Get Free Ebook The Genius of Dogs: How Dogs Are Smarter Than You Think, by Brian Hare Vanessa Woods
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The Genius of Dogs: How Dogs Are Smarter Than You Think, by Brian Hare Vanessa Woods
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Review
“Many authors have tried to anecdotally capture the emotional bond between humans and dogs. Here at last is a book that digs deep into cognitive science to unravel the mysteries of the canine brain. Thoroughly researched and written in the likable voice of a brainy scientist sitting at your kitchen table, The Genius of Dogs is a fascinating look at what goes on between the ears of the animals we share our lives with. I found it entertaining, fast-moving, and filled with gee-whiz insights that gave me a new appreciation for the complex social intelligence of man’s best friend.”—John Grogan, author of Marley & Me and The Longest Trip Home“The Genius of Dogs is a fantastic book. It makes it very clear that there are different kinds of intelligence. All dog lovers should read this book.”—Temple Grandin, author of Animals Make Us Human and Animals in Translation“The definitive dog book of our time by the researcher who started a revolution.”—Daniel J. Levitin, author of This is Your Brain on Music and The World in Six Songs“A masterful account of the way science is revealing just how smart dogs can be. Fascinating and highly readable.”—John Bradshaw, University of Bristol, author of Dog Sense“With the help of some wolves, Russian foxes, New Guinea singing dogs and a Labrador Retriever named Oreo, Brian Hare tells us about his fascinating search for an understanding of how dogs think and communicate.”—Stanley Coren, author of Do Dogs Dream and Born to Bark“Based on Brian Hare’s game-changing research, The Genius of Dogs brilliantly explains the canine mind and in doing so illuminates the natural history of all intelligence. This book will captivate anyone interested in dog, ape or human mentality.”—Richard Wrangham, Harvard University, author of Catching Fire“This is the best book in existence, by far, for learning about the recent revolution in our understanding of the minds of dogs. And its fun, too.”—Mike Tomasello, Co-Director, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology“The Genius of Dogs is not just about dogs, and not just about genius. It’s an exciting detective story by two comparative biologists with amazing discoveries to report.”—Bernd Heinrich, author of Mind of the Raven“A fascinating, riveting, utterly engaging romp through the mind of man's best friend. I promise: You will never look at your dog the same way again.”—Maria Goodavage, author of Soldier Dogs
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About the Author
Brian Hare is an associate professor in the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University, where he founded the Duke Canine Cognition Center. Vanessa Woods is a research scientist at the Center as well as an award-winning journalist and the author of Bonobo Handshake. Hare and Woods are married and live in North Carolina.
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Product details
Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Plume; 1 edition (October 29, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0142180467
ISBN-13: 978-0142180464
Product Dimensions:
5.3 x 0.8 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.4 out of 5 stars
362 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#48,689 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
In addition to illuminating a fascinating area of scientific research - the co-evolution of dogs and humans - this book adds important understanding to dog training. All dog trainers should read it.Brian Hare explains the major shortcomings of both of the two leading models of dog training: "leader-of-the-pack" (dominance training), and "operant conditioning" (mislabeled as clicker training). He points out that dominance training is based on scientifically inaccurate assumptions about how dogs relate to humans; while operant conditioning intentionally ignores dog's unique cognitive processes (ways of thinking).Dogs evolved from wolves by refocusing their social skills and affection towards humans, Hare explains. For example, they can learn hundreds of human words using many of the same mental processes that a human infant does. And can learn by copying humans and inferring communication signals from human gestures such as pointing. Operant conditioning does not accommodate these capacities, so it misses a major opportunity to train from dog's strengths.A major take-home training lesson for me from this book was Hare's point that, as social animals, dogs are not very good at trial-and-error learning. They do much better when shown a technique through social interaction. This runs counter to a major tenet of operant conditioning: let the animal flounder around until, by chance, it discovers the desired behavior. This is called 'shaping' in the operant conditioning lingo, and Hare convincingly explodes this tenet. Gurus of operant conditioning advise that you wait around until your dog hits on the right behavior, then 'shape' that with a reward through stepwise trials-and-errors towards the desired behavior. It is a tedious procedure, frustrating for both dog and owner. And lacks any scientific foundation. It appears to have been co-opted from rat (BF Skinner) and dolphin (Karen Pryor) training, where it is not practical to actually show the animal the desired behavior, so trial-and-error is the only option. Trial-and-error may be fine and the only alternative for rats and dolphins, but why design a dog training program around one of dog's weaknesses? Much better to train to their strengths - their ability to learn from others, especially their humans. Social learning: dogs are brilliant at it, Hare explains, with solid science behind him.And what about dog's inherent cognitive weaknesses? Rather than pound your head against a wall and drive yourself and your dog into chronic anxiety, Hare asks that we recognize that such weaknesses actually do exist and are inherent, and when training doesn't work it actually may not be your fault, contrary to what many operant trainers insist. Thank you Brian Hare from freeing us from the guilt-tripping that has unfortunately become inscribed into operant conditioning as evangelized by leading dog trainers.The book is well worth the purchase price just for this single, valuable insight. Train to your dog's strengths, find other ways to manage their untrainable weaknesses. Hare gives the example of incessant barking - training may not solve hormonally-based behaviors like this. Better look to medical alternatives such as castration. Similarly for many dog 'problems', training may not be able to overcome biology. Aggression, leash-pulling, hunting... don't just assume you're a bad trainer. Instead, understand your dog's cognitive profile (Hare offers an online test for that). Will the future bring gene and hormone therapy for dogs? It could save their lives.There are also some shortcomings in the book that limited it to four rather than five stars for me:In explaining dog evolution, Hare asserts that only dogs and bears survived the expansion of humans into Europe. All other large predators were killed off. He fails to mention house cats. Maybe they weren't large enough? Seems a trivial reason to leave them out. So much could be learned. I find the absence of any discussion of domesticated cats in a book about predator domestication and the ecological evolution of the human-pet relationship, to be utterly baffling. What better species to compare dog domestication to, both for the convergent-evolution similarities, and for the contrasting differences?Hare's cognitive profiles of dogs leave out the single most important cognitive trait from a trainer's perspective: what the English call 'biddability', or Americans call 'will-to-please.' Why do some dogs inherently have a laser-like focus on their owners, while others pay only passing, occasional, unpredictable attention to their owners? Presumably, there is a genetic aspect to this. A discussion of will-to-please would have been extremely valuable.Hare downplays genetic differences between dog breeds based on the argument that their DNA is 99% identical. Thats not a convincing argument when anyone can readily observe the huge behavioral differences that exist between a Border Collie vs a Labrador vs a Beagle. Genes differ in their importance; oversimplified DNA arithmetic is not a sufficient explanation of these differences, let alone a reason to pretend they don't exist.Hare could have done a better job at explaining dog operant conditioning than by labeling it as 'clicker training.' That's like labeling the practice of fishing, as 'rod holding.' The clicker, like the fishing rod, is just a tool. He also presents dog cognitive training as an alternative to operant conditioning, whereas it appears more logically as an extension of it. Operant conditioning is still a powerful and effective training method when it is in synch with a dog's cognitive abilities. It is when we want to train something that is not a match for a particular dog's cognitive abilities, that operant conditioning runs into trouble.Hare says nothing about the formation of habits. Operant conditioning acts to build almost addictive performance in dogs. One can hypothesize that it triggers some releases of hormones in a dog's brain that motivate habitual performance of the desired behavior. In fact, this presumption is emphasized by most trainers who utilize operant conditioning. Susan Garrett calls it 'building value' for the behavior. After awhile the dog sees the behavior as a motivating reward in and of itself. I wish Brian Hare had given his take on this. Is habit-formation a strength of dogs that trainers can utilize?Bottom line: The Genius of Dogs highlights a whole new dimension to understanding dog behavior, while also being a fascinating account of how dogs evolved to become our best friends, viewed from the lens of science - a lens that is all too often missing in the dog training literature.
A superb book. Dogs have spent the last 14000 years getting better and better at reading humans, and anticipating those humans needs and providing assistance. Communication has been a one-way street with the dog doing all the work. "The Genius of Dogs" is a great first step at turning the tables. Hare and Woods have produced an excellent compilation of current dog research to which they have made a great contribution. The notes at the end cite over 600 recent and current dog intelligence and behavior studies. That is a quite valuable source of information. The Genius of the dog also brings some sanity to the popular conception of the wolf. As Hare and Woods point out, a wolf pack is a small family group which operates as a cooperative. It has little to do with dominant behavior and subordinate behavior. .This book is a great read and its assertions are well documented with science. I am a dog trainer of 50 years experience. When you say to me, "I love my dog," I say to you, "Your dog deserves no less than for you to read 'The Genius of Dogs'"
Although I grew up having dogs as pets, and always assuming my dogs were exceptionally smart, some years ago, I was amazed as my brother-in-law gave his dog an instruction on Thanksgiving day. The instruction was fairly involved, but the dog went and did it. So when I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about this book, having to do with "dognition" and the learning and personal relationships between dogs and humans, I bought it and read it. It goes beyond dog-human relationships, and includes insights into how humans also interact themselves. It is more technical a book than you might expect, and goes into quite a bit of detail, but it is an excellent book on how dogs and mankind have forged a bond that endures and grows deeper, largely through selective breeding, (not necessarily on the part of the humans) not through conditioning. It also provides insights into how dog "owners" can learn about their dogs' strengths, and how best to foster canine learning in their environment. It includes sections on conditioning/training, and the strengths and weaknesses of normal methods, and talks about how well dogs understand words that they hear. Quite fascinating, especially the parts on how dogs learn words and names of objects, and how they can use what they have learned to learn new names and group associations. I recommend this excellent book to anyone with a curiosity of how the world around them works, and how "dumb animals" aren't really dumb at all.
Having been looking for a book that would provide me with a thorough update of literature on dog cognition, I was very pleased with Brian Hare's offering. His writing, while reviewing scientific literature, is an easy and "comfortable" read. Decades ago I had taken animal behavior courses that focused on the Skinner school of operant conditioning, which essentially opined that all non-human animals had no capacity to interact with the environment around them other than through slow, trial-and-error learning or instinct. I recently became interested in learning how behavioral scientists and comparative psychologists have changed their viewpoint, particularly pertaining to dogs. I felt Hare provided a wonderful look at how dogs deal with the world around them, and what their true cognitive capability is. A very enjoyable read.
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