Dog Genius

This is a documentary based on different behaviors of dogs. The interesting part of it is that it relates that conducts with the human influence on dogs. All these behaviors are shown as a way of intelligence, which is similar to human thinking, and that seems to be the result of a coevolution of both.

The video shows many examples of dogs in different situations and the way they act, as the case of Mabel, who "predict" the moment when her owner was getting home ( my dog does the same, but not from that far). Ambula was another dog, used to demostrate the capacity to "understand" body signs, for example, the owner pointed an object and he goes straightly to it, she even follows the movement of the owner`s eyes to get an object. This was also studied in monkeys and they can not do this.

On the other hand we have dogs with incredible habilities, which are not really common, as Rico, which is a famous dog, who can recognize 200 different objects by hearing its names, but he can recognize new objects by exclusion too. This case was not a surprise to me, because it was presented in the last Behavior`s class (and it was this morning), we saw a few examples that were also presented in this documentary (as those named on the previous paragraph).

To conclude I have to mention my favourite one, Donnie. This was an artist dog, who was rescued from the street and lived in a dog`s shelter until a woman take her to live on her home. After a few months of adaptation to his new environment, she started to present an uncommon behavior: she ordered her toys by colours or types (by species: frogs with frogs and monkeys with monkeys)in geometrical forms. Her most amazing achievement was when she put two monkey toys as if they were hugging each other and this happened just a day after her owner did the same with her. For some people this was a way to show her feelings, but some others just think that she was playing.

In my opinion there is too much to study yet to define if dogs can show intelligence at the level of human beings, but I`m sure that they can expressed emotion states.