![]() ![]() I can unpack that for you a little bit, but the idea is that there's really at least two stages of domestication. It's when natural selection actually shapes animals and really pushes them in a direction towards what we would recognize as being domesticated, but it's actually just natural selection doing the work, not humans. Certainly, that is a critical part of the story of the animals that we have today that most people would consider domesticated.Īctually, what we think, based on some experiments, an earlier stage of domestication that influenced many species and especially is a big part of the story of dog evolution from wolves, is self-domestication. Hare: Well, I think when we normally think about domestication, we think about humans controlling animal breeding and animal reproduction. What do you mean by domestication? How do animals become domesticated and how scientists studied that over the years? It's always good to define the terms we're using so everyone understands what we're talking about. I think my dog Oreo does that." That really is what launched the whole thing. When Mike Tomasello said to me, "Only humans do this, and it's critical to culture and language development, and apes can't," I said, "Well, I think my dog can do that. It's the first way they understand our intentions and know what others want. ![]() Kids 9 to 12 months of age, this is crucial for them as a developmental time point as a first window into the minds of others. If we point and try to help them and indicate where something's hidden with our gesture, they're not really good at figuring it out. We were finding that chimpanzees were not particularly good, as you just outlined in your intro, at understanding human gestures. What happened was my undergraduate advisor, Mike Tomasello, was explaining to me why we were studying chimpanzee gestural communication and their understanding of human gestures. When I was in college, dogs were not seen as particularly interesting or remarkable, nobody was really studying them with any great effort. Oreo was instrumental in getting our studies of dog cognition started. When I went to college and I found out there are folks who do this for a living, who try to get inside the minds of animals and see how they think, and that it was really important to understand humans, I was all ready to do it. We have a best friend, especially when I was a little kid growing up, and I couldn't help but wonder what he was thinking and what was going on in his mind, was he like me, was he different from me, in what ways was he different. Can you talk about that? How did he inspire you, and what did you learn from those first studies? You open your latest book with an anecdote about your childhood dog, Oreo, and how he provided the spark for your entire line of canine cognition research. Mills: Let's start with your research on dogs, which is where this all began. Domestication causes distinct temperamental, physical, and cognitive changes that are as apparent in humans as they are in dogs, and domestication may be the key to our species evolutionary success and the reason that homo sapiens survived long after other early human species went extinct. They argue that humans, just like dogs, are domesticated animals, bred for friendliness. Together with his wife and research partner Vanessa Woods, he recently published a book called "Survival of the Friendliest", which lays out a theory of domestication on a broader scale. Hare also founded and co-directs the Duke Canine Cognition Center. Brian Hare, a professor of evolutionary anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience at Duke University. What does psychology learn from researching this special skill, and what can studying dogs' evolutionary journey from wild wolves to domesticated pets teach us about humanity's history? Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that explores the connections between psychological science and everyday life. Human toddlers can do this, but adult chimpanzees cannot. Point your finger at a hidden treat and a dog will immediately follow your cue. Kim Mills: Dogs have long been portrayed as humanity's lovable best friends, and anyone who has a dog knows that they're pretty smart, but are they smarter than other animals? What about in comparison to our close evolutionary cousin, the chimpanzee? There's at least one thing dogs can do that chimps can't. ![]()
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