Dogs and humans share certain similarities. Both species started as predators, who routinely hunted animals larger and more dangerous than themselves. In fact dogs and humans are the only land mammals who have this characteristic. (Some members of the dolphin family do too.)
However, there are many ways in which dogs and humans differ. Cognitively speaking, there are three abilities that set human beings apart from most other animals -- three higher-order mental abilities we have that evolution hasn't yet given dogs (abilities that dogs have no need for).
1) A sense of self-and-other (or Theory of Mind).
2) A sense of linear, chronological time (or mental time travel).
3) The ability to think symbolically (through words and language).
One of my main themes here is that, for most species (excluding cetaceans and some primates), animal consciousness should be described economically, through the laws of physics, not through higher-order intellectual thought processes. (This is why I think Freud -- whose psychology was based on the conservation of energy -- is more relevant to dog training than Pavlov and Skinner.)
In my last article, I proposed that while dogs are one of the most expressive animals on the planet, capable of a wide range of communicative skills, and able to read one another's body language immediately, in real time, they can't form the conscious intent to report information to others; they can only express their feelings unconsciously.
Some readers have reacted badly to this idea, which is understandable since we love our dogs; they get under our skin (and inside our brains), and read us like no other animal can. It seems to me that the dog's social and emotional flexibility (inherited from the prey drive of the wolf) amplifies our narcissistic human tendency to project human-like thinking onto everything in the natural world, from the "man in the moon" down to the survival "strategies" supposedly devised by viruses and bacteria.
The reason I think it's important to form a clear, un-anthropomorphic view of canine behavior is that far too many people, who believe their dogs can think, end up misunderstanding and mistreating their animals. If we can educate people that, yes, dogs are feeling beings, but that they don't do things "deliberately," or with malicious intent, then fewer dogs will be hurt of mistreated or misunderstood. That's my hope, anyway.
Turid Rugaas, is a Norwegian dog trainer and writer who seems to share that goal. She studied the body language of dogs for more than a decade, and carefully recorded their behavior on video and in photographs. In the end, she created a wonderful library of what she calls "calming signals." Rugaas says that the primary reason dogs use their body language is to calm others, and that they use this system "because it's the language they know and think everyone understands."
This strongly suggests that dogs possess a Theory of Mind.Yet if we look at these calming signals more economically, we might see that what she's actually describing are the ways that dogs attempt to reduce the unpleasant physical and emotional vibrations they feel within themselves.
Don't get me wrong. What Turid Rugaas has done is very important, and very helpful. I think every dog owner, and particularly every dog trainer, should study her work. She's provided us with a marvelous amount of intel about dogs. But I also think we should interpret her results with a more parsimonious mindset, i.e., via Ockham's razor and Morgan's canon.
Brenda Aloff, following Rugaas' work, has written an exceptional book called Canine Body Language, which I also highly recommend. The only problem is that Aloff divides body language into two types: "deliberate communication" (which would require conscious intent), and "non-deliberate signals reflecting an inner state" (which would only require the ability to express one's emotions).
It's possible that Rugaas and Aloff were influenced by evolutionary biologist Roger Abrantes' book, Dog Language. In it, Abrantes says that wolves need to sublimate their aggression in order to hunt cooperatively. "This does not mean aggression disappears," Abrantes writes. "Rather it assumes other forms through ritualized behavior: greeting ceremonies, pacifying behavior, and rank ordering." Note the term "pacifying behavior.," implying that one wolf is intentionally trying to pacify the other.
Is that true?
If it is, it would require a fully-developed Theory of Mind.
Let's say that two dogs meet and there's tension between them. (Why else would one or the other need to be calmed or pacified?) Depending on the level of tension, this would probably create at least a small burst of adrenaline in each dog's system. That would also create changes in the their blood chemistry, which would in turn create subtle changes in each dog's overall scent. Those changes would activate receptors in olfactory cells, cells that have the capacity to distinguish between the odor proteins of a relaxed, sociable dog and those of a tense, fearful/aggressive dog. This information would theoretically go to the DNA in their receptor cells and activate a sequence of regulatory DNA, which would turn on a part of the gene that says, "Danger, danger, Will Robison! Keep your distance!"
So in this scenario, "pacifying behaviors" would be nothing more than a "down-and-dirty" (i.e., cognitively simple) reaction to an olfactory stimulus.
There are other explanations, which I'll go into in future articles, though I've already laid some of the groundwork, primarily in my articles on the canine emotional GPS system "How Lost Dogs Find Home" and "How Dogs Find and Retrieve Our Unconscious Desires," as well as my article on the strange behaviors of The Druid Peak Pack in Yellowstone.
For now though, if we apply this formula (or some variation on it), where so-called "pacifying behaviors" can be distilled down to a simple energy exchange, based on the way certain odor proteins vibrate differently than others, I think we're on more solid ground than we'd be by believing that dogs send each other calming signals "because it's the language they think everyone understands," or that dogs use their body language with the deliberate (i.e., consciously-arrived-at) intent to communicate.
Of course we can't know with any real precision how dogs process their experiences. The most we can do is apply what we know about our own feeling states. For example, I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that when we're angry or in pain or under a great deal of stress, we can actually feel a very real, and very unpleasant, physical vibration taking place within our own bodies, one that is quite different from the kinds of vibrations we feel when we're relaxed and at ease.
If you've listened to the Mel Gibson tapes, you know that Gibson's voice has a specific set of vibrations of pain, hate, and rage (among other things), while the voice of his former girlfriend is very cool, almost lacking in affect. If we just tune in to their tones of voice, ignoring the words they're using to manipulate and inflict pain on one another, we can feel that each voice has a specific emotional vibration that creates a very unpleasant feeling of physical and emotional resonance inside of us.
