[ExI] puzzle - animal consciousness

[spike]

>... 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