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Dog Translator Turns Woof into Words
by findingDulcinea Staff
A computerized dog translator beats humans at reading canine moods. The decoding of dogs’ language is the latest advance to suggest that animal emotions are more complex than previously thought.
30-Second Summary
Scientists have developed software that interprets the repertoire of noises dogs make to produce a linguistic expression of canine mood. In short, it is a dog translator.
However, it is only fractionally better than humans at correctly recognizing dogs' emotions. The computer was judged 43 percent accurate, compared to the average human result of 40 percent.
The New York Times wrote about another study, which found that canines’ emotions are more nuanced than previously thought. Dogs wag to the left when experiencing a negative emotion and to the right when it is a strong pleasant emotion. When the emotions are less intense, the left or right bias is less pronounced.
Apart from increasing our understanding of canine companions, the Times study indicates that some animal brains show a degree of complexity that many scientists previously thought only humans possessed.
The two studies are part of a new trend in scientific research into dog behavior, according to an article on Physorg.com, an electronic science magazine.
Some scientists claim that dogs’ “love” depends on their owners’ continuing to supply food and care. They would switch loyalties if the source of care changed, animal sciences expert Fred Metzger told Physorg.com.
Others disagree. Dog trainer Leslie Burgard describes dog love as unconditional. Biologist Susan B. Eirich says social animals, such as dogs, must have emotions in order to communicate with their kind.
However, it is only fractionally better than humans at correctly recognizing dogs' emotions. The computer was judged 43 percent accurate, compared to the average human result of 40 percent.
The New York Times wrote about another study, which found that canines’ emotions are more nuanced than previously thought. Dogs wag to the left when experiencing a negative emotion and to the right when it is a strong pleasant emotion. When the emotions are less intense, the left or right bias is less pronounced.
Apart from increasing our understanding of canine companions, the Times study indicates that some animal brains show a degree of complexity that many scientists previously thought only humans possessed.
The two studies are part of a new trend in scientific research into dog behavior, according to an article on Physorg.com, an electronic science magazine.
Some scientists claim that dogs’ “love” depends on their owners’ continuing to supply food and care. They would switch loyalties if the source of care changed, animal sciences expert Fred Metzger told Physorg.com.
Others disagree. Dog trainer Leslie Burgard describes dog love as unconditional. Biologist Susan B. Eirich says social animals, such as dogs, must have emotions in order to communicate with their kind.
Headline: Studies throw light on dog behavior
Hungarian scientists developed a program that translates dog talk into human. The software was tested against the human ability to recognize dog behavior correctly and only just beat the human beings to the right answers. “A possible commercial application could be a device for dog-human communication,” one of the developers told Reuters news agency.
Source: The BBC
When a dog wags its tail to the right, it is happy. When it is unhappy, the tail moves more to the left. The phenomenon, discovered by Italian scientists, is described in a study published in the magazine Current Biology in March 2007. It is not only an unfamiliar feature of dog behavior, it also runs counter to claims that only human beings show brain asymmetry, a sign of complexity some scientists believe only humans possess.
Source: The New York Times
Opinion & Analysis: The link between dog and man
The scientific take
Scientists today question the old belief that dogs do not have emotions comparable to those of humans. Some scientists argue that dogs “love” only because they are given love and care in the first place. Others, however, say dogs’ love is unconditional, much like the emotional connection between parent and child, according to dog trainer Leslie Burgard. “Social animals must be able to read other animals in their society and must be able to maintain social bonds,” biologist and psychologist Susan B. Eirich told Physorg.com. So, it is logical that they have emotions, she concluded.
Source: Physorg.com
The pet lovers’ take
“When it comes to love, a dog can always outdo us,” according to an article on Yahoo Pets. It says that scientists deny that dogs can feel love, because it would “disrupt our [human beings’] entire position and standing in the animal kingdom.”
Source: Yahoo Pets
‘Fascinating social parasites’
“Dogs are a brilliant evolutionary success almost without parallel in the animal world, and they owe that success to their uncanny ability to worm themselves into our homes, and to our relentlessly anthropomorphic psyches that let them do it,” wrote Stephen Budiansky, author of "The Truth About Dogs: An Inquiry Into the Ancestry, Social Conventions, Mental Habits, and Moral Fiber of Canis Familiaris."
Source: PBS
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