My son-in-law, Todd, has a 2-year-old mutt named Rico. Rico may be about half Labrador retriever and half German shepherd, but he may also be a Heinz hound (57 varieties). I often tease Todd and Rachel about the way they anthropomorphize their dog.
The other day, I went to their house, and Todd was hanging clothes in the back yard. I sat on the stoop. Rico promptly came over and dropped a tennis ball at my feet. He plainly wanted me to throw it and (I thought) pantomimed turning away from me and running.
I told Todd that I had just read in Science about another dog named Rico. That dog supposedly had a vocabulary of 200 words and would fetch various toys on command from the owner. Without turning from his clothesline, Todd said, “Rico, why don’t you get the rope?”
7 Comments
Anton Mates · 15 June 2004
Nice post. I generally try to give animals the benefit of the doubt on cognitive matters, but Rico still surprised me. I've read about dolphins learning to generate a novel behavior on command, but I didn't expect a dog to be able to come up with "I need to bring back the novel object." Clever border collies.
Your Pullum link is broken, incidentally...should be http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001039.html#more
Bob Maurus · 15 June 2004
Some years ago I saw an article about a dog that won a "Dog of The Year" award from some organization. He responded to 180+ commands or vocalizations, walked his family's child to school each morning, on the way back home retrieved anything the kid had dropped, and went back in the afternoon and walked the kid back home again. I think he was a sheperd mix, but I'm not sure.
Also saw, on a Carson show I think, a dog who's routine was an absolute mind f##k. He responded to involved commands like,"Go to the cabinet, open the bottom drawer, and bring the folder to Johnnie." All sorts of potential for flim-flam here but . . .
Joe P Guy · 16 June 2004
gwangi · 16 June 2004
I worked for a year or so in Irene Pepperberg's lab (while she was still at U. Arizona), and those parrots were simply astonishing. If you show Alex a tray with, say, three red blocks, two green blocks, four red cotton balls, and five green cotton balls, then ask him, "How many green blocks?", he'll know. He (and the other, less famous parrots too) can assign multiple labels to an object. Now, I don't know much about cognition, but that stuff was just freaky.
Ramona · 17 June 2004
I loved this article..I have a 2 year old Dobie and she has been able to bring me her toys by name since she was a pup..And needless to say she a lot of toys..When I get her a new one she knows its name by the end of the day and can bring it to me when I ask..She is truely a special little lady..
Joel Lewis · 17 June 2004
Hi matt. I've read the Science article that all of this revolves around, and in response to pullum's 'cry of outrage' that you link to, what is so exciting about this research is that rico appears to be doing MORE than simply associating sounds to objects-he appears to show the abillity, if given a word he has never heard before, then sent to fetch any of a number of objects, including one which he has never been exposed to before, to reason that the novel word must be a request for the 'new' object. In other words, he appears to show 'reason by exclusion', and can often still remember the new word, after a single trial, three weeks later. Now, this doesn't necessarilly indicate that he understands language;he may only associate all of this with fectching(though some intruiging annectdotal evidence suggests otherwise), but if this holds up, with him showing these same abillities in response to other people's commands, the this certainly shows some amazingly complex thinking for a lil' old doggie-more than mere associative conditioning!
Joel
Margaret S. · 17 June 2004