Turkish Dogs - particularly Anatolian Shepherd Dogs: Dogs Can Too! (LOL)

Friday, November 30, 2007

Dogs Can Too! (LOL)

...but for how much longer? ;)

A pretty famous cartoon above. And it came to mind after I read this at Fox News.

Dogs Taught to Use Computers in Austrian Study

In order to test whether dogs can visually categorize pictures, and transfer their knowledge to new situations, four dogs were shown landscape and dog photographs, and expected to make a selection on a computer touch-screen.

. . .

. . . (Doggie not used in the study, but I thought he is cute!)

In this test, the dogs had to choose between a dog-on-landscape image and a landscape-only photo. Good doggies: They aced the test, selecting the images that included dogs.

The results indicate, according to the authors, the dogs were able to form a concept of a "dog." Whether the dogs recognized the pup pictures as actual dogs, however, is an unknown.

The scenarios that come to mind when I think of the Internet Dog cartoon above being used in this test just crack me up. :)

Of course, with dogs recognizing other dogs on the computer, Mr Cartoon Dog might not be so right after all. . . LOL ;) :D

Okay, a more serious perspective. I think that our dogs are a lot more aware and perceptive of things than we are prepared to recognize sometimes. They do amazing things in search and rescue and in more everyday facets of life. It's just that it is us humans are sometimes unwilling or unable to take notice. Or if we do, other people think we are nuts.

I think I'm in good company. Heehee.

Labels: behavior, humor, Science

Semavi Lady woofed at @ 11/30/2007 01:45:00 AM | Permanent link | (3) Comments

Jan sent us a woof // November 30, 2007 It's always nice when those not familiar with the intelligence of dogs finally catch on to what we know. Humans just need to learn how to build good tests.

Semavi Lady sent us a woof // November 30, 2007 Boy, that's for sure. I remember reading the news about one you recently blogged, where some study tested to see if dogs would respond to emergencies. The testers staged fake emergencies and the dogs didn't fall for it. I was wondering after reading that one, if there could only be a test to test the common sense of people who design such studies. Of course, there are still pet lovers that seem to have the impression that if you fake a seizure or a diabetic coma, you can train a service dog to alert to a real one. Yep, humans still have a long way to go. LOL :) :)