EXTREME PERCEPTION AND ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE

EXTREME PERCEPTION AND ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE Many animals also pick proscribed extreme perception. Forensic frumps be three times as pricey 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 dog can smell things a person cant doesnt make him a genius it just makes him a dog. Humans can see things dogs cant, scarce that doesnt make us smarter. precisely when you look at the jobs some dogs take over invented for themselves employ their advanced perceptual abilities, youre moving into the realm of true cognition, which is resoluteness a problem under novel conditions.The transport spruce dogs be an example of an animal using advanced perceptual abilities to solve a problem no dog was born knowing how to solve. Seizure fantastic dogs are dogs who, their owners say, can point a rapture before it starts. Theres close up controversy over whether you can train dog to predict seizures, a nd so far people havent had a lot of luck trying. But there are a issuance of dogs who have figured it out on their own. These dogs were skilled as seizure-response dogs, meaning they can help a person in one case a seizure has begun.The dog might be trained to deceitfulness on top of the person so he doesnt hurt himself, or bring the person his medicine or the telephone. Those are all stock(a) helpful 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 ahead of time. No one knows how they do this,because the signs are invisible to people. No tender-hearted organism can look at someone whos nearly to have a seizure and see (or hear, smell, or feel) whats coming. Yet one study set that 10 percent of owners said their seizure response dogs had turned into seizure sprightly dogs.The New York Times published a terrific obligate about a woman named Connie Standley, in Florida, who has two huge Bouvier diethylstilbesterol Flandres dogs who predict her seizures about thirty minutes ahead of time. When they sense Ms. Standley is head into a seizure theyll do things like pull on her clothes, speak at her, or drag on her hand to get her to somewhere 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, just 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 Clever 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 seven 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 calendar month comes on Tuesday, what is the date for the following Friday? .He could answer mathe matical questions posed to him by contend strangers, too. Eventually a psychologist named Oskar Pfungst managed to show that Hans wasnt really counting. Instead, Hans was observing sub tle, unconscious mind cues the humans had no idea they were giving of Hed start tapping his foot when he could see it was time to start tapping then 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 lay 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 naked view and already knew the answer. If either condition was missing, his p erformance fell apart. Psychologists lots use the Clever 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 different species as well as Hans was reading human beings really a sign that he was just a softened animal whod been classically conditioned to stamp his hoof? I gestate 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 ha snt been hugely successful, but some dogs do it. I think those dogs are showing supreme 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 high 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 churl that up to unique aspects of canine hearing, smell, or vision, like the fact that a dog can hear a dog whistle firearm 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.