AR-News: (AU) Tests show dogs are almost human

[Animalara2003 at aol.com]

Researchers found dogs have evolved an unusual ability to read human gestures.


Tests show dogs are almost human
By Leigh Deighton, Elizabeth Colman
February 16, 2004 
IF YOU think your dog can read your mind, you're right. Because pooches and 
people have kept company for hundreds of generations, Canis familiaris is 
hard-wired to pick up human social cues, a US anthropologist claims.

According to Brian Hare of Harvard University, the insight will help trace 
the evolution of dogs, and may help explain the origins of autism in people and 
point towards possible therapies. 
"The first diagnostic test for autism is the inability to use social cues," 
he said. "Autists are very poor at reading things like eye-gaze or pointing, 
something called joint attention." 
Not so your average mutt, he says. "It looks like dogs evolved an unusual 
ability to read human gestures and cues, and manipulate and predict human 
behaviour. 
"They were selected to do that through domestication," Dr Hare told the 
American Association for the Advancement of Science, meeting in Seattle - and he 
has the evidence to prove it. 
In the first two of four studies, Dr Hare and colleagues in Germany and 
Hungary found dogs are better at a test of their ability to interpret social cues 
than even our primate cousins the chimpanzees, and the dog's closest relation, 
the wolf.




full story:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,8692990%255E421,
00.html 


"The world is a dangerous place,
not because of those who do evil,
but because of those who look on and do nothing.",
Albert Einstein
      /\   /\         
>' .' <   
                              
There is no justice, just us!  








    
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