September 6, 2017
A new study carried out by the
Department of Psychology at Barnard College in the U.S. used a sniff test to
evaluate the ability of dogs to recognize themselves. The results have been
published in the journal Behavioural Processes.
The experiment confirms the
hypothesis of dog self-cognition proposed last year by Prof. Roberto Cazzolla
Gatti of the Biological Institute of the Tomsk State University, Russia. Dr.
Alexandra Horowitz, the lead researcher, wrote, "While domestic dogs, Canis
familiaris, have been found to be skillful at social cognitive tasks and even
some meta-cognitive tasks, they have not passed the test of mirror self-recognition
(MSR)."
Prof. Horowitz borrowed the
"Sniff test of self-recognition (STSR)" proposed by Prof. Cazzolla
Gatti in 2016 to shed light on methods of testing for self-recognition, and
applied it to 36 domestic dogs accompanied by their owners.
This study confirmed the previous
evidence proposed with the STSR by Dr. Cazzolla Gatti showing that "dogs
distinguish between the olfactory 'image' of themselves when modified:
Investigating their own odour for longer when it had an additional odour
accompanying it than when it did not. Such behaviour implies a recognition of
the odour as being of or from 'themselves.'"
Prof. Cazzolla Gatti firstly
suggested the hypothesis of self-cognition in dogs in a 2016 pioneering paper
entitled after the novel by Lewis Carroll "Self-consciousness: beyond the
looking-glass and what dogs found there."
As the Associate Professor of the
Tomsk State University anticipated: "this sniff-test could change the way
some experiments on animal behaviour are validated." Soon, the study of
Dr. Horowitz followed.
"I believe that dogs and
other animals, being much
less sensitive to visual stimuli than humans and many apes, cannot pass the
mirror test because of the sensory modality chosen by the investigator to test
self-awareness. This in not necessarily due to the absence of this cognitive
ability in some animal species," says Cazzolla Gatti.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment
You only need to enter your comment once! Comments will appear once they have been moderated. This is so as to stop the would-be comedian who has been spamming the comments here with inane and often offensive remarks. You know who you are!