Dogs 'mimic Movements Of Owners'.

[luffy4688]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10777586

Dogs "automatically imitate" the body movements of their owners, according to a study.

This automatic imitation is a crucial part of social learning in humans.

But Austrian researchers report that the phenomenon - where the sight of another's body movement causes the observer to move in the same way - is evident in many other animals.

They say that it reveals clues about how this type of learning evolved.

The study, which was led by Dr Friederike Range from the University of Vienna in Austria, also suggests that the way in which people interact with and play with their dogs as they are growing up shapes their ability to imitate.

"It's not a spontaneous thing," said Dr Range. "The dogs needed a lot of training to learn it."

She and her colleagues investigated this imitation with a series of trials using a simple door-opening test.

The team built a box with a sliding door on the front that could be opened with a knob.

The owners demonstrated how to open the door by using either their hand or their mouth.

"When the owners used the hand, the dog had to open the door with its paw to get a reward," Dr Range said.

When the owner opened the door with their mouth, the dog had to use the same technique.

Dr Range explained to BBC News: "A second group of dogs had to learn the alternative method - if the owner used their hand, they had to use their mouth, and when the owner used their mouth, they had to use the paw."

The dogs that had to imitate the same action as their owner learned their task far more quickly.

This showed that the dogs had a predisposition to imitate their owners' hand/paw and mouth/muzzle movements.

She noted that, because dogs have a very different body shapes to people, they also had to interpret what they saw.

"This type of learning has obvious evolutionary advantages for animals," Dr Range said. "They can learn about certain aspects of life without having to learn by trial and error, which always comes with some risk."

The new evidence supports a theory of learning which suggests that a system of "mirror neurons" and the capacity to imitate are forged as an animal learns and develops, rather than this system being inborn.

[Sheridan]

I don't stand in doorways, Grumpy does. Explain that one Dr Range.

[casowner]

Well Jake is laying on the floor farting, his dad is laying on the couch doing the same.

They could have saved their research dollars

Edited July 28, 2010 by casowner

[Teebs]

Well Jake is laying on the floor farting, his dad is laying on the couch doing the same.

They could have saved their research dollars

[luffy4688]

Well Jake is laying on the floor farting, his dad is laying on the couch doing the same.

They could have saved their research dollars

:cry:

[HeavyPaws]

Moon learned how to open doors by watching me {or by trial and error, I'm not giving her points for intelligence}.

However, she did learn how to open locks by herself

Dog owners know all this, they could have saved themselves some cash

[zindello]

Well Jake is laying on the floor farting, his dad is laying on the couch doing the same.

They could have saved their research dollars

Sounds like our place...

[Danielle]

My Stock Horse learnt how to unlatch the paddock gate by watching me do it. Amazingly smart these animals.

[Nekhbet]

without mimicry no species would survive. How do they think valuable skills are taught? As for copying humans, we raise dogs as semi human from the moment they're born so it's no surprise they have basic understanding of hands, mouths etc considering they are such a highly developed body language species compared to us. Hell, they notice tiny body and facial movements that most humans miss so the fact they learn through positive reinforcement how to open a door is not really something that revolutionary.

Seems like you can get grants for just about anything these days

[corvus]

The group in Austria do a lot of work to basically prove what they already know as long-time dog owners and enthusiasts. The thing is, who is going to believe them unless they can prove it? "Knowing" something through observation is not the same as knowing it through the application of the scientific method. That Austrian group do cop it from some for painting dogs as a smarter species than they are, although obviously not everyone thinks that's what they do.

Patricia McConnell was recently talking about the curlyness of identifying mimicry in animals on her blog. http://www.theotherendoftheleash.com/do-do...ou-in-milwaukee There's a part 2 to that blog entry as well. She points out that people can't settle on a definition of mimicry in the first place. Some say it's any form of observational learning, and we know that dogs can do that (although it's currently considered the domain of mammals with higher brain capacities with the exception of the octopus), but some say that the behaviour learnt has to be novel. This link has a good run down if you feel like wading through a lot of words, and the point is made there that observational learning should not be considered true imitation because we don't know if the animal learnt the actual movements required from the demonstrator or how the environment works.

So in summary, this kind of research is actually useful and worthwhile. It provides evidence for an idea that is not widely accepted. And not every animal is capable of mimicry, or even observational learning. As it happens, there's a study about human and dog demonstrators and their effect on how quickly dogs learn a task. None of the dogs learnt the task faster after seeing it demonstrated by a human. Some of the dogs learnt it faster after watching a dog. Interestingly, the dogs that didn't learn it faster after watching a dog were generally dogs that had previously been classified as socially dominant animals.

[Frostypaws]

Well said Corvus A peer-reviewed, controlled, reproducible, well-conducted scientific study may "only" confirm what dog-handlers have known all along... but importantly the study can be built on by others in the same controlled, reproducible way It can be disseminated and read by other researchers and bring about scientific collaborations and breakthrough, something that anecdote is not well-disposed to (unless you wait for Mythbusters to get around to it!).

[Cody]

My Stock Horse learnt how to unlatch the paddock gate by watching me do it. Amazingly smart these animals.

And who said animals are dumb

[Parkeyre]

I know of a DOLer's Great Dane bitch who turns on garden taps to get herself a drink as her mummy does for her.

Only trouble is when she does it when Mummy's not home, and can't turn it off for her :S

[Mrs Rusty Bucket]

Is how some people toilet train their puppies... - number 1s anyway.

I'm glad she hasn't figured out how to turn the tap on.

Pretty sure she learned some good agility moves from watching Susan Garrett DVD.

Edited July 31, 2010 by Mrs Rusty Bucket