Friday, November 6, 2009

My dog thinks like a 2-year-old human.


I was reading this article on NYTimes website about yet another study that has "surprised" people by implying that animals, in this case dogs, are smarter than we thought.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/weekinreview/01kershaw.html?_r=1&em

I'm starting to get a bit tired of the way these articles go. Always this surprise, or stated surprise, that humans aren't so unique, that we aren't somehow different than "all the animals." Duh. We are animals. And invariably, the dog or crow or parrot or elephant being written about gets compared to humans as if we represent some gold standard. They have emotions "like us," language skills "like us," or problem solving skills "like us." In this one, they study how many vocabulary words a dog can learn and talk about how dogs can be as smart as 2 year olds.

Two year olds don't exactly get wide recognition for being extremely smart. Neither do they sniff out cancer and impending epileptic fits (another thing the article talks about).

Why can't dogs, or dolphins, or primates, or any of them get respected on their own terms. In terms of the things they have evolved to do, and humans just get added to the animal list as yet another example?

It reminds me a bit of Aristotle's going on and on about how the female is inferior to the male, and her body represents some sort of "failed" male, where even conception was considered successful if it produced a male and flawed if the child was female. And if you start there, well you sure have a lot of studies you can do which will continue to surprise you, about how women are almost as "rational" as a 15 year old male, or almost as strong as a 12 year old male, etc.

The point is, which I've made a few times now, that even medicine can be biased in terms of what is normal, and in the case of women and giving birth, having that "males are the norm" view hasn't helped much. It may sound like a silly complaint from me, but extend it to something like breast development and take male anatomy as the norm (ever wonder why males even have nipples?) and complete the phrase "women's breasts are like _______ male breasts." What is even the point? Obviously silly.

So back to dogs, or rats, or whatever other animal is in the news as being "more human than we thought." Maybe it would be nice to look for some other way of comparing animals (including humans), just to give a slightly different viewpoint. Otherwise, it seems like animals are only as worthy of respect if they can be shown to be kind of human, and honestly, given all the other news headlines, I'm not seeing the undisputed upside of human behavior or intelligence or any of it.

What I love most about the pupper, in terms of her skills, is that she is always asking for what she wants. In this way, I often feel much less "honest about wants" than a 5 year old dog. I worry, I weigh the consequences (real, but more often imagined) of what I am about to say. I spend so much time not just saying what I want, that the pupper is my role model on this. She asks, takes it in some sort of stride (like not pouting or lashing out) if she is denied what she asked for, and then 2 minutes later, asks again.

Her napping skills are pretty fierce, too. Someday, I want to learn to nap like a 5 year old dog as well.

2 comments:

  1. "Her napping skills are pretty fierce" - ha ha ha ha ha! Awesome line.

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  2. On a more serious note, ten days later, something Chris (Impey) mentioned yesterday brought me back to this entry of yours. He was talking about a press conference about the Vatican Observatory's interest in astrobiology, and a colleague being asked if the aliens could be "saved" and the colleague's response drawn from the parable of the sheep. In short, his response was that humans were the only "lost sheep" that needed to be saved, and other species, and aliens by extension, are already saved. Anyway, this led to a (complete non sequitor to our meeting) discussion about how upon closer examination, that explanation should be deeply dissatisfying to believers because the whole premise of the religion is that people are "special", "created in the image of God", etc. Which, to get back to my whole point here, may be the underlying assumption that a whole broad culture of people are hitting up against when they find out that people are not really that special after all.

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