Minds of Animals

The cognitive abilities of non-human animals

by Alexandra Horowitz

What not to name a dog

James Thurber, the artist who even in blindness still drew a charismatic, familiar bloodhoundy mutt, once wrote a short story called "How to name a dog." Thurber was not a dog researcher; he was a dog illustrator. And he was an accidental one, at that. But his observations and reflections on dogs have had staying power. So I was surprised to read his recommendation for what to name a dog. Read More

Pro-hawk discrimination

When did predators become the good guys? Read More

When Your Dog Reads Your Subtle Cues

Every animal cognition researcher lives in Clever Hans's shadow. This horse was clever, but not in the way that people thought he was. Hans lived in Berlin at the turn of the twentieth century. His owner, a Mr. von Osten, had trained him to do arithmetic (or so his owner believed). Given a multiplication or division problem, Hans tapped out the answer with his hoof. Read More

Introducing a newborn to a dog -- or a dog to a newborn

Nine weeks ago I left the house one day and returned the next with our newborn son. From our young dog's point of view, this was a very surprising occurrence. Though I had been pregnant for forty-one weeks, our pup had seemed unaffected by the gradual change in my body and behavior -- and the presumably immediate change in my odor. Read More

Why do we treat dogs so much better than we treat wolves?

Coddle the dog, kill the wolf? Read More

When science meets media

All of us working in the behavioral sciences face a similar paradox when our research gets featured in the traditional media (i.e., not an abstruse journal read by forty of our colleagues): while it is surprising and delightful to have attention paid to our work, we may feel some apprehension too, since misunderstandings about the work fly fast and furious. Read More