you're listening to brains on we're both serious about being curious brains on is supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation hey Evelyn did you have any trouble finding us nope the brands on headquarters looks just like you said it would pretty distinctive let's head up to the studio can you press that button right there welcome to brains on headquarters Which floor elevator please take us to the studio holding doors for additional passengers of course you're welcome oh wh
at a cute dog is there a human coming to join this dog next up brains on boardroom no elevator I said the studio yes first stop boardroom second stop Studio this is a dog going to the boardroom here we are brains on boardroom hey Molly hey Evelyn I don't remember adding you to the invite list for this meeting what's going on in here sandon oh this is the monthly meeting of the brains on dog advisory Council I've been I've been for years I didn't know you had a brands on dog advisory Council neit
her did I oh yeah I post about it all the time on my blog which you guys totally read right uh okay with Archie here now joining us the dog board is fully assembled oh what's that Penelope oh don't mind the water on the floor we had the octopus advisory council meeting in here yesterday they have quite the sense of humor did you know they could turn off a light switch just by squirting water at it what Pranksters oh speaking of which Molly uh that board the octopus one said they'd like the show
a lot better if you had eight arms so I told him you'd work on that sure okay let's get started take a seat everybody oh I'm sorry I mean sit good boys and girls stay good good good now we're gonna share ideas on how to improve the show speak one at a time one at a time Molly Evelyn are you guys gonna stay and help with this or I kind of want to but we have to get to the studio yeah buy cutie fluffer faces all right suit yourself oh and if you see anyone from the alpaca advisory Council wanderin
g around tell them that got pushed to Thursday all right bye next stop brings on Studio [Music] you're listening to brains on from American public media I'm Molly Bloom and my co-host today is Evelyn from Horsham Pennsylvania hi Evelyn hi Molly thank you for having me today oh thanks for being here now Evelyn it is a very funny coincidence that sandon chose today of all days to hold his dog advisory council meeting because this episode is based on a canine-centric question that you sent in to us
what was that question do dogs understand their dogs the way a human knows it's a human tell us about your dogs I have a full-size goldendoodle and a mini-sized Goldendoodle and the oldest one is named Titus and then the younger one is named Pickle so Evelyn what made you think of this question do you remember um I was laying in bed with my dog and I was just thinking does he realize that he's a dog because he sometimes I think he thinks he's one of us as a human because he lays in bed with us
asked by relay in bed he sits with us in a chair but at the same time he interacts with other dogs the way that they're supposed to like they run around with each other they play with each other all the usual stuff well one step to understanding an animal State of Mind is to find out if they are aware of themselves as distinct individuals in the world it's called self-awareness there's a famous test that's supposed to let you know if an animal is self-aware known as the mirror test it works like
this when an animal is asleep you draw a little red mark on their face somewhere prominent then when they wake up you put them in a room with a mirror and you wait to see if they notice hey sweating mark on my face the theory is if they are self-aware they'll recognize themselves in the mirror see the dot and try to get it off or at least move around to get a better look at it is it a pimple am I going to animal puberty most animals totally ignore the mirror and they never notice the dot only a
few have been shown to recognize themselves in the reflection like dolphins elephants chimpanzees and of course humans but humans can only do it after about the age of two ah this dot won't come off why are all these people in laugh coats staring at me this is the last time I agree to be a part of any study one by humans one so do dogs pass the mirror test are they self-aware no dogs do not pass this test sometimes dogs even think the reflection is another dog but keep in mind it's not concrete
proof of self-awareness dogs may still be self-aware but this test might not be the best way to find out luckily we know a scientist who spends a lot of time thinking about dogs and how they think Alexander Horowitz runs the dog Cog Mission Lab at Barnard College welcome Alexandra thanks Evelyn do dogs understand their dogs the way we understand we're humans wow it's such an interesting question do dogs understand their dogs well I think all the evidence that we have shows that they do that the
y think about themselves as dogs and recognize other dogs as dogs and this is a little surprising in some ways because dogs come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes from tiny tiny toy Chihuahuas to Great Danes and Mastiffs but in studies it looks like they recognize all of those types of breeds as one category of things which is dogs in fact there was one study that showed dogs pictures of dog faces which all looked really different and also pictures of other animals faces like a cat and
a cow and a donkey and these dogs have been trained to pick out the dog face and get a reward for it and then when they were shown all these faces they had no trouble at all distinguishing who were the dogs from what were the other animals so I think it's safe to say they know their dogs could dogs feel the mirror test and still be self-aware I love the idea of the mirror test that animals might look in the mirror like we do and notice hey you know that's me in the mirror and especially notice i
f something is different about how they look now dogs don't pass that test I don't know if you've ever seen a dog look in the mirror they're interested in the mirror they seem to think there might be a dog there but they don't seem to care if there's a little Mark on their head at least they don't seem to try to remove it I thought though that this doesn't show that they don't think about themselves I thought that maybe it was that they just don't care that much about how they look because in fa
ct they are smelling creatures they smell the world first just the way we see the world first so I designed a little study which I called an olfactory mirror which is just a smell test where I got a little bit of their scent like a mirror reflection and then I changed it a little bit and I wanted to see if they were way more interested in that marked version of themself than just the regular picture of themself and they were they sniffed that Mark a lot longer as though they were looking in the
mirror and noticing that there was something different except for about their smell instead of about how they look so I think that they do have some kind of sense of themselves but that it's rooted in what they smell like which is a little bit different than us because we might not even know really what we smell like um why do dogs sometimes pick a favorite person in the family do you have any advice on how to become my dog's favorite person well I think there's no Fail-Safe way to become a dog'
s favorite person except to pay them a lot of attention so if you think about a dog's life in a normal family they spend a lot of time kind of waiting for things to happen which have to do with them that might be feeding that has to do with them that might be play if somebody's going to play with them or take them for a walk there are lots of different ways we pay attention to our dogs and the people who pay attention in most of those contexts the ones who take them for the walks the ones who no
tice when they're feeling rambunctious and want to play the ones who give them their food wind up usually being the favorite person so I'm pretty sure you can do that and what kind of memories do dogs have can they remember their early lives as puppies can they remember how long ago you left them when you go away to work well we know that they have pretty good memories it's not as though just because they can't talk to us about their memories they don't have memories and we see this every day in
their behavior you know they recognize you even if you've been gone for a day or a week or a month um or a year you know they can remember you and will recognize you pretty quickly but we don't know and that it's hard to get evidence for how much of um what we would call episodic memory that they have in other words memory for episodes of their life so if they were at a shelter early in their life and it was a scary place and it's hard to test for episodic memories you know we can ask a person
what do you remember about when you were four years old but we can't ask an animal a non-verbal animal that so you have to get to it by just seeing hmm do they recognize being in particular places do they show familiarity with people who they've met once before and it does look like they recognize and um people in places just as we would expect so their memory is pretty good what is the thing that people misunderstand about dog's mind the most it's a great question I think that most people think
of dogs as just like us only smaller furrier maybe a little less smart but I think in many ways they think really differently than we do and that starts with the fact that they smell the world where we see it I should say to that question you know that I have a theory that they can pretty much tell how long you've been gone if you're gone the same amount each day by how much less of your smell is in the house because everybody has a smell you know your house has a smell it smells like the peopl
e who live in it and the dogs who live in it sometimes when I go on vacation I come back and I open the door and I smell dogs and that's because there's a smell in the house and I and I don't usually notice it but our smell would diminish over the course of the day so if you're in the Next Room your dog can smell it if you leave the room there's still some smell of you in that room normal smell of person but as the day goes on the smell would dissipate so in some sense the dog can tell how long
you've been gone by how much of your smell has disappeared from the house isn't that wild that's really cool thank you for answering your questions yeah my pleasure [Applause] Molly speaking of dogs do you think we can sneak back into the dog advisory council meeting they were all so cute we can try but we have something else to sneak in first it's time for the Mystery Sound mystery Style [Music] here it is uh uh I don't know maybe someone pouring dog food into a bowl hmm very good guess we're g
onna be back with the answer in just a bit [Music] who is that it's me Evelyn can I come in and hang out with you guys sure we're doing some testing oh fun so everybody okay let's see uh which of these questions would make a better episode topic why do cats lick themselves or do dogs dream [Music] wow unanimous vote dog dreams it is wait Dog stream are they like our dreams oh yeah researchers think dogs totally dream well pepper the pointer over there says dogs are expert sleepers and their slee
p is a lot like ours interesting huh what what did she say oh uh she said dogs typically spend about half their day sleeping which totally jealous but scientists think they are only dreaming for a small portion of that also we tend to sleep in kind of like one long chunk overnight but dogs they get a lot of their sleeps in little chunks you know like cat naps oh sorry sorry dog naps oh good point Mr Muffin what did he say now I really need to learn to speak dog oh uh just the dogs have both rapi
d eye movement sleep or REM sleep and non-rapid eye movement sleep or non-rem sleep just like us us non-dog people we've been known to dream during both phases of sleep but the dreams we typically remember you know like the weird ones where your best friend shows up but they're also a bee and they sting you and you swell up and explode but it's okay because it turns out you were really a pinata this whole time and now there's candy and everyone gets candy you know those kind of dreams those are
mostly associated with REM sleep oh interesting weird but interesting yeah dogs enter REM sleep about 20 minutes into a snooze and that's when you might see their breathing change a little or their their legs twitch and that's a sign they're dreaming in fact there's a part of the brain called the pons that seems to keep humans and dogs from acting out their dreams when they sleep some Studies have found that when that area is not working in dogs they actually get up and do the stuff in their dre
ams like they act it out like what well a pointer dog might get up and point at dream birds or a terrier might dig for dream rabbits and a dream Warren oh uh french fry over there says she dreams about owning a small bed and breakfast in wine country where the dogs and people can go and sign up for spa treatments oh oh I'm sorry I misheard she dreams about eating garbage it sounds a lot like owning a bed and breakfast it's easy to confuse it too time for our break alright everybody take five the
re are bowls of water on the table in the back and a fire hydrant outside if you need to use the restroom we'll meet back here to review new taglines for the show right now the top contenders are let's see um brain's on where we're serious about chasing squirrels and uh brains on bark bark woof bark brains on thanks for letting me duck out for a second Salmon's quite the facilitator that he is are you ready to answer another listener question about dogs yes my name's Claire and I'm from Vancouve
r Canada my question is do dogs bark in different languages like humans do in different countries we definitely hear their barks differently like what word do we use in the United States Evelyn for the sound a dog makes I say bark or woof exactly but if you grow up speaking Spanish you say that the dog goes or in Somali or Hmong oh Volvo or like this that was Russian polish and Chinese but the answer to whether or not dogs actually speak different languages is no again our friend Alexandra Horow
itz dogs speak the same way no matter where they're from there are no dog dialects that we know about the only difference is how we as different language speakers refer to the sounds they're making dogs will learn whatever language you can teach them but it's not like they speak English like you could train a dog to say whenever you say the word glarp or roll over when you say schmagoozle yes and I would love to hear that next time I go to the dog park Digi glarp exactly and speaking of things I
want to hear it's time to go back to that Mystery Sound let's hear it one more time foreign new thoughts after hearing it again um not really yeah it's it's it's a tricky one for sure well here is the answer so that was the sound of a toy T-Rex dinosaur stomping on the floor oh yes does that make sense I would have never gotten that well the woman you just heard is Vanessa Woods she's often surrounded by dogs at Duke University where she helps run the Duke puppy kindergarten we're actually attr
acted to new things or scared of new things if they're Brave or a little bit shy and understanding what the personality of a puppy is really helps us understand also how they think and what kind of problems they'll be able to solve dogs are becoming this amazing research model for us because they have such a special relationship with humans so it's very very rare to have an animal that you know we can read like if a dog is like happy you can tell if they're happy if they're sad you can tell that
and not only that but dogs really also seem to understand us in a really special way they you know understand our gestures and our body language in a way that almost no other animals do and not only that but in some cases they can also read our minds mind reading dogs what they you know there's like a baby in front of hide a toy from them I guess hidden even though the baby can't talk yet or really understand language or um you know is this basically Brand New by the time they're about nine mon
ths I'm on my gestures because and you know it might seem really simple but actually they know that I know that they don't know where the toy is and that I'm trying to help them so that's what we call theory of mind or you know one variation of mind reading and and it looks like dogs also do the same thing in a really sophisticated and flexible way that we don't really see in any other animal Vanessa puts this T-Rex stomping puppy research to use by helping service dog organizations Better train
and choose dogs that will go on to help other people [Music] hey Molly and Evelyn sorry to intrude look I know you're in the middle of a taving but we were just finishing up our dog advisory council meeting and we're doing a quick tour and the castle just really wanted to see the studio all right I mean I'm sorry they really wanted to smell the studio sure sure come on in we're almost done dogs have a sense of themselves but it probably has more to do with smell than anything else we think Dog
stream in a pretty similar way to humans dogs don't bark differently depending on where they're from but they can learn to respond to whatever language their humans are speaking in you can even teach a dog to read your mind the council is very impressed with the canine representation here they pass along their kudos oh thank you little to Snug machines uh they prefer to be known as daring Brave squirrel Hunters uh but they appreciate the sentiment all right I'm gonna walk them out oh no no I've
been having to like walk out like it's time for you guys to leave I'm not I'm not taking for a walk I don't I don't have time like I got appointments there's other Council meetings and um that's it for this episode of brains on brains on is produced by Mark Sanchez sandin Titan and Molly Bloom we had production help from NED Lee Brick Striker and Otis gray we had engineering help from Matt Porter Johnny Vince Evans and John Miller many thanks to John and Barb eversole Margaret Gruen Ellen Furlon
g Angie Johnston Vicki crackler Nancy Yang Abdi warsami Jacob Maldonado Medina Elizabeth Shockton Ralphie mcinerney pormart Lisa Gunter Chrissy peace and jinju you brains on is a non-profit public radio production and donations from listeners help us keep making new episodes you can't support the show and see our cool thank you gifts at braindon.org donate and did you know you can listen to more than 100 episodes of brains on by visiting brainzon.org it's true we've covered everything from space
to cats to molecules to farts now before we go it's time for a moment of um why why we're driving in the car at night [Music] probably everybody who's ever been in a car when the moon is out has seen this and wondered why it doesn't move along with them hi I'm Jane Houston Jones from NASA's jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena California now let's all Pretend We're in a car right now and you're looking out the window and what happens you see a house maybe it's your friend's house then you driv
e a little bit further and you pass your house maybe a little bit further you pass the school and all those objects are moving past your view because they're really close to us yeah the moon on the other hand is really far away it averages about 238 000 miles away from the earth so that's really really far and so as we're driving we're not getting that much closer or farther away from the Moon than we are so it just always looks the same [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you thank you
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