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Dominique Autier-Dérian / Animal Cognition
During the experiments, the dogs sat in front of the experimenter, on a line between the two screens. When hearing an order, the dogs expressed their choice by going to a given screen and putting a paw in front of the chosen image.
By Megan Gannon
LiveScience
Dogs can pick out the faces of other dogs in a virtual lineup of humans and other animals, a new study shows.
And it doesn't matter if it's a German shepherd looking at a standard poodle. Dogs still know who's one of their own, researchers say.
Previous research has shown that many animals, from macaques to sheep, are better at recognizing images of another member of their own species than picking out images of individuals from different species.
In the new study, scientists wanted to test if this phenomenon held true for the domestic dog, which is far more variable in size, shape and behavior than any other living mammal. Regardless of how different dog breeds might seem, all dogs belong to the same species, Canis lupus familiaris.
For the study, a team of French researchers put nine pet dogs in front of two side-by-side computer screens that showed images of faces. In each pair of pictures, one showed a dog's face (various breeds and cross-breeds were featured) and the other showed non-dog animals, including cows, horses, cats, birds and humans.
The dogs were trained to choose one of the pictures, by going over to a given screen and putting a paw in front of the image when the experimenter gave a signal. Over the course of dozens of trials, the dogs showed a preference for the dog faces, and they seemed to lump all dogs into the same category, regardless of whether they were looking at a Chihuahua or a mastiff, the researchers said.
"The fact that dogs are able to recognize their own species visually, and that they have great olfactory discriminative capacities, insures that social behavior and mating between different breeds is still potentially possible," the researchers write. "Although humans have stretched the Canis familiaris species to its morphological limits, its biological entity has been preserved."
The study, led by Dominique Autier-Dérian of France's National Veterinary School in Lyon, was detailed online this month in the journal Animal Cognition.
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Wow, this is something that I've randomly thought about. Even though you have a dog that's raised around humans, they're able to recognize other dogs, even ones that look incredibly different to them. I always thought that was pretty interesting since they must have some unconscious awareness of the entity "dog" and don't think of themselves as people, if that makes any sense. Anyway cool experiment.
What a dumb study.
"Researchers discover that dogs can recognize members of their own species!"
No duh, Dr. Derpy Hooves. How else are dogs supposed to make puppies?
Not so dumb. By using pictures, they researchers also showed that the dogs aren't relying on sound or smell to recognize another dog.
Actually no, KamKam - it isn't that simple. We know that there is a socialization period for dogs that is absolutely critical. It is between the ages of 8 and 12 weeks. If puppies are not exposed to other puppies, other dogs, children, and adults they will not become properly socialized. The effects of this can be minor to severe, but we know for a fact that if they are not exposed to other members of their own species during this time, that they will have great difficulty in recognizing and behaving properly around other dogs, and they will exhibit aberrant mating behavior.
Presumably, all of the dogs in this study were well socialized to begin with, thus ensuring that they had been exposed to other dogs and humans.
Source: Veterinarian
The study didn't just evaluate that dogs can recognize their own species - we already knew that, obviously. It evaluated that they preferentially recognize their own species, and not only that but they recognize a static image of their own species from a computer screen. THAT is remarkable, quite frankly...
...because that is actually something that the vast majority of animals cannot do. We are beginning to learn that canines are remarkably intelligent, and that they possess a theory of mind. This is not something that is either/or, you either have it or you don't as previous researchers in animal cognition suspected. Instead, it is a gradation. The fact is, canines simply could not do the sorts of things that they can do without possessing one.
One my cat was walking on the bed and stepped on a national geographic photo of a wolf's face--whole page picture. Although cats normally would not respond to a print image, it took her by surprise and she jumped 3 feet in the air.
Duh! If you're a dog owner and couldn't tell this, double Duh! Or you really don't have any connection with your dog. Dogs even bark at and try to interact with dogs they see on TV screens at home. Just show them Lassie or "Benji" and they go wild.
they can recognize their own breed too. 2 dogs that look alike tend to be far friendlier from the first meeting than 2 different breeds. i've noticed this in my lab and rat terrier.
Hatr_Hurter - As a veterinarian, I disagree with the assertion that they can recognize their breed. Dogs don't care about stuff like that, they only care about other dogs. What you are probably attributing to breed recognition is instead differing behaviors due to a disparity in size.
Often, smaller dogs will react aggressively in the presence of bigger dogs, for example. Conversely, dogs of similar size will react more favorably to each other. This is not just because differing size leads to a conclusion of potential threat, but because dogs communicate largely through body language and that is conveyed in a more difficult manner when there is a difference in size.
They needed a study for this??
Yes, and it is amazing. Put a aztec trail rations dog and a st. bernard in the same room and they recognise each other as the same species. Put any two humans in different varied shades, shapes and sizes in the same room and it will take a great deal longer for both to come to the same conclusion. Unless they are opposite genders of course.
Wonder if they can recognize photos of the human members of their pack? Or if all humans looks the same to them.
Yes, they can. A number of studies have been done on that, and variations of it, but this one is particularly interesting in that it explores consequences of that recognition:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3469536/
Our cat's favorite TV show. Westminster Dog Show. He will watch the entire thing from start to finish while sitting up and the only thing that moves is his head.
Don't you wish you knew what he was thinking?
Bet they wouldn't have been as good at recognition if they were from the Canis lupus unfamiliaris species..
OK, I never post 'LOL' replies.... but LOL.
I bet this works if they show the dogs ass too!
I expected one of the obligatory "I hope my tax dollars didn't pay for this! herp derp" posts, so that I could point out that not only did this study take place in France, but at a veterinary school, and was likely funded privately and not by the government. How disappointing.
That doesnt make sense. How can a Nanny-State afford anything constructive and beneficial? Aww... private funding.
Cool study. I'm not surprised either, because smell is only one part of the sensory system, and even though it's the dogs best sensory it wouldn't make sense that they wouldn't use sight too...
They had to study this? I could have told you that when I was six after seeing dogs sniff each other's butts. If the French hadn't done this, I would have expected the geniuses at Homeland Security to pay $2 million for such a study.
Another case of media bias. They forgot to mention that one of the human faces shown was Obama and that 5 dogs slit their paws when his picture was flashed!