
A jackal's nose for the job - curtis
https://www.rbth.com/longreads/jackals/
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Ftuuky
"It is not a breed," Sulimov explains. "We have reproduced the initial 'pre-
breed norm' of a dog, the way it used to be 100,000 years ago. In other words
before humans began to 'specialize' it, breeding it for hunting, guarding,
etc. Any specialization limits possibilities."

I found this fascinating and the "Any specialization limits possibilities"
reminds me of that Heinlein quote:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a
hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a
wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act
alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a
computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization
is for insects."

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canadapups
Wow, that is the interesting article, not the wikipedia one. Some excerpts:

"The groundbreaking approach is based on analyzing the bioelectric activity of
the animals' brain and central nervous system"

"Because of errors in "signal behavior," the accuracy achieved by the
traditional dog method is only 60 percent, says Zaripov. However, the new
method being used has increased detection accuracy to nearly 100 percent."

~~~
privong
Interesting that it also seems to handle false positives well:

> Among other things, the new method makes it possible to detect "a false sit"
> (when a dog sits to signal that it has found something). "In traditional
> signal behavior, 'a dog's trick' is hard to detect: The dog does not smile,
> it does not wink," says Zaripov. "In this case, however, an encephalogram
> shows that the dog has a conscience. Deep down it knows that it has made a
> mistake. The reaction of its central nervous system is completely
> different."

~~~
intrarTrode
Encephalogram lie detectors for dogs, as they roam the airport. Each day
begets a new, ever more interesting layer of futuristic hell.

I can imagine lie detectors being deployed to test whether I was motivated to
order a hamburger because of an advertisement I noticed.

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nn3
Yes URL should be replaced with the rbth article.

So they developed a portable lie detector for dogs? And it works better than
human lie detectors because the dogs don't understand it?

I wonder if a smart enough dog can figure out how to fool it to get a treat
anyways.

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anonytrary
> During the breeding process, male jackal pups had to be fostered on a
> Lapponian Herder bitch to imprint the jackals on dogs. Female jackals
> accepted male dogs more easily.

I thought this was really neat.

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wyldfire
Maybe I'm a little skeptical but it sounds like, "Gee, what we really need is
a lie detector for the dogs.". Maybe dogs aren't the right tools for the job.

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vivaan
I can't be the only one who finds the whole forced "inter breeding" bit
morally extremely dubious, can I?

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intrarTrode
I think you're imagining gamified dog-on-dog rape in poorly lit parking lots,
when really it's more akin to a 5 second livestock insemination procedure that
the mother probably forgets about an hour later.

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VectorLock
I wonder if these guys will ever hit the civilian market.

Those domesticated Russian foxes are supposedly starting to trickle out.

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curtis
This article has a lot more information about the Sulimov dog:
[https://www.rbth.com/longreads/jackals/](https://www.rbth.com/longreads/jackals/)

~~~
dang
Thanks! we've switched to that from
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulimov_dog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulimov_dog).

~~~
curtis
I think "High-tech jackal-dogs" would make a better submission title. It's
used in the article as a section title and it seems like it better represents
the content.

