Fido knows what’s fair
”
It’s not fair!
”
Anyone who’s spent more than a few minutes with young people
knows that line well. Delivered with conviction and passion, it’s
proof that a sense of fairplay is either innate or learned early in
life. And it’s not unique to humans.
Fido knows what’s fair
“It’s not fair!”
Anyone who’s spent more than a few minutes with young people knows that line well. Delivered with conviction and passion, it’s proof that a sense of fairplay is either innate or learned early in life. And it’s not unique to humans.
Monkeys have been shown to have the same sense, and now researchers at the University of Vienna’s Clever Dog Lab (There is such a place; I couldn’t make up anything that far-fetched.) report that Fido has the same keen awareness of right and wrong.
Ask a dog to do a trick, and if there’s the prospect of a reward, they’ll happily give it a go, and another, and another. When I order Sparky to sit, he’ll do it – usually. But when he believes I’ve got a tiny treat in my hand, his backside hits the floor so fast I wonder if he’s going to injure himself.
If a dog does not get its reward, then sees another get a sausage treat for doing the same trick, he’s unlikely to respond to an order to repeat the trick, and he may even turn away and refuse to make eye contact.
“Animals react to inequity,” said Friederike Range in an Associated Press report. Range led the team of researchers at the University of Vienna. “To avoid stress, we should try to avoid treating them differently.”
When I watch our dog napping in one of his comfortable dog beds, getting up only to move to a sunnier spot, I wonder about what a dog finds stressful, and if I could obtain some of that stress for myself.
Range said he does not believe his findings are surprising. After all, dogs are descended from wolves, and wolves are known to have complicated social structures and they appear to be quite sensitive to one another.
In the reward experiments, Range and his colleagues experimented with dogs that understood the command “paw” meant to place a paw in the hand of a researcher.
Those who refused to cooperate were removed from the experiment, leaving 29 dogs to be linked into various pairs for testing. Dogs sat side by side with a researcher in front of them. Between the dogs and the scientist sat a divided food bowl with pieces of sausage on one side and brown bread on the other. The dogs were asked to shake hands, and each could see what reward the other received.
When one dog got a reward and the other didn’t, the unrewarded animal stopped playing. When both got paid off, everything was fine.
One thing that researchers said did surprise them was that – unlike primates – the dogs didn’t care whether they got sausage or bread. The researchers must not spend much time around dogs.
Dogs are pretty single-minded about food, and quality always takes a back seat to quantity. Come to think of it, worry about where the next meal is coming from may be what causes stress in dogs.
