Word: hares
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
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...
...lest anyone conclude that wolves are unusually stupid, Hare notes that chimpanzees, which perform well in many other cognition experiments, also flunk the food-canister test. Hare’s conclusion? Dogs’ unique ability to read human social cues is a product of domestication...
...Although Hare has always loved dogs, it didn’t initially occur to him to study them scientifically. Hare’s “first love,” as he puts it, was chimpanzees. In high school, he volunteered at a zoo in Atlanta. “I was such a dork!” he says of his passion for studying chimp behavior. Hare’s undergraduate studies at Emory University, home of a noted primate center, cemented his interest in chimp cognition and behavior...
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...