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What Does Your Dog Really Want?

What Does Your Dog Really Want?

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In early 2017, Alaska became the first state to pass a law that made it essential to consider pets’ well-being when people are fighting over custody. It may seem like a long-overdue change since pets, especially canines, are often considered part of the family. When we think about what’s best for an animal, we have to think about how we can figure out its needs. In 2013, Shannon Travis and Trisha Murray went to the New York State Supreme Court to fight for their rights. Murray moved out of their apartment in New York City while Travis was away on a business trip. She took some furniture and their dog, Joey.

Travis thought Joey was her property because she bought him from a pet store. Murray disagreed. She said that Joey belonged to her because, among other things, it was in the dog’s best interest to be with her. Joey slept on her side of the bed. With very little precedent to go on, the court had to decide if it made sense to have a custody hearing for a dog or not.

Joey was able to have a hearing.

It’s one thing to figure out how to split up property. But another thing entirely to think about is a dog’s needs. If a canine is a property, as the law said at the time, then it can’t have its interests. A chair wouldn’t care about which room it was in. As a dog, you would need to know what it is like.

Thomas Nagel, a philosopher, stated forty years ago that this was impossible because animals are too different from us. (He specifically referred to a bat, but the situation is the same.) His true goal, though, was neurology. He contended that understanding how an animal’s brain operated would not bring us closer to understanding what it was like to be that species. His essay cast a lasting shadow over the field of neuroscience. 

What did Nagel Write in His Essay?

The tools of modern neuroscience did not exist when Nagel published his essay. Indeed, the only way we could learn about people’s mental states was to observe their behavior or, in the case of humans, to ask them what they were thinking or feeling. Both are plainly imprecise indicators of mental states. Because of the importance of human language, many researchers abandoned the prospect of knowing animal feelings and instead focused on observable behavior. Because a canine cannot tell himself, “I’m terrified,” some scientists have redefined fear, the most studied animal emotion, as a behavioral program that an animal uses to avoid something painful. However, this was a step back toward a Cartesian view of animals as automatons. This perspective eliminated any prospect of discerning what was in a dog’s best interests, as required by Alaskan law.

But our understanding of the brain has greatly changed since Nagel wrote about it. The use of tools like optogenetics, which lets researchers control neurons with light, and noninvasive technologies like MRI, which I prefer, has helped connect the dots between how the brain looks and how it works. It doesn’t make sense not to use the same techniques to figure out what animals think.

This is How It Worked 

In 2012, my coworkers and I started a project to make it easier for dogs to enter an MRI scanner. This way, we could better understand how their brains worked. In the beginning, there were just two dogs, but now there are 90 “MRI-dogs” who have taken part in a dozen different experiments.

It turns out that after hundreds of scans, I have to disagree with both of them. We can also use this technology to figure out what a dog wants, sometimes better than we can by just watching them.

People who research dogs often want to know if their apparent love for their humans is based solely on the fact that their humans provide food or if the dogs value their relationship with their humans for other reasons. When the dogs were in the MRI, we gave them two objects they could see as visual clues about what was happening. First, their human would show up and say something like, “Good job, girl!” when they saw one thing. Then in the next visual clue, they would get a piece of food on a stick.

What Did The Study Reveal?

Our study looked at a part of the brain called the caudate nucleus, which helps us remember things. In humans, the caudate is very active when people are looking forward to something good. Animals can get what they want with the help of the caudate, which connects their motivational states to their bodies. In many studies, people’s caudate activity has been linked to their preferences. 

We did the same thing with dogs. We used their candidates to determine how much they preferred food or praise. This is what we found out about the 15 dogs who took part. Two of the dogs were really into food, but four were more into getting attention and praise from people. Many dogs liked both. At least their brains did.

Set Up a “V”-Maze in a Big Room With The Dog Owner

We also assessed the dogs’ preferences by providing them with a choice outside the scanner. We put up a “V”-the maze in a huge room, with the owner at one end of one arm and a food bowl at the other. Also, we studied the dogs’ selections chronology after they ran the maze 20 times. For praise, dogs with more active brains tended to return to their owners more frequently, but food-loving dogs’ brains stayed with the chow. The canines with brains that liked food and praise were the most intriguing. These dogs tended to switch back and forth between food and owner in the maze.

This is the issue with relying simply on behavior to determine a dog’s desires. They, like people, may have competing preferences. Also, they may choose the largest option, constantly go left or right, or choose the first option even if the other alternative is superior. When compelled to pick between two options, they may resort to techniques that have little to do with their genuine preferences. The MRI data provided insight into the dogs’ thinking without requiring them to decide.

They could see into their minds without having to make a choice.

Whom Does the Dog Choose?

Judges who decide who gets to have a pet should resist the temptation to let the dog choose. It’s not hard to imagine a dog choosing an abusive owner out of fear or going to a person dressed in brighter clothes. In Travis v. Murray, the court knew that canine-MRI could be useful, but it didn’t think it was possible. It turns out that after we’ve trained almost a hundred dogs, it’s not so hard for many dogs to go into an MRI scanner. The window into their brains tells us things that their behavior doesn’t.

If this had been Joey’s brain, it had been his two owners instead of food and praise. Moreover, his brain might have wanted to be in charge. His humans took care of it before his hearing date in court. He didn’t get to go to court.

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