The ability to imitate came up on an earlier post, and jump-started an interesting conversation about whether dogs are able to imitate others. I mentioned that it’s controversial in science whether non-human animals can imitate others, and promised to get back to the issue. It’s worth a half-day seminar unto itself, (and I’ll mention at APDT in October when I introduce the Cognition Symposium) but I thought it’d be fun to delve into the issue a bit here.
We should start our inquiry by defining “imitation.” Of course, that itself is controversial! Some argue that imitation is any example of “observational learning,” while others insist it’s not true imitation unless the action imitated is a ‘novel’ one not normally done by the species. This, of course, limits the definition and makes it harder to find in non-human animals, and also brings up the question of what is “novel.”
No matter how it is defined, imitation is actually an advanced cognitive act. We think little of it (he’s just “aping you”) because we as a species are so good at it, but it’s actually an impressive behavior to pull off. It requires that an individual not only observes another’s behavior, but is able to translate that behavior mentally into his or her own action and then replicate it: Just watching someone pick up a pencil requires that your brain is able to link his arm with your arm, and that’s not something that comes easily to many animals. There’s a great clip I show in my UW class of Allen Alda doing a science special in which he interviews a researcher named Tomasello who compares the behavior of young children with that of orangutans when given a chance to replicate Alda’s behavior. The subjects watch Allen use a rake to pull food out of a box. The rake can or can not pull the food out, depending on whether it’s up or down. The kids watch Allen do it, and quickly learn to turn the rake over if they need to, but the orangs don’t seem to pay any attention to how he gets the food out. This could be an example of our species’ predisposition to watch and imitate the behavior of others and the orangutans lack of inclination to do so.
Frans de Waal, another primatologist, writes in The Ape and the Sushi Master (a truly great book) that we can’t compare an ape’s tendency to imitate a human with a human’s tendency to imitate another of their own species. He suggests that we need to consider BIOL, or what he calls Bonding and Identification-based Observational Learning. He suggests that individuals are unlikely to imitate others if they have no social relationship with them.
However, he too cautions about ascribing true imitation in cases in which it superficially looks like imitation, but isn’t really. Example: a kitten watches its mother use a litter box, then walks into the box, scratches and eliminates. Wow! Imitating its mom, right? Nope… that’s a perfect example of what’s called “Local Enhancement.” The kitten is indeed affected by its mother’s behavior, and is attracted to the litter box. She walks into it because she saw her mother in it. However, once inside, the scratching and eliminating isn’t imitation, it’s an instinctive reaction to litter and needing to eliminate. We all know you can take most kittens, put them in a litter box and they’ll use it as if they’d been clicker trained to do so, right? A lot of what looks like imitation is actually this: an animals will watch another open a box, be attracted to the box, but have to learn for herself how to open it.
There’s LOTS more to this topic! I’ll write about the mechanisms of imitation next (mirror neurons and more), but for now I’ll direct you to some of the work of Adam Miklosi, an Ethologist in Hungary, who showed a fascinating video of a Tervuren (I first said GSD but found the article and discovered my mistake) trained a cue that meant “do what I do” at a seminar in Germany. Anyone else seen it? It’s fantastic.
And of course, how could I not ask you? Send in your examples of what looks like imitation (in any species), but there’s more: write out your example and then put on your science hat. Is there another possible explanation? If so, it doesn’t mean it isn’t imitation, or that dogs can’t imitate, but it is good to be open minded, yes? Considering alternative hypothesis will make for an especially interesting conversation.
See you in Milwaukee? I’ll be driving a few hours east to do a fund raiser for Wisconsin Human Society this Thursday night (24th) at the Raddisson Hotel in Milwaukee. I’m going to talk about Play, raise pots of money for a great progressive shelter and sign books and hopefully… get to meet some of you who read the blog. They may be sold out, but check it out if you can come and please come up and say hi if you are a blog reader. I love meeting you in person, it’s a lovely kind of reinforcement for writing.
MEANWHILE, back on the farm: The lambs are huge! They are growing like weeds. Well, like lambs I guess, who are getting their fill of sweet, protein filled grass and forbs (sheep LOVE dandelions.. so do I, I pick the leaves and cook them for my dogs) and a small supplement of corn/oats and a protein balancer pellet. They don’t get much because they are getting such great grass and they are still getting milk from their mommas, but I like to give them a little extra.) Here are Dorothy’s lambs, getting large enough to lift her up if they shove their noses into her hard enough (which they do on a regular basis.)
The last few nights have been dramatic. Tornado warnings, wind damage, torrential rain. Rain Rain Rain. Enough already! But the sky sure was beautiful last night, as the clouds began to roll in for the next storm.
Kitt says
Look at that silly lamb baby! I love it. I would think mom would be getting tired of that, though.
Many years ago I taught my standard poodle how to bow by spending an hour on my hands and knees bowing myself as she watched. I’d sweep my hand for a signal, say, “Bowwwwwwww,” and then stretch my arms out in the dog-bow position. After many repetitions on my part, I said, “Bridget, bowwwwww” and by gosh, she did it! Within short order, she would do it whenever I asked.
That sure seems like true imitation to me. Not sure how else you could explain it.
Mary Straus says
At one time I had four dogs. One of the dogs was too soft to be trained directly, even using clicker training, but she watched and imitated the other dogs. She did a mirror image of what they did. For example, they waved their left paw, while she waved her right. They circled clockwise, while she circled counter-clockwise. I think the mirror image proves that she was imitating them.
It seems obvious that dogs imitate each other. I’m surprised that science still questions it.
Kim says
Ken Ramierez presented his take on this at clickerexpo, the basic idea is that he taught a dolphin to imitate another dolphin, and then they tested it using a behavior that was novel to the imitating dolphin. What they got was some approximation of what they were looking for. He likened it to a gymnast doing a bunch of flips, then you asking another kid to go out to do the same thing- they might come close, doing some actual bending/flipping, but not get it exactly right, because IT IS NOVEL, the imitator doesn’t have the same skills…
So, then he tried to prove it “scientifically” in dogs that it is possible. Granted, he had an n=1 for his study. But he had many controls in place- the test subject (the one doing the imitating) could not see anyone but the dog he was being asked to imitate, and the handler giving him the cue to “copy”. There was also no verbal commands used. There were blinds in place, multiple videos taken from many angles, etc. In the end, it came to the same as the dolphins- the first time he was asked to imitate a novel behavior, it was “speak”, and while he didn’t actually bark, he did let out a few big whines (which was not something they’d ever heard from him before). The second novel behavior tested had a similar effect- it was an attempt at the imitated behavior, but not exactly right.
Anyway, since you asked for comments….
Nancy R says
A few years ago I was fostering a border collie that had been a child’s 4-H obedience dog. The family advised the rescue group that they were relinquishing her to rescue because she was too hyper and stubborn. When she came to my house I noticed that sometimes she ignored commands and other times she obeyed but was slow in responding. Initially I thought she was, in fact, stubborn and the child training her had not been very good at insisting she obey. After she had been at my house for two weeks I noticed she did not wake one evening when we returned home late at night. My dogs had startled when the garage door opened and had begun barking very loudly. She remained sound asleep in her crate and did not wake until I rattled her crate. I then suspected she was deaf and confirmed this through BAER testing. At first I was perplexed how she had sometimes responded to obedience commands as I was only giving verbal commands. I then realized she only responded to my commands when my own dogs were present. I gave a verbal command, my dogs responded and she watched their behavior and copied it. I contacted her prior home and asked whether they realized she was deaf. They did not and she had been with them for 2 years. She fooled everybody by copying other dogs behavior.
Nelson says
What about the reverse? What about a dog trying to teach by demonstrating? I had two dogs. One dog, Camille, easily jumped onto the brand new bed in our new home. The other dog, Stanzi, could not. Since the two dogs slept together on the old bed in the old house, getting on the bed was a familiar goal. But the new bed was too high for Stanzi. Camille jumped on and off the bed several times as Stanzi stomped nervously, trying to jump up, but she was unsuccessful in her attempts. Stanzi seemed to get discouraged and was leaving the room, when Camille saw the footstool at the foot of the bed. She jumped down the bed to the footstool, then to the floor to stop Stanzi from leaving. Then she did the reverse, jumping up onto the footstool, then to the bed. Stanzi stopped and watched. Camille jumped off the bed from the side, then reapproached at the foot and demo’ed going up via the footstool again and again and again. She repeated this many times in a row, always jumping off the bed from the side and going up onto the bed using the footstool. Unfortunately, Stanzi never figured out how to get up on the bed using this method (she was not my brightest dog), but what was most interesting for me was that Camille only used the footstool to get up on the bed when Stanzi was there and wanted to come up as well. If what I interpreted is true, then Camille had the capacity to think that Stanzi could understand WHY Camille was repeatedly going only onto the bed with the footstool AND that Stanzi would either follow or copy the behavior.
Beth says
I had posted this study in the post where the issue of copying first came up:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11720-dogs-show-humanlike-learning-ability.html
Basically, if untrained dogs saw a trained dog get food by pushing a lever with her paw while she had something in her mouth, they would they would also push the lever but were more likely to use their muzzle than their paw (since as we know, dogs tend to prefer using their mouths to manipulate objects). It would seem that they figured she only used her paw because her mouth was occupied, and would have used her mouth were it available.
But if the same dogs watched her push the lever with her paw to get the food and her mouth was empty, they were more likely to also use their paws; it seems that they decided that using her paw was integral to getting the food, since she could have used her mouth and chose not to.
That sure sounds like copying behavior to me.
From my own experience, when I was a girl we had two female dogs, a springer spaniel and a little mixed breed. The little mutt knew how to “speak”, among various other tricks I taught her. The spaniel was a well-trained hunting dog, polite and dignified, and hardly ever barked inside the house.
I tried to teach the spaniel the “speak” command, and she would get excited and shuffle her front feet and sort of thrust her head forward as if she were barking, but would not make a peep no matter how wound I got her. She did not think she was meant to bark inside for no good reason. So I went and got the little mutt, and gave a demonstration: “Brandy, speak!” Brandy spoke, brandy got praise and a bit of a treat, then I turned back to Ginger (the spaniel) and said “Ginger, speak!” and she gleefully barked for me, relieved to finally understand what I was asking.
It sure looked like imitation. She was not barking along with the little dog, but did bark when given the command.
Margaret T. says
I had a dog that “sat pretty” for a treat; that is, he sat on his haunches and lifted his front legs and balanced. My sister had a pup, probably eight months old at the time, and very food oriented. My sister, her husband, and I were standing around, and I showed them Topper’s trick. Scotchie, my sister’s dog, did a true double-take when she saw him get the treat, and then she sat and lifted her front legs. She was pretty wobbly, and she got not only a treat, but a lot of praise and exclaiming. They had never tried to get her to sit pretty–I asked. I could think of no explanation besides imitation.
Susan S. says
There’s a video on YouTube called ‘The True Meaning of Dogsledding” in which two Labs plunge their muzzles into the snow (as Labs will), flip onto their sides, & slide down a long hill, propelling themselves when they lose momentum. It’s possible that someone taught them to do this, but it seems more likely that one stumbled upon the behavior & the other imitated it. It’s worth a look.
I’ll see you in MKE.
Melissa says
I was talking about this to a friend one time, and they suggested there was a window in puppies where they would imitate you. It reminded me of when my older dog was a puppy and I was outside weeding. He watched me pulling plants up with my hands, then he took hold of some weeds in his mouth and pulled them up. My friend had had a similar experience with one of their dogs copying yard work. For both of us this occurred when the dogs were puppies and once they got to about a year old they no longer responded in the same way. They stopped watching us so carefully and didn’t try out anything novel we were doing for themselves. When my younger dog was a puppy I tried weeding in front of him and watched him nose around the weeds and he mouthed them a bit and bit some grass off and that was it. He seemed pleased with himself. He’s never done it since.
Try it with Hope! With my guys it was when they were around maybe 5 months old. Before sexual maturity, but older than wee little babies.
I once tried to teach my dog “less and more”. I was teaching him to lift his paw off the ground, and if I wanted to teach him a big lift I’d use a big hand signal and if I wanted a little lift I’d use a small hand signal. People told me dogs couldn’t learn that, but he did. I was shaping it, so it’s not like it was imitation, but I was interested that I didn’t have to shape it much. He generally got the gist of it right from the start. And I started doing it in the first place because I had noticed how quickly he dropped when my partner gave one of his big hand signals compared to my little hand signals. I don’t think this is imitation, though. I think it’s an automatic response to our own enthusiasm. I bet that’s a mirror neuron thing. Oh boy, mirror neurons! I can’t wait. 🙂
Mike says
I had a female dog who had never marked anything in her life when she lived with our other female dog. We got a male dog, who was very intent on marking everything. The female not only started marking (which I wouldn’t really call imitation) but she did it the wrong way and would attempt to pee by lifting one foot. As long as we owned the male our female dog would try to mark things and even do her normal business on three legs, to great mess and failure.
Laurel says
I had a puppy for less than a week and observed my older female and the pup sitting side by side looking out over the countryside. This was not something I believe the pup would have done on his own so I looked it as imitating the older one. What was spooky however was the fact that the dog I lost a month before used to sit at that very spot and I had never seen the female there before that day. I took a picture of it and you can see it here (in the middle of the post) … http://laurelandherdogs.blogspot.com/2010/01/jake-and-others.html
Amy says
YES! I believe that dogs are able to imitate each other. When my Aussie puppy joined us, she learned all the basic commands – sit, down, shake, roll over, high five within 2 weeks of her stay. I truly believe that her watching my 4yo Aussie helped to facilitate how quickly she picked things up. Granted, she was also getting a lot of shaping and positive reinforcement from me. But alternating between our pup and our adult seemed to help her “get it” faster.
Another imitation example: My parents Chow mix is a little slow with commands. On more than one occasion, when I asked for a spin, down, roll over, the Chow mix would just sit and stare at me. However, when our adult Aussie would follow the command meant for him, he would immediately copy her to earn the treat!
Janice says
I have always wondered if the entire definition of imitation (and of it being the pinnacle of cognitive skills) wasn’t designed to make sure that only humans could be demonstrated to have it. The reason that I say this is that even our terminology is species-centric. “Observational” implies visual observation–something which we humans do with great acuity. But why would we expect a rat, who has terrible vision, but an olfactory perception like nothing we can even imagine and the ability to produce sounds and hear in ranges where our ears can’t even hear, to show imitation through the visual sense, which is one of its weakest senses? So if a rat were to produce a novel sound pattern following the demonstration of that novel sound pattern by a demonstrator rat–we would never hear it and would still persist in trying to make the poor practically blind rat demonstrate its cognitive skill through visual observation and imitation. Or how about an animal that produces a novel odor and upon smelling it, another one of its species produces the same novel odor? Would we humans, with our poor ability to smell, even be able to perceive that imitation took place? There could be all kinds of imitation going on around us that we miss because we are focusing our entire set of definitions on our primary perceptional skill not that of the animals we are studying. Anyway, this has always bugged me.
Rebecca Golatzki DVM says
Many years ago I worked in a vet clinic with a large boarding kennel. We had a little dachshund come in to board who would grab the chain link kennel with her teeth and pull back on it as hard as she could, shaking the whole door. By the time she left at the end of two weeks, she had taught EVERY dog in the kennel to do this. Our kennel runs were much the worse for her example!
I do think my dogs will sometimes imitate things. The most frequent example I see is watching other dogs run an agility course. If they watch several dogs run before their turn comes, and I am somewhat casual in entering the course when it’s our turn (this is practice, not a trial), they will often take off and run the first part of the course themselves. Their memory limit seems to be 3-4 obstacles, then they come back to me for input. I also frequently see new dogs in a group learn food soliciting behavior from the established dogs- I always ask for a nice straight tuck sit as close to front as I can get. It doesn’t take new dogs long to figure out how the others are getting rewarded and soon they are jockeying for “front” position along with the rest. Of course, there is some shaping there as they only get rewarded when they’re in the right position, but certainly the IDEA that that position is a good one seems to come from watching the other dogs.
As far as it being a practical method for training, I find mostly letting my dogs watch other dogs train gives them a high level of excitement and drive when it comes to their turn, and also seems to clue them in as to what “category” of activity we are doing on a given day- agility, tracking, etc. Actually trying to get them to imitate the other dogs is not a frequently used tool in our bag, but we do resort to it once in a while.
My cats, OTOH, are master imitators. On MANY occasions I have ended a shaping session with the dogs, only to have the cat saunter over, perform whatever behavior I had just spent 30 minutes laboriously shaping the dog into doing, and then wait expectantly for their click and treat. Trust a cat to cut to the chase!
Rose T. says
Beautiful pictures of the farm and lambs – thanks for sharing those.
I taught Daisy (my dog) to use potty bells and she has been using them for quite some time. Recently, I started taking my cat Bubba out on leash. They both go out the same door which has the potty bells. Well, we were in the kitchen a few days ago and Bubba was standing near the door and the next I hear is the potty bells ….(Daisy is nowhere near there). Then a few days later, my husband confirmed that Bubba rang the potty bells because he wanted to go outside…..imagine that? Not sure if that’s true imitation, but I can tell you that I NEVER trained Bubba to ring the bells to go outside.
Frances says
Cats definitely imitate – I too have had mine saunter over after watching me painstakingly training a pup, and perform for a treat. I am almost certain Sophy the Papillon has learned to imitate the cats, too, but need to observe a little more to be sure.
Jen says
I taught my first dog to roll over by rolling over myself. I didn’t know anything about dog training and monkey-see-monkey-do, plus rolling around in the yard, seemed like a good idea at the time. It worked. Of course, rolling over is something dogs do anyway, so not novel.
2 Curly Dogs says
I’m fairly certain our poodle has learned thru imitation.
We taught our Portuguese Water Dog to ring a bell as a signal he needs to go outside. One night, shortly after we had brought her home, we were sitting down to dinner when our Poodle walked over to the bell, deliberately nudged it with her nose and then looked right at us – a complete imitation of what our PWD does. We had never taught her this, being more focused on other things after we rescued her. The only way she could have learned it is thru observing our PWD.
retrieverman says
I have had three golden retrievers that have all figured out how to open the same French doors. No one taught them to do this, and I can’t imagine that they have sophisticated enough problem solving skills to figure out how to open the door.
I used to laugh when I read of that famous study that showed that dogs couldn’t learn to open gates but wolves always could. I guess they weren’t using golden retrievers. One of my fellow bloggers has BC’s that routinely open the all the French doors in the house.
The only way I can figure that these dogs have learned to open those door is through observational learning– possibly imitation, for the dogs always used their paws to open the door, not their mouths.
What’s interesting is that none of the other dogs I have known, including a dog that was half golden retriever/half boxer, learned how to do this.
What’s interesting is that one of the goldens learned how to open the door from another golden.
The current dog had to learn to leave the door alone. But every once in a while, she comes by the door and looks at the handle.
Sonja says
When I was a teenager, my family adopted an adorable little Corgi mix from our local shelter. We named her Love. She came pre-housetrained and with the understanding of one command (sit). We got out about a thousand different types of food for treats, but poor little Love was just TOO EXCITED about the food to effectively learn. Her little feet did this frantic happy dance (which, I can’t deny, was about the cutest display of happiness I’d ever seen) and the food was just too distracting for her to take in anything else that was happening. I clearly remember my mom looking over at me and saying, “Sonja! We can’t teach this dog anything! She’s too sweet to learn!” HA! We put all Love training on hold (I know what you’re thinking, but her behavior/temperament was flawless from the start).
Our other dog, C.D., knew all kinds of good tricks and we practiced with him while Love was around. We’d humor her with a “Love, sit” every so often. :p I don’t know how long it took, but it was super-fast! Within a month, Love knew several of C.D.’s tricks. Love died suddenly and unexpectedly after eight years with my family (her age was unknown). At the time of her death, she had been directly taught exactly one trick by any member of my family (Mom took a behavior Love already displayed and put a word to it–dance). Yet, she knew many more. She learned had learned most of C.D.’s repertoire by watching him. I imagine this to be a form of repetition. “C.D. does x when the humans say y and then he gets a treat.”
I suppose it’s possible that Love had been taught all of these behaviors in her past life. However, she had never displayed them. My family definitely tries common “commands” out on newly adopted shelter dogs. Over and over, she showed “sit” was the only one she knew (at least by the names we gave them–generally the most common names for the behaviors).
I think science often errs on the side of “animals don’t have advanced cognitive abilities” in the interest of not anthropomorphizing. The problem with this, of course, is science underestimates nonhuman animals. The language barrier means they can’t tell us everything they know and are capable of. Heck, we humans even underestimate each other. Constantly!
The human brain is certainly unique among the brains alive on earth today, but there are lots and lots of similarities in other species’ brains too (indeed, I’m certain there are ways in which my dogs’ brains are more sophisticated than my own)!
Ann W in PA says
The examples I have seen are more in the category of “one of these things is not like the others.” We foster dogs, so we have a lot of newbies coming in, and it definitely seems as if they learn group “routine” tasks from watching the other dogs all doing the same thing and that they are the odd man out. I don’t know if it meets the definition of imitation, but they are certainly copying what they are seeing the other dogs do.
The clearest example is this one. Our own dogs have learned that they must wait in a sit-stay while I fill their food bowls. There isn’t a verbal cue or hand signal to sit and stay – after I open the door to the laundry room where they are fed, I just wait a second until everyone is in their sit-stays. Once the new dog finds that rushing up to the food bin doesn’t work, they look around at the other dogs who are obviously all doing the same thing, and then go into a sit, sometimes at their very first meal. Most of these dogs had never been trained to sit or stay on cue, and I would say over half of the dogs I’ve tried it with have had the exact same behavior. It’s difficult to think they aren’t seeking and getting valuable information from observing the other dogs, since it is almost cartoonish how they look around in an exaggerated fashion and then you can almost see the lightbulb over their heads as they confidently splat into a sit and don’t move until the other dogs do.
Jennifer Hamilton says
When I saw the dog sledding video, I immediately wondered how in the world somebody trained that behavior…but when I saw the second dog do the same thing, I jumped to the conclusion that one learned from the other and the first one came across it by accident. All assumptions, I know…but it would be very interesting to ask the owner of those two dogs. Two dogs doing such a novel and complicated behavior is worthy of study!
Margaret T. says
Nelson said, “What about a dog trying to teach by demonstrating?”
I’ve seen that, too. My own dogs are littermates that I got from rescue. They have their own play style, with the female often grabbing the male’s ear or skin over the shoulder and tugging it. We spent some time with a friend and her two dogs, one a puppy, and they had a totally different play style that involved a lot of stuffing of plush toys into the other dog’s mouth followed by a gentle game of tug. The puppy tried to play with my Jessie in the same way, and Jessie just wasn’t getting it, until my friend’s older dog walked over to the pup, took the toy she was stuffing at Jessie, and gently tugged it. Then she deliberately dropped it and walked away to lie down. Jessie picked up where the older dog had left off, playing with the puppy in the style of the other two dogs.
Corrie says
A couple of examples:
Growing up my dad had a beagle that we talk to beg (sit up on her rear end and use her tail to balance). One weekend we were watching my mom’s cat and she started to do the same thing in order to get a treat. We had never tried to teach the cat to do that before. For the next 12 years, the cat knew to sit up and beg for treats.
I now have a 2 year old female golden retriever. I had taught her to “give me five” (a low high five) but she would only do it if my had was palm up right in front of her and I hadn’t really tried to get her to do any differently. A friend visited with his 5 year old male golden who had been trained to give high fives where he has to stand up on his back legs to reach his owners hand. After watching his golden do this a few times, I asked mine for a high five and she did the same thing she had just seen the other golden do. She is still able to do that trick, knowing the difference between low and high fives.
I suppose it’s possible that she just connected the two with the word “five” and knew she wanted me to touch her paw to my hand and that the timing was just coincidental. We did try to get her to learn “speak” the same way, but were unsuccessful. Selective imitation I guess. 😉
Miki says
True story – I took a basic “Click for Tricks” class at a Petsmart with my (then) 4 y.o. standard poodle. The class was small – Mike and I, a guy with his middle-aged lab mix, and the instructor with her UDX GSD. The instructor was teaching us and herself – she had no prior clicker training experience. It wasn’t the best class but not the worst, either – by the third class Mike could crawl and do a short Cha-Cha-Cha on command. In the 4th class the instructor wanted to show us shaping. She stood on one side of a rubberized grate with her GSD on the other. Her “goal” was to have her GSD place his paw on the top of the grate. While she stood there, her poor dog tried all kinds of behaviors – staring at her, sitting, down, up and down, walking around the grate. He finally put a paw on top of the grate and started to walk across it – click/treat! Back to trying other behaviors again, but fewer, before he touched the top of the grate again – click/treat! He did this a couple of more times until the instructor was satisfied that he knew which behavior she wanted – and then she asked me to try it with Mike. I set him up on one side of the grate, and walked around to the other side. Almost before I reached my place Mike put his right paw on the top of the grate. Click/treat. He did it again – click/treat. And again, and again, and again, not once hesitating in the least.
It was obvious to me that Mike had learned which behavior elicited the reward by watching the GSD – so he did the same thing. It amazed me then; it amazes me now.
Man – I miss that dog…..
Kat says
The picture of the lambs and their poor mother brought back fond memories. I remember watching the lambs lifting the ewe’s back end off the ground while they nursed. Seems to me it was about that point where the ewe decided it was time for the lambs to be weaned.
As for dogs learning by imitation here’s my example. Ranger is a high status dog but he’s a lazy wrestler and will almost always roll on his back and casually fend off his playmate causing the other dog to wear himself out while Ranger is expending little energy. From what I’ve seen it’s a pretty unusual (novel?) strategy for a high status dog. One of Ranger’s playmates is also a high status dog, a chocolate lab that is almost 6 years old. Until he started playing with Ranger this dog never wrestled from his back. Now when he’s playing with a younger more energetic dog he’ll usually roll on his back and use the same strategy that Ranger does to wear out his playmate. As the lab’s person puts it with complete confidence “He learned that from Ranger.” The lab saw that Ranger’s strategy of wrestling from the back conferred an advantage–fending off while laying on your back you don’t get as tired and your playmate does get tired–and adopted it. It wasn’t trained or encouraged by the people it was just something he did all on his own. I suppose he could have figured out the strategy on his own but the fact that he did not until he experienced what it was like to wrestle with Ranger seems telling to me. From where I sit the lab observed a strategy that conferred an advantage and imitated it. I should add that this dog is the only one to have figured out that allowing the game to be controlled by Ranger’s tactic means getting tired while Ranger remains relatively fresh. The lab now backs away and waits for Ranger to return to his feet–no other dog has figured that out so far although I’m watching to see whether some of the others pick it up.
Denise says
Because my dog Hugh is reactive, there aren’t many dogs he gets to play with these days. His best bud is my cat, Amelia but Amelia is a force to be reckoned with. They play togther a lot and often Amelia initiates the play but she also controls it. When she’s had enough she issues a cease and desist order and Hugh says “Yes Ma’am!” I’ve often seen Hugh approach an offered round of play by reaching out with his paws and touching Amelia as he faces her. It looks as if he is trying to imitate the cat style of boxing with the front paws rather than a more doggie style of play. When he does this, he’s less likely to get the cease and desist order than when he approaches in a more dog-play style. On the other hand, he might just be testing the waters in a way that is least likely to get him whalloped by Madame Amelia should she be in a particularly evil mood. Feline moods are to be respected, as poor Hugh has reason to know!
DeAnna says
My mom taught her young horse to do a modified agility course. She clicker trained, but she struggled with getting him to put his front feet up on the pause table. She eventually taught it by stepping up herself. Now, she can stand next to him and put either one or both of her feet on the table, and Indigo will do the same. If she puts only her right foot, he puts his right foot. She also taught him to “stomp” this way, with either foot. He will stomp the same number of times that she does. All the rest could be simple clicker training, with the cue being my mom’s action. But the number of repetitions is something that she didn’t teach him. It doesn’t seem likely that he would understand a different cue for each different number of stomps, but rather that he understands the “trick” is to stomp the same number of times as Mom.
em says
Nancy R. I had a similar experience with a hearing dog! When I was ten years old, we adopted a lab/GSP mix puppy with perfect hearing who seemed to pick up commands really easily, but only performed them sporadically. She had no problems learning the ‘rules’ of the house, (lie in one place during dinner, don’t touch the trash, don’t jump or mouth at people, stay out from underfoot in the kitchen, etc.) but I was the only one teaching her ‘tricks’ (basic obedience, fetching games) and for nearly eight months I was at a total loss to explain why she usually ‘listened’ but sometimes just completely ignored me-especially since she had a very strong work/retrieval drive-she typically responded with tremendous alacrity. At first I thought she was just young and flaky or easily distracted, but one day I realized what was happening-coming from an Italian background, I was subconsciously supplementing my verbal commands with consistent hand signals-she had learned the gestures flawlessly but never bothered to learn the words. Once this possibility occurred to me, I tried running her through a silent recital of her repetoire, which she performed perfectly. Naturally, I thought this was very cool, and used my silent commands to impress and astonish my friends 🙂 She did eventually learn many vocal commands, but to the end of her life, the gestures were easier for her to ‘read’ and we used sound primarily to get her attention.
I always thought of this experience as a fluke until I adopted my dane, Otis-he found it much easier to understand and remember gestures than sounds also, despite having very acute hearing. In fact, his lack of response to verbalization was so severely marked when we adopted him (as a young adult), that I informally tested him for deafness the first day we brought him home. It took him two months to learn his name, three to learn the word for ‘sit’-a command that he picked up in less than ten minutes when cued with a gesture.
Interestingly, the scenario of a deaf dog being surrendered for ‘stubborness’ is not uncommon in the great dane rescue community (deafness and blindness are sadly quite prevalent among danes owing to the genetic dangers of combining certain coat-color-related genes). Thanks to my experiences, I can see how someone could make that mistake-even if I can’t quite excuse it…it can be shocking to realize how closely our dogs are actually watching us without appearing to. I also suspect than many hearing dogs are unfairly labelled as ‘dumb’ or ‘stubborn’ because they have a hard time with verbal signals.
em says
I would concur with all the other posters about cat behavior, as well. I had a fetching cat-it’s not really all that rare. This cat learned to fetch as a response to my efforts to end play with a feather wand toy that she liked to obsessively chase around. I would flick it across the room, she’d chase it and drag it back to me to keep playing. My other cat watched, but never attempted to interfere. Then, the next day, she brought me HER preferred toy (rattle mouse-ball) while I was lying in bed. I chucked it out of the room, and she repeatedly brought it back despite never having done anything similar before. This went on-cats both fetching, but separately- at different times and with different objects, until the introduction of a third cat, who, rudely, would horn right in when my first fetcher tried to play with feather wand. She stalked off in a huff and refused to play at all anymore. Weirdly, the imitator gave up the game, too, despite the fact that third cat was far too terrified of her to interfere in her game with the rattle-ball. She’d still chase and play with it, but no more fetching.
Melanie S says
My ewe was ridiculously tolerant of her twin boys’ desire to keep nursing well beyond what seemed feasible to me. They would be down on their knees shunting her back end up off the ground, and backwards, and I couldn’t believe she allowed it for as long as she did.
Actually, I can hear the three of them (Mama Chook and her boys Buster and Serendipity) calling to me right now, alerting me to the fact that dinner is just a bit late today!
Smiles…
Melissa Bollbach says
My boyfriend’s dog Elmer “rings” the doorknob with his nose when he wants to go outside. My dog Bear started doing this too. I think it could be that Bear made a classical association that a ding means the door is about to open, and he nosed the door while guessing how to make the sound himself. But what tickles my boyfriend is that Bear generalized to “ringing” the doorknob of the pantry, which Jeff attributes to Bear wanting a snack.
Thanks for addressing this issue and the current research on it! In my mind I stick with the official “for now it looks like dogs can’t imitate but research is ongoing”, and it’s hard to assess new studies without having access to the full papers. Plus there seems to be a lot of “my dog learned to pee on a bush by watching another dog” discussion whenever the issue comes up on email lists. Some great candidates in these comments though!