Dogs really are as bright as your two-year-old – and just as manipulative

August 11, 5:27 PMWildlife Conservation ExaminerCathy Taibbi

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Terrier mix. Photo: Chris Barber. Pharaoh Hound Talk

Animals are smarter than we think.

“A dog will never lie to you,” is an oft-repeated refrain sung by most dog owners.

“I prefer animals to most people," is another. "I can trust them to be honest.”

Honest? Really?

Have you ever had this happen? You let your dog sleep on the couch. Then one day, when you’re in his favorite spot, Rufus suddenly runs to the front door and starts barking. Finally you get up to go see that’s he’s barking at.

Nothing there? Coast clear?

You turn around to get comfortable again and who’s in your spot?

Rufus.

Think you’ve been scammed?

According to a recent study, you have!

It turns out that animals are much more like us than we want to admit, which doesn’t make animals bad, it just makes them . . . well . . .‘human’.

According to a recent news release dated August 8, 2009, by Stanley Coren of The University of British Columbia and The American Psychological Association, dogs can count and do simple math; they can operate mechanisms; they can understand hundreds of words just from living with and watching us. . . And they can lie to get what they want.

Deception is a behavior that a surprising number of animals engage in. From tiny harmless flatworms that have evolved to mimic the warning colors of deadly coral snakes, to sick antelope that pretend to be healthy by frolicking around in front of a stalking lion, lying, it turns out, is crucial to survival.

There are different levels of deception, however, starting with physical, unconscious mimicry (such as the flatworm mentioned above). The animal simply looks like another.

This is an adaptive survival trait that evolved physically over time.

Next is camouflage. Again, this is a physical change over time with probably no conscious awareness or intent. The result is the animal blends in to the background and can’t easily be spotted by a predator.

There is also biological deception (for example, the eye-spots on butterfly wings, employed to startle predators.) Sometimes paired with behaviors that display these ‘deceptive’ markings or traits, they are still probably purely physical and instinctive.

Some animals take mimicry a step further, such as the mild-mannered hognose snake which puts on a real show by acting like a dangerous rattlesnake – but then will roll over and ‘play dead’ if you press the issue!

But with higher intellect comes apparently deliberate, CONSCIOUS deception.

According to the Davidson College website:

“Animals have many methods of misinformation. While camouflage is an example of unknowingly misinforming, the intentional misinformation or knowingly misinforming is considered an act of deceit. Deceptive behavior in animals is a complex and sophisticated subject. The difficulty lies in attempting to determine intention in an animal, and because we cannot see into their brains to find out what the animal intends (if it intends at all) it is difficult to determine was is intentional deceit and what is simply instinctual behavior. This also asks the question of which deceptive behaviors are learned and which are inherently genetic. Whatever the case, deceit is usually used for the purpose of gaining an advantage in competition (Spence 2004).

“Deception was defined by Vrij in 2001 as “a successful or unsuccessful deliberate attempt, without forewarning, to create in another a belief which the communicator considers to be untrue” (Vrij 2001). Another good definition of deception was proposed by de Waal in 1992: "Deception can be defined as the projection, to one's own advantage, of an inaccurate or false image of knowledge, intentions, or motivations" (de Waal 1992). Lastly, Byrne defines deception functionally as "acts from the normal repertoire of the agent, deployed such that another individual is likely to misinterpret what the acts signify, to the advantage of the agent" (Byrne 1997).

“Because deception is such a complex behavior attributed to highly intelligent animals, there are many factors involved that are necessary to examine in the discussion of this subject. Deception involves not only the manipulation of objects, but of individuals, requiring significant cognitive abilities.

A good example is the Vervet monkey. It appears Vervets (which use alarm calls to warn their neighbors of predators), can choose to raise the alarm and alert the troop to the presence of a predator . . . or withhold the alarm call if it would be an advantage to an individual.

In plain English, Monkey A may spot a lion stalking rival Monkey B. Monkey A realizes this is a perfect chance to get rid of the competition and keeps his information to himself.*

Sounds a lot like corporate America, doesn’t it?

Elephants, Cetaceans (whales and dolphins), primates, parrots, rooks and crows, rats . . . and our own beloved dogs, all fall into the category of cunning con artists.

According to Dr. Coren, “During play, dogs are capable of deliberately trying to deceive other dogs and people in order to get rewards . . . And they are nearly as successful in deceiving humans as humans are in deceiving dogs."

He’s concluded, in a recent study, that dogs' mental abilities are close to a human child 2 to 2 ½ years of age.

When this study on dogs was being conducted, researchers considered three different types of intelligence. The first is instinctive intelligence; the stuff the animal is born with. In addition to basic survival and social skills, most dog breeds have been developed to have certain basic behavioral tendencies, such as the urge to herd livestock.

The second is adaptive intelligence; this is the ability to learn and modify behaviors to meet new challenges. This helps the animal figure out a changing world, evaluate situations and learn.

The third is the kind that breeders of working dog breeds like Border Collies and German shepherds, value the most: working ability, including obedience and trainability.

Great intelligence doesn’t necessarily equal an animal that’s easier to train – or to live with. It seems the more tuned-in to us and the more intelligent species, the more apt they are to get bored, act out, and find ways to manipulate us.

Why would a dog resort to tricking or controlling us?

Dogs will manipulate us into behaving in a manner that brings them the greatest reward, or causes them the least stress, according to Steven R. Lindsay, author of The Handbook of Applied Dog Behavior and Training. Since a dog depends on its owner for everything, it is essentially trapped in the relationship with its humans.

“The dog’s dependency on human prerogative and fickleness for obtaining its survival needs places significant pressure on it to learn how to anticipate and control human contingencies of reward and punishment,” he writes. As a result, dogs have learned to read us, learn from us, and manipulate us.

That may be true, but we know intuitively there’s more to it than that.

Dogs and other animals also ‘lie’ when they play, either alone or while chasing each other without intent to harm, or when engaging in a game like keep-away.

It causes one to wonder about the powers of imagination in animals when they toss a stuffed toy (obviously not a prey animal) about with such enthusiasm, growling and shaking it as if for the kill. Or when a parakeet warbles and coos to a brass bell, feeding it as if it were a mate. Surely the parakeet realizes the bell is not alive. He must be imagining, pretending, the way a child does with a doll.

Pretending is one thing, but why is lying so common and what does it take to be able to deceive?

In the book Lying and Deception in Everyday Life, edited by Michael Lewis and Carolyn Saarni, the authors explore what it actually takes to be able to engage in calculated deceptive behavior. In the chapter The Human Face of Nonhuman Duplicity, they outline some of the requirements for deceptive behavior (paraphrased here: author); self awareness, understanding of cause-and-effect, awareness of the impact of one’s own actions, and the abilities imagine and to extrapolate.

Of all the great apes, orangutans are arguably the best tool users and most clever of thinkers. The authors tell the following story:

“For example, during my first meeting with the sign-using orangutan Chantek, he distracted me to get raisins and nuts he had seen me put into my pocket. While touching me from the opposite side of a fence, he looked at me and then slowly turned his head to the left; as I turned to see what he was looking at, he put his hand in my pocket to obtain the food.”

This reminds me of old comedy routines, or of magic acts that use a technique called misdirection. As amusing as the story is, it’s also a sign of pretty highly functioning cognitive abilities. While it might be dangerous to assume that such a ploy by a nonhuman is entirely preconceived and plotted (as opposed to a result of prior trial and error learning), the result is nonetheless impressive.

What about Rufus? When you stop to think about it, even hiding a toy shows a great deal of sophisticated awareness. Yet we also now know that he can count up to 4 or 5, understand an amazing 200 +- words and signals, operate mechanisms and solve complex problems once thought to be within the grasp only of great apes.

It seems many animals are born with the capacity to bend or twist the truth and control those around them to the best of their abilities. They may be fooling others or even perhaps themselves, but there must be a reason.

Undoubtedly, as much like us as they are, we'll find their reasons for lying are the same as our own.

Stanley Coren, PhD, spoke Saturday August 8 on the topic "How Dogs Think" at the American Psychological Association's 117th Annual Convention.

*This case study was adopted from an experiment performed by Cheney and Seyfarth. Full citation: Cheney, D. and R. Seyfarth. 1985. Vervet Monkey Alarm Calls: Manipulation through Shared Information? Behaviour (94) 1: 150-166.
 

The American Psychological Association, in Washington, D.C., is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States and is the world's largest association of psychologists. APA's membership includes more than 150,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 54 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance psychology as a science, as a profession and as a means of promoting health, education and human welfare.

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Copyright 2009 Cathy Taibbi