Puppy Dog Eyes, Baby Talk, and A Daily Dose of Oxytocin: Decoding Dog Behavior with Angie Johnston
Finding Genius Podcast
Richard Jacobs
4.4 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 25 October 2020
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Do dogs really love us? Are they really feeling guilty when they give us that unmistakably guilty look? Can dogs outsmart children when put to the test?
Tune in to explore these questions and more, including:
- How certain interactions with dogs trigger the release of hormones in our bodies, and theirs
- Why domestication may have cost dogs their capacity for independent problem-solving
- What happens in terms of the dog's ability to pay attention and learn when we use baby talk to speak to them
Angie Johnston is an assistant professor at Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences whose work revolves primarily around two simple, yet very compelling questions: what can dogs tell us about dogs, and what can they tell us about humans?
Johnston is studying dogs closely in an attempt to grasp what's really going on in their minds, and to better understand which parts of our psychology are uniquely human, and which are shared with our furry best friends. She does this by conducting studies which compare dog behavior and problem-solving with that of human toddlers around the age of four or five.
Some of the most surprising results came from a study looking at over-imitation, which is the tendency to imitate silly, unnecessary steps in a procedure, even when knowing they are silly or unnecessary. The findings would suggest that dogs are smarter than children, at least in this regard. And while that may be the case, Johnston explains why the findings actually make sense when viewed through a social and cultural lens.
She also explains the dog's propensity to learn new words, the quantitative measures of their "love" for us and how they differ between domesticated dogs and wolves, the facial coding system in dogs and the evolution of that "puppy dog eyes" expression, and how the COVID-19 lockdowns have actually prompted Johnston and others to conduct virtual studies, which capture more purely the dog's behavior in their home environment.
Tune in for the details and check out https://sites.bc.edu/doglab/ to learn more.
Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Forget frequently asked questions common sense common knowledge or Google how about advice from a real genius |
| 0:06.8 | 95% of people in any profession are good enough to be qualified and licensed 5% go and beyond. They become very good at what they do. |
| 0:15.1 | But only 0.1% are real Jesus. |
| 0:18.3 | Richard Jacobs has made it his life's mission to find them for you. |
| 0:22.4 | He hunts down and interviews geniuses in every field, sleep science, cancer, stem cells, |
| 0:27.2 | ketogenic diets, and more. |
| 0:28.8 | Here come the geniuses. |
| 0:30.4 | This is the Finding Genius Podcast. |
| 0:33.0 | That is Richard Jacobs. |
| 0:35.0 | Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with the Finding Genius Podcast. |
| 0:41.0 | I have Angie Johnson. She's an assistant professor at the |
| 0:44.6 | Boston College, part of the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences, and she |
| 0:49.4 | studies dogs and what they're thinking, which is sounds really really interesting so |
| 0:53.9 | Angie thanks for coming no problem thanks for having me yeah tell me about your |
| 0:58.2 | research and your own words so what I look for whenever I'm looking at dogs is two things. |
| 1:03.4 | One, what can dogs tell us about dogs? |
| 1:06.3 | And two, what can dogs tell us about humans? |
| 1:08.9 | So one thing we know about dogs is that they're really similar to humans even more so than our closest |
| 1:14.1 | primate relatives in a lot of ways and so what we can do is we can learn about |
| 1:18.8 | what dogs are thinking by testing them in studies and then we can also compare them to |
| 1:23.9 | humans specifically human children to see what parts of our own human |
| 1:28.0 | psychology might be unique and what parts do we share with our best friend? |
... |
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