EXTREME PERCEPTION AND ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE

EXTREME PERCEPTION AND ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE Many animals also have extreme perception. Forensic tails are three times as darling as any X-ray machine at sniffing out contraband, drugs, or explosives, and their overall success rate on tests is 90 percent. The fact that a cover can smell things a person cant doesnt make him a genius it just makes him a dog. Humans can see things dogs cant, but that doesnt make us smarter. only when you look at the jobs some dogs have invented for themselves using their advanced perceptual abilities, youre moving into the realm of true cognition, which is solving a problem under novel conditions.The seizure howling(a) dogs are an example of an animal using advanced perceptual abilities to solve a problem no dog was natural knowing how to solve. Seizure alert dogs are dogs who, their owners say, can predict a seizure before it starts. Theres still controversy over whether you can train dog to predict seizures, and so outlying(prenominal) people ha vent had a lot of luck trying. But there are a number of dogs who have figure it out on their own. These dogs were trained as seizure-response dogs, meaning they can help a person once a seizure has begun.The dog might be trained to reside on top of the person so he doesnt hurt himself, or bring the person his medicine or the telephone. Those are all standard laboursaving behaviors any dog can be trained to perform. But some of these dogs have gone from responding to seizures to perceiving signs of a seizure in the lead of time. No one knows how they do this,because the signs are invisible to people. No human being can look at someone whos about to have a seizure and see (or hear, smell, or line up) whats coming. Yet one study found that 10 percent of owners said their seizure response dogs had rancid into seizure alert dogs.The New York Times publish a terrific article about a woman named Connie Standley, in Florida, who has two huge Bouvier des Flandres dogs who predict her seizures about thirty minutes ahead of time. When they sense Ms. Standley is heading into a seizure theyll do things like pull on her clothes, bark at her, or drag on her hand to tick her to someplace safe so she wont get hurt whenthe seizure begins. Ms. Standley says they predict about 80 percent of her seizures Ms. StandleyS dogs apparently were trained as seizure alert dogs before they came to her, but there arent many dogs in that category.Most of the seizure alert dogs were trained to respond to seizures, not predict seizures. The seizure alert dogs remind me of apt(p) Hans. Hans was the world-famous German horse in the early 1900s whose owner, Wilhelm von Osten, thought he could count. Herr von Osten could ask the horse questions like, Whats s nonetheless and five? and Hans would tap out the number 12 with his hoof. Hans could even tap out answers to questions like, If the eighth day of the month comes on Tuesday, what is the date for the following Friday? .He could answe r mathe matical questions posed to him by complete strangers, too. Eventually a psychologist named Oskar Pfungst managed to steer that Hans wasnt really counting. Instead, Hans was observing sub tle, unconscious cues the world had no idea they were giving of Hed start tapping his foot when he could see it was time to start tapping wherefore hed stop tapping his foot when he saw it was time to stop tapping. His questioners were making tiny, move ments only Hans could see. The movements were so tiny the humans making themcouldnt even feel them. Dr.Pfungst couldnt see the movements, either, and he was look ing for them. He finally solved the case by putting Hanss questioners out of view and having them ask Hans questions they didnt know the answers to themselves. It turned out Hans could answer questions only when the person asking the question was in plain view and already knew the answer. If either condition was missing, his performance fell apart. Psychologists a lot use the Cle ver Hans story to show that humans who believe animals are intelligent are deluding themselves. But thats not the obvious conclusion as far as Im concerned.No one has ever been able to train a horse to do what Hans did. Hans trained himself. Is the ability to read a member of a dissimilar species as well as Hans was reading human beings really a sign that he was just a dumb animal whod been classically in condition(p) to stamp his hoof? I think theresmore to it than that. What makes Hans similar to the seizure alert dogs is that both Hans and the dogs acquired their skills without human help. As I mentioned, to my knowledge, so far no ones figured out how to take a raw dog and teach it how to predict seizures.About the best a trainer can do is reward the dogs for helping when a person is having a seizure and then leave it up to the dog to star identifYing signs that predict the onset of a seizure on his own. That approach hasnt been hugely successful, but some dogs do it. I think those dogs are showing superior intelligence the same way a human who can do something few other people can do shows superior intelligence. What makes the actions of the seizure alert dogs, and probably of Hans, too, a sign of amply intelligenceor high talent-is the fact that they didnt have to do what they did.Its one thing for a dog to start recognizing the signs that a seizure coming you might chalk that up to unusual aspects of canine hearing, smell, or vision, like the fact that a dog can hear a dog whistle while a human cant. But its another thing for a dog to start to recognize the signs of an impending seizure and then decide to do something about it. Thats what intelligence is in humans intelligence is people using their built-in perceptual and cognitive skills to achieve useful and sometimes remarkable goals.