him out of back yard, he arrived back in looking sad, question, do I retrieve bone from the four hens who are enjoying it at moment?
 
I think we are only starting to realise the intelligence of non verbal species. Probably not helped by assuming they are thick as mince to start with.
Not item similarities like in the study but if I ask Ffee to find my socks she won’t bring me P’s. Same if he asks her for his.
She brings me my slippers and generally brings both together (jam them in and slime them) but if one of the others have taken one she will come and ‘tell’ me she can’t get it. If all else fails she will bring me another one of my shoes, but not P’s.
And when I send her for a retrieve (and this is basic gundog stuff) she will stay on the bird she’s been sent to get and ignore all others. I know that’s expected by them but actually it’s pretty amazing.
 
Clodagh said:
And when I send her for a retrieve (and this is basic gundog stuff) she will stay on the bird she’s been sent to get and ignore all others. I know that’s expected by them but actually it’s pretty amazing.
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Not the same, but there are a tonne of twigs in my garden.

If I begin a game with one particular twig, she will only seek out that twig.

I can pop her in the house and go and hide the twig somewhere in the garden and she will come outside and sniff out that particular twig, ignoring all others.

Dogs really are quite something.
 
Clodagh said:
I think we are only starting to realise the intelligence of non verbal species. Probably not helped by assuming they are thick as mince to start with.
Not item similarities like in the study but if I ask Ffee to find my socks she won’t bring me P’s. Same if he asks her for his.
She brings me my slippers and generally brings both together (jam them in and slime them) but if one of the others have taken one she will come and ‘tell’ me she can’t get it. If all else fails she will bring me another one of my shoes, but not P’s.
And when I send her for a retrieve (and this is basic gundog stuff) she will stay on the bird she’s been sent to get and ignore all others. I know that’s expected by them but actually it’s pretty amazing.
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There is an awful lot of current research which is jaw dropping. We know whales use language and we are very close to knowing what they are saying. My area is dogs and language use, in broad laymens terms. We only know the tip of the iceberg of what dogs are capable of. I think for a lot of people it will change the way we see animals. That thing were they are seen as dumb and lesser wont be able to be applied anymore.

I've said before both of mine listen to the sat nav to know when we are stopping for a walk, and also know if I say to them I have to run errands, that it wont be this time we go for walk. Cooper likes to bring me a shoe while I'm getting ready to go out, usually a croc as hes had a thing for crocs since he was a puppy. Typical apeasement stuff as hes excited and anxious to get out. Today I thought I'd see what he would do if I told him it was the wrong shoe and could he get my walking shoes. He went away and stood at the shoe box for a bit and then came back with my walking shoe. I couldnt get him to go back for the second one, I guess that would have felt like work and needed some training to stick. But no one will persuade me that that dog didnt listen and understand what was being asked of him.
 
Morwenna said:
I’ve been teaching my dog the names of her toys. She now knows around 15 of them and will bring me whichever toy I ask for from the toy box.

She still doesn’t seem to know what “sit” means though - at least, not when we are in our lessons 😂
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My aunt and uncle used to have a miniature(?) Poodle, which would bring a named toy, on request from the toy basket which held at least 10.
 
Dogs that are part of and treated like family, know exactly what is going on, when it’s going on and if they are going to be part of that particular going on…..
My Jack Russell can read me like a book, from the time I open my eyes in the morning until the time I put my mug of milk in saucepan at night, and every move in between….and no one will ever persuade me otherwise….
 
We taught Dram the name of about dozen toys when he was a puppy .
He knows that big ball is a football sized one and ball is a smaller one
Both dogs know load up in car load up in the lorry and load up in the defender .
We had one dog gone now who knew which sets of keys when with which vehicles .
Many of us will have had dogs that know what suitcases can mean .
Dogs can follow some simple sentences recognising words and tone and linking them together to understand what we want .
We created dogs from wolves they imo our best innovation it’s a shame they are not universally appreciated more than they are.
 
CorvusCorax said:
They are exceptional at reading body language and as Pavlov once identified, making a link between two previously unrelated stimuli.
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Similar to clever Hans the horse who everyone, even his owner thought could understand human language, count and do maths. His 'trick' was tapping his hoof on the ground the correct number of times to give a numerical answer to a question. It took them years of touring this horse around and doing this show for them to realise that what he was actually doing was interpreting non-verbal cues from humans (any humans, his handler didn't have to be there) so accurately that he knew when to stop tapping from the vibes that humans around him were giving out.

Which is arguably a hell of a lot cleverer than being able to understand simple questions and count.
 
skinnydipper said:
Is there anything you could share so that we can learn from you. Thanks, ID.
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Dogs are clever and people are stupid is the main takeaway. I'm looking at how people interpret dog communication. Spoiler alert, they dont!

Obviously there is a shed load more to it than that, but the current belief is that dogs have genetically evolved to look and behave the way they do to integrate themselves into human life. Theres some interesting stuff around how and why they became domesticated, and some things around coat colour changes that happen with domestication. We know dogs understand from a very young age specific human gestures like pointing. They understand that people arent dogs and make allowances/changes to accommodate that. They can and will use novel behaviours that they havent seen before or learnt from anywhere in an attempt to communicate. The way they develop communication skills is remarkably similar to humans and they display flexibility in communication which is a very human trait. It also ties in with a whole load of things to do with being appealing like human babies.

Mainly dogs just want to coexist peacefully with humans as that has huge evolutionary benefits. They do a multitude of things to facilitate that both conscious and unconscious and with a big dose of evolutionary stuff thrown in the mix.

Its absolutely fascinating how like humans their communication is. They literally come out of the womb hard wired to want to communicate with us and use the same sort of learning that humans babies do. I think as time goes on and we learn more about epigentics we will start to see how much of this stuff is genetic. But thats not my field. I'm a biological anthropologist, stuck in the middle of social science and science science, trying to make it all tie in together.

I'm full of cold and thats no doubt full of typos and not very coherent, its just a brain dump of various things my mind finds super interesting.
 
DabDab said:
Similar to clever Hans the horse who everyone, even his owner thought could understand human language, count and do maths. His 'trick' was tapping his hoof on the ground the correct number of times to give a numerical answer to a question. It took them years of touring this horse around and doing this show for them to realise that what he was actually doing was interpreting non-verbal cues from humans (any humans, his handler didn't have to be there) so accurately that he knew when to stop tapping from the vibes that humans around him were giving out.

Which is arguably a hell of a lot cleverer than being able to understand simple questions and count.
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Yep, most training is just vibes and repetition. We humans are very, very stuck on patterns and doing the same thing, at the same time, all the time, and dogs learn this very quickly and easily. Even if we think we are not, we are. The amount of times I have had to tell people they have trained a problem THEMSELVES through their own behaviour, and it is not just the dog sticking two fingers up to them, is mindblowing.
 
Jenko109 said:
Mine also know about different clothes.

Getting dressed into pyjamas and they wont move.

Getting dressed into leggings and a hoodie and its game on.
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Similar to clodagh, mine can somehow hear which clothes I'm putting in the bedroom while they are downstairs in the kitchen (I can only tell this from the "oh my god, we're about to go for a walk" noises)
 
I'm Dun said:
They literally come out of the womb hard wired to want to communicate with us and use the same sort of learning that humans babies do. I think as time goes on and we learn more about epigentics we will start to see how much of this stuff is genetic.
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Equally I have seen litters of puppies where some have run away from the human into the distance, not in fear, they just don't care, are naturally aloof/aren't that into people, and that is absolutely genetic as well.
 
DabDab said:
Similar to clodagh, mine can somehow hear which clothes I'm putting in the bedroom while they are downstairs in the kitchen (I can only tell this from the "oh my god, we're about to go for a walk" noises)
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My Mum knew when I was coming home as my old dog would start whining when my car was at the bottom of the road, about half a mile away or more. It was an extremely busy road with very heavy traffic. Similarly, my neighbours have said the same (although much quieter area) but they don't generally bother when it is their car. My uncle's cat would go and wait up at the top of the road when he was en route, and he worked weird shifts.
 
Mine won’t go and get named items, Bert knows what a find it is, it’s a certain ball and I used to ask him to go get his ball and he’d look at me all confused so I’d say find it!
Now he thinks balls (only certain balls!) are called find it’s
Sometimes people are a bit thick and say fetch it… idiots, god knows what they are on about!

I love that out of our 4 they understand certain things that they are involved with.
If I’m going to work, none of them are included so stay where they are.
If I’m going poo picking Bert comes (after locating a find it) the others stay put.
Long walks include 3 but not the old boy.
Round the field is free for all to join.
Going to do horses means they can chill in the garden if they want to but doesn’t matter.
 
I know I make a joke of my dog(s) living in Chaos Towers but it is one of the reasons I have no real routine, because I do not want the dog to get stressed or start hassling me for food or a walk, if for some reason we had to leave the routine, which is something they learn.
Like, for instance, the dog who had to learn that no, we absolutely do not go for a walk at 5am every morning in this house. One day, once in a blue moon we might, or it might be much later than that.
We are generally creatures of habit and they adapt to whatever we do.
 
Interesting… The Hooligan is on his 3rd iteration of a particular teddy bear that Kong make that we have nicknamed “Lugless Douglas” due to his tendency to remove the ears (he does this to anything with ears… he doesn’t put random holes in toys that don’t have ears). When a new one is purchased to replace the old (usually at the point the head has a big gaping hole in it) he knows that the new version is still called the same thing despite it no longer smelling the same.

He also knows which toys are suitable for games of tug (& brings us them when he wants this) and which aren’t.

He also sometimes knows when his brother is outside the back door before he starts meowing (although as there have been multiple occasions where Horrid has ambushed him from behind bushes where the Hooligan has been totally oblivious before he’s got a cat wrapped around his neck perhaps this is just coincidence!)
 
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My lad understands a fair bit. I asked him where his bone was, he found it. If i ask him to get his duck/snake/pig etc he always brings the right one. The best is that he understands a few sentences too. Say, we are in the yard and im ready to get the horses in. If i tell him, ' im getting the horses in' he goes and stands by the tack room door and waits to be let in . He then sits on the sofa and watches the horses come in. After wet walks, if i say 'lets put your dressing gown on' he will stand still with his head stretch out so it goes on easily.
My husband didnt believe me, so weve done a few demos to prove him wrong.
 
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