Word: dogged
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...biological anthropologist Brian Hare has opened to his office. Canine sidekick Milo, very much at home in Hare’s office, stretches out on the floor. He’s there not just for companionship but as a professional muse as well. Hare recently published a study on dog cognition that was lauded in CNN and openly mocked by Susan Orlean (of Orchid Thief fame) in The New Yorker...
Hare’s research method is a dog-friendly variation of the old cup-and-ball game. “It’s kind of stupid,” laughs Hare. “I hide food from dogs, and then I tell them where it is.” Hare aims to find out to what extent dogs, wolves and chimps can follow human thought processes. In his study, Hare places two upside-down canisters in front of his test subjects, then points at the one canister that hides a doggy treat. Most dogs pick...
Despite his academic focus on chimps, Hare’s best friend has always been his dog. Growing up, his constant companion was a dog named Oreo who followed him around his Atlanta neighborhood and especially loved playing fetch. Hare remembers that when Oreo didn’t see him throw the tennis ball, he could point at the ball and Oreo, jowls stuffed with several more balls, would run in the right direction...
...during a meeting with his advisor at Emory, Hare remembers his advisor saying that chimpanzees couldn’t pass a cognition test as outlined above. “My dog can do that!” says Hare; his advisor flatly denied it, saying that dogs were a textbook example of an animal not sophisticated enough to follow human thought processes. Hare’s “cute little undergrad study” that he conducted in his garage using two pet dogs as subjects proved that he wasn’t barking up the wrong tree...
Sitting comfortably in the upper tier of the FleetCenter last week, I waited, hot dog in hand, for the start of the Celtics game. Just another mid-winter contest in the interminably drawn-out NBA season, against a visiting Houston Rockets team that does not have a particular rivalry with the Celts or Bostonians in general...