11–13 of 13 posts
Are they sure only dogs can follow a pointed finger? What about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans ? The horse was following even more subtle clues than a pointed finger. Of course a horse is also a domestic animal.
Fun article, but it's a pity they don't specify exactly what "lots of training" means: "Tomasello and his team wondered if such a rare ability extended to hand gestures and tested chimps to see if they could understand pointing. To their surprise, the chimps did badly, able to learn the meaning of a pointed finger only after lots of training." Because my own child also understood what a pointing finger meant only aft…
So chimps can't follow finger if it's beneficial for them? Or dolphins or crows?
My friend was afraid that someone might want to hurt her dog by feeding him something nasty, and since there is much more right handed people she taught her dog to avoid treats given with right hand. Dog gladly accepted treats given with left hand.
At first I was amazed that dog can discern between left and right side of human or the world. That's not something that comes easily even for humans.
After the dog refused to take treat lying on the inside of my left hand I turned the hand by 180 deg along wrist-elbow axis and placed treat on top of my hand. Dog accepted the treat without much hesitation. Dog did not understand the concepts of left and right, just relied on placement of the thumb on the human hand he saw.
That's how I circumvented her little security measure and hacked into her dog. ;-)