[ExI] puzzle - animal consciousness

[William Flynn Wallace]

Well, Hell!  What is sequence but the order in which the trained dogs run
an obstacle course? Perhaps the owners are shouting commands?  But the dogs
aren't stopping at each one to wait for directions.  I'll have to bet that
'no dogs can sequence' is very wrong.  Dogs are smarter than rats and lab
rats can learn very complicated sequences of tasks.


On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 2:10 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

>
> >... On Behalf Of BillK
> Subject: Re: [ExI] puzzle - animal consciousness
>
> On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 3:58 PM, spike wrote:
> <snip>
> > >...If you see
> > examples of your dog reasoning or failing spectacularly to reason, do
> post
> it please.
> >
> >
>
> >...I have just seen a home video on tv. A few treats were scattered in the
> middle of a kitchen table... Then he got down again, trotted round the
> table
> again. stood up and snaffled the final treat.  Good work!  BillK
> _______________________________________________
>
>
> Cool, thanks BillK.
>
> Here's one that has puzzled me.  We are told that dogs don't have a sense
> of
> sequence.  They can learn a number of tricks but cannot be trained to do
> them in sequence.  At dog shows, every demonstration has a human giving the
> dog commands, in order, but you never see a dog going out by himself and
> doing a series of tricks.  Conclusion: dogs have no sense of order of
> events, the animal world's equivalent of Vonnegut's Billy Pilgrim.
>
> I will grant most of that, but with moderation.  Some dogs apparently have
> some sense of sequence.
>
> Observation:  my mother's poodle barks at any dog anywhere under any
> circumstances, and recognizes other dogs by visual cues alone, such as
> seeing one out the window of a car.  He also recognizes dogs on the TV
> screen, and of course has to bark and scare them away.  This dog knows when
> a commercial comes on which has a dog in it, before the dog comes onto the
> screen.  He starts barking at the start of the commercial.  He knows from
> just spoken words that there is a dog coming, and must be barked away.
>
> Conclusion: this dog has a sense of sequence if he knows what is coming.
>
> If we want to do experimentation on some new body medical technique, such
> as
> dropping a dog's temperature to 1C, perhaps a way to test it would be to
> find a dog like this one, time how long he takes to respond to the
> commercial, do the cooling and rewarming cycle, time him again.
>
> spike
>
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