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Doggie mastermind learns 200 words Friday, June 11, 2004

#1 User is offline   Chefelf Icon

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Posted 11 June 2004 - 12:57 PM

QUOTE
Doggie mastermind learns 200 words
Maggie Fox
Reuters

Friday, 11 June  2004 


Rico, the border collie, has learnt to retrieve 200 objects by name (Image: Susanne Baus)
A clever border collie called Rico that can fetch at least 200 objects by name has re-ignited the debate over whether language is unique to humans, researchers say.

The German researchers say the dog's ability to fetch a newly introduced object when asked, even if he has never heard the name of the object before, may be living proof that dogs truly understand human language.

The researchers publish details in today's issue of the journal Science.

"We wonder what prevents animals from speaking. The limitations are not their capacity to hear or understand," said co-author Dr Julia Fischer of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig.

Rico's abilities seem to follow a process called fast mapping, seen when young children start to learn to speak and understand language, the report said

Fast mapping allows children to form quick and rough hypotheses about the meaning of a new word the first time they hear or see it.

The 10-year-old dog, which beat human competitors to win a popular German TV talent show five years ago, lives as a pet with his owners Witold Krzeslowski and Susanne Baus of Dortmund, western Germany.

Baus said Rico developed his skills while laid low for nearly a year after a shoulder operation, as she tried to engage his mind and let his body rest.

"I discovered this talent and told my husband, who thought I was mad. At the start it was three to four objects, but it's risen to 200 or 250," she said. "I don't know what the limit might be."

In their report, Fischer and colleagues wrote: "He was reported by [the owners] to know the labels of more than 200 items, mostly children's toys and balls, which he correctly retrieved upon request."

http://abc.net.au/sc...es/s1129608.htm


Show me a dog that can do my taxes, then I'll be impressed.
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#2 User is offline   Ninja Duck Icon

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Posted 11 June 2004 - 06:24 PM

One step closer to voting rights for dogs.
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Posted 11 June 2004 - 07:48 PM

reading, doggie style
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Posted 11 June 2004 - 10:09 PM

If a dog did my taxes and then I got audited, I'd be all like "well, I guess I should have seen *that* one coming."
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Posted 12 June 2004 - 11:12 AM

I wonder what it does if you say vulgar things to it? I hope it kills itself... dumb mutt. lol!

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PRECIOUS VELIUS....
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Posted 12 June 2004 - 11:33 AM

What the hell is wrong with you all? Why do you want to ridicule this story? It's a nice little feature about a beloved family pet who has quite an impressive party trick. It's a nice story so give it a rest, guys.

And Look to the Sky, I am shocked by your comment! It's really nasty. I had you figured as a fairly nice girl and quite thoughtful.

I can remember our first encounter in the movie theatre. I wrote a scathing report about Starship Troopers and I meant to say that the movie was so terrible, that the only thing vaguely entertaining about it was a bit of gratuitous nudity. Admittedly, I phrased the sentient very poorly and I wrote a shithouse introduction.

But you jumped on me straightaway for that... and I didn't really feel like defending myself at the time so I just basically told you to fuck off.

But I did get an impression of you as a thoughtful and caring person. But the comment you just posted under this story has shaken up this perception considerably.

I don't know if you are a caring and thoughtful person or not, Look to the Sky. But if you are, then you shouldn't go posting such awful things.

That was terrible.

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Posted 12 June 2004 - 01:13 PM

I think the story pretty much leaves itself open for ridicule. I don't care how many words the dog can understand, it just means that the owners have spent a lot of time training it to recognize commands. The whole animals using language debate is ridiculous, only because we've pretty much already determined that most animals can recognize the patterns of some words and phrases if we teach them well. For example, my cats seem to recognize their names, and the words "sit" and "no", but I would not consider that out of the ordinary.
Dogs used by the police and as private guard dogs are trained to learn a rather vast list of commands as well, but I don't see people getting all up in arms over that. To me, the story is just an example of people getting far too excited over something that is not particularly exciting.
LTTS' comments, however, were still somewhat uncalled for.
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Posted 12 June 2004 - 03:14 PM

In theory, any dog could be conditioned to respond the way we want to quite a large number of commands. This wouldn't be especially interesting, since we already know that many animals can be trained this way. The interesting thing in this case is that they claim the dog can learn the names of new objects very quickly, the way a child developing language might. I'm not convinced until I see more of the research, however. Remember "Clever Hans"!
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Posted 12 June 2004 - 04:31 PM

We're still joking with our comments, right?
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Posted 12 June 2004 - 09:56 PM

Mostly, Ninja Duck, but I just didn't see anything particularly funny about the article or anything that deserved ridicule.

Laura is right, I believe. The fact that this dog can learn these new words so quickly does make it somewhat remarkable, if it is true.

But even if it is not remarkable, there is still nothing wrong with this story. If you were looking through a news paper and reading story after story about all the terrible things in the world, I believe that this story about the dog would be a very welcome change. And I wish the media would include such stories more often.

Sure, there's a lot of doom and gloom in the world - but there's also plenty of nice things too and it's good to hear about them occasionally.

I thought it was a nice story.
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Posted 13 June 2004 - 03:44 AM

I really think that's pretty cool even though I usually don't like dogs. I think cats are more intelligent simply because they are un-trainable. You can try to get a cat to do what you want for years and it'll still urinate on your leg and then laugh a feline laugh. A dog though it takes a week and they're your slave. Yup, cats are better. But a dog that knows two hundred words is pretty impressive and I really do think that shows more brain capacirty for actual thought than programming,

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Posted 13 June 2004 - 04:05 AM

Cats are smart, yes. And most cats I've seen exploit their owners by getting free food out of them and when there's no food around, they generally don't give a shit about them. Most cats wouldn't worry if their owners were trapped in a house fire and they generally act as if they think they are better than their owners.

Dogs however genuinely do care about their owners and can make truly wonderful friends. In fact, dogs make better friends than a lot of people out there.

And because of this, dogs also make better pets than your average cat.

I'd also like to point out that a lot of dogs are very intelligent. Some give their affection easily, some make you work a bit harder for it... but I think that's a lot preferable to an animal that despises you and will happily take free food from you but give you nothing in return.

Sure, there are some nice cats but I've only encountered a handful of nice cats in my travels - and a hell of a lot of not-so-nice cats.
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Posted 13 June 2004 - 04:08 AM

You may have guessed from the above post that I am a dog-person as opposed to a cat-person. cool.gif
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Posted 13 June 2004 - 04:22 AM

I will always argue that cats make great pets. We have three, and all of them will make it a point to be in the same room as someone else, and they seem to get rather cuddly with me when I'm glum or depressed. Someone once told me that cats can sense things like that, and sometimes react to it. The idea that cats are cold and only use their owners to their own advantage seems to be lost on all three in our household. And to be perfectly honest, if we had a housefire, and they just took off, I'd be glad knowing that they weren't still inside. They can't do much to help a human being when they're so small.
As far as the "not-so nice cats", I think it has something to do with their owner, really. We've always coddled ours, and treated them like family, so they're usually very friendly and sociable, but most people I know that own cats treat them like they're "just a pet" and don't even bother to play with them or treat them to something like brushing or a kitty treat. Two of our cats are 14 years old, and still play as if they were 2, like our third cat. Obviously, we did something right.

I guess I just really like kitties.
Dogs, to me, are mostly drooling, messy, and dirty idiots, which I don't care for. Once a dog is beyond puppy size (unless its full-grown size is still puppy-size) I don't really care for it.
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Posted 13 June 2004 - 04:31 AM

There are some people who've never taken the time to get close to dogs and so they don't understand them. Dogs are lovely animals.

Yeah, they can be messy sometimes - but so can people.

As for cats, there might be something in what you say about the way people raise them.

And I'd like to say that dogs really look after their owners a lot. When I lived in Australia, my dogs would come and check on me if I wasn't well. Dogs also take pride in guarding their owners and making sure no harm comes to them.

And unlike cats, and smaller annoying dog breeds, larger dogs can actually help people out in a housefire. And what's more, most dogs would.
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