

First clear evidence that dogs do not naturally distinguish objects by shape - andrewcooke
http://www.lincoln.ac.uk/news/2012/11/598.asp

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brisance
Maybe it's just that particular breed of dog used in the experiment (border
collie), or even that specific dog. Even the paper title cites a singular dog.

 _The paper 'Word Generalization by a Dog (Canis Familiaris); is Shape
Important?' by Emile van der Zee, Helen Zulch and Daniel Mills is published in
PLOS ONE on 21st November 2012 and is available
at:<http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0049382*>

~~~
ninjin
> Maybe it's just that particular breed of dog used in the experiment (border
> collie), or even that specific dog.

Excellent point! Now, I would love to read a rebuttal/confirmation study over
a larger population and/or varying dog breeds and I think you just stumbled
upon an great idea for a research paper.

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varikin
I think it said that they are planning on testing more breeds as well.

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jjtheblunt
Dogs definitely recognize their acquired family, human and canine (and feline,
etc), with no vocalizations. My Shetland Sheepdog had near 100% accuracy going
and finding a huge selection of latex toys (caterpillars, alligators, and so
on) and knew them all by name, many by name and color. And, yes, I know the
obvious retort of "but dogs don't see color", which is false, as it is for
cats; the correct statement is that they are both _likely_ color blind in the
sense that there exist colors distinguishable by humans which to dogs (and
cats) look indistinguishable. So, I could ask her where she put her green
alligator and she'd repeatably, for years, with such games return from god
knows where later with well over 90% accuracy (even if it was a grey alligator
to her).

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StavrosK
Did you have two identical alligator toys that differed only in color?

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barclay
Oooh. That would be a good test. Similar to the above comment, our guy has a
number of toys and can distinguish by name. Totally going to the pet store
this weekend to see if we can try that out.

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mitchty
I thought dogs see in shades of blue and yellow. Basically red and green show
up as "yellow" to their cones.

At least thats how it was explained to me when you throw a red toy on the
grass that the dog can't "see" it.

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hcarvalhoalves
Would that suggest our language is connected to our vision?

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twiceaday
This will blow your mind: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGurk_effect>

~~~
anonymous
So, in effect, they're saying that we use lip-reading to distinguish between
very similar phonemes? That's... yes? I'm not seeing what's so remarkable
about it, I've been aware of it since forever - it's how I can understand what
people next to me are saying at loud concerts and the like. Even further,
sometimes I have trouble recognising what someone's telling me if I can't see
their lips and no, my hearing is perfectly fine.

Guess it's one of those things where you think everybody senses the world the
same way.

