You're listening to Brains On, where we're serious about being curious.
Hey, Evelyn, did you have any trouble finding us?
Nope.
The Brains On headquarters looks just like you said it would.
Yeah, it's pretty distinctive.
Let's head up to the studio.
Can you press that button right there?
Welcome to Brains On headquarters.
Which floor?
Elevator.
Elevator?
Please take us to the studio.
Holding doors for additional passengers.
Of course.
You're welcome.
Aw, what a cute dog.
Is there a human coming to join this dog?
Next stop, brains on boardroom.
No, elevator.
I said the studio.
Yes.
First stop, boardroom.
Second stop, studio.
Is the dog going to the boardroom?
Here we are.
Brains on boardroom.
Hey, Molly.
Hey, Evelyn.
I don't remember adding you to the invite list for this meeting.
What's going on in here, Sandon?
Oh, this is the monthly meeting of the Brains on Dog Advisory Council.
I've been doing these for years.
I didn't know you had a Brains on Dog Advisory Council.
Neither did I. Oh, yeah.
I post about it all the time on my blog, which you guys totally read, right?
Uh.
Okay, with Archie here now joining us, the dog board is fully assembled.
Oh, what's that, Penelope?
Don't mind the water on the floor.
We had the Octopus Advisory Council meeting in here yesterday.
They have quite the sense of humor.
Did you know they can turn off a light switch just by squirting water at it?
What pranksters!
Oh, speaking of which Molly, that board, the octopus.
One said they'd like the show a lot better if you had eight arms.
So I told them you'd work on that.
Okay, let's get started.
Take a seat, everybody.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I mean, sit.
Good boys and girls.
Stay.
Good, good, good.
Now, we're going to share ideas on how to improve the show.
Speak.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
One at a time.
One at a time.
Molly, Evelyn, are you guys going to stay and help with this, or...?
I kind of want to, but we have to get to the studio.
Yeah.
Bye, cutie fluffer faces.
All right, suit yourself.
Oh, and if you see anyone from the Alpaca Advisory Council wandering around, tell them that got pushed to Thursday.
All right.
Bye.
Next stop, Brains On Studio.
Here we are.
Have a good taking listening to brains on.
I'm molly bloom and my co-host is evelyn from horsham, pennsylvania.
Hi evelyn hi molly, thank you for having me today.
Oh, thanks for being here now, evelyn.
It is a very funny coincidence that sandon chose today of all days to hold his dog advisory council meeting, because this episode is based on a canine centric question that you sent in to us.
What was that question?
Do dogs understand their dogs the way a human knows it's a human.
Tell us about your dogs.
I have a full-sized gullendoodle and a mini-sized gullendoodle.
And the oldest one is named Titus, and then the younger one is named Pickle.
So, Evelyn, what made you think of this question?
Do you remember?
I was laying in bed with my dog, and I was just thinking, does he realize that he's a dog?
Because sometimes I think he thinks he's one of us as a human.
Because he lays in bed with us the way we lay in bed.
He sits with us in a chair.
But at the same time, he interacts with other dogs the way that they're supposed to.
They run around with each other.
They play with each other.
All the usual stuff.
You can go to our Instagram, brains underscore on, to see Evelyn's adorable dogs.
And listeners, we'd like to see pictures of your dogs, too.
You can send them to us at brainson.org slash contact.
Or post them on Instagram or Twitter and tag us, that's brains underscore on.
And bonus we would love a caption telling us what you think is going through your dog's mind in that photo.
Well, one step to understanding an animal's state of mind is to find out if they are aware of themselves as distinct individuals in the world.
It's called self-awareness.
There's a famous test that's supposed to let you know if an animal is self-aware, known as the mirror test.
It works like this.
When an animal is asleep, you draw a little red mark on their face, somewhere prominent.
Then, when they wake up, you put them in a room with a mirror, and you wait to see if they notice.
Hey, what's this red mark on my face?
The theory is, if they are self-aware, they'll recognize themselves in the mirror, see the dot and try to get it off.
Or at least move around to get a better look at it.
Is it a pimple?
Am I going through animal puberty?
Most animals totally ignore the mirror and they never notice the dot.
Only a few have been shown to recognize themselves in the reflection, like dolphins elephants, chimpanzees and, of course, humans.
But humans can only do it after about the age of two.
Ah, this dot won't come off.
Why are all these people in lab coats staring at me?
This is the last time I agree to be a part of any study run by humans.
So do dogs pass the mirror test?
Are they self-aware?
No, dogs do not pass this test.
Sometimes dogs even think the reflection is another dog.
But keep in mind, it's not concrete proof of self-awareness.
Dogs may still be self-aware, but this test might not be the best way to find out.
Luckily, we know a scientist who spends a lot of time thinking about dogs and how they think.
Alexandra Horowitz runs the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College.
Welcome, Alexandra.
Thanks, Evelyn.
Do dogs understand their dogs the way we understand we're humans?
Wow, it's such an interesting question.
Do dogs understand their dogs?
Well, I think all the evidence that we have shows that they do, that they think about themselves as dogs and recognize other dogs as dogs.
And this is a little surprising in some ways because—
Dogs come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes, from tiny, tiny toy chihuahuas to Great Danes and Mastiffs.
But in studies it looks like they recognize all of those types of breeds as one category of things, which is dogs.
In fact, there was one study that showed dogs' pictures of dog faces – which all looked really different and also pictures of other animals' faces, like a cat and a cow and a donkey.
And these dogs had been trained to pick out the dog face and get a reward for it.
And then, when they were shown all these faces, they had no trouble at all distinguishing who were the dogs from what were the other animals.
So I think it's safe to say they know their dogs.
Could dogs fail the mirror test and still be self-aware?
I love the idea of the mirror test, that animals might look in the mirror like we do and notice hey, that's me in the mirror and especially notice if something is different about how they look.
Now, dogs don't pass that test.
I don't know if you've ever seen a dog look in the mirror.
They're interested in the mirror.
They seem to think there might be a dog there, but they don't seem to care if there's a little mark on their head.
At least they don't seem to try to remove it.
I thought, though, that this doesn't show that they don't think about themselves.
I thought that maybe it was that they just don't care that much about how they look.
Because, in fact, they are smelling creatures.
They smell the world first, just the way we see the world first.
So I designed a little study which I called an olfactory mirror, which is just a smell test tool, where I got a little bit of their scent like a mirror reflection, and then I changed it a little bit.
And I wanted to see if they were way more interested in that marked version of themselves than just the regular picture of themselves.
And they were.
They sniffed that mark a lot longer, as though they were looking in the mirror and noticing that there was something different, except for about their smell instead of about how they look.
So I think that they do have some kind of sense of themselves, but that it's rooted in what they smell like, which is a little bit different than us, because we might not even know really what we smell like.
Why do dogs sometimes pick a favorite person in the family?
Do you have any advice on how to become my dog's favorite person?
Well, I think there's no fail-safe way to become a dog's favorite person except to pay them a lot of attention.
So if you think about a dog's life in a normal family, they spend a lot of time kind of waiting for things to happen which have to do with them.
That might be feeding.
That has to do with them.
That might be play, if somebody's going to play with them or take them for a walk.
There are lots of different ways we pay attention to our dogs.
And the people who pay attention in most of those contexts the ones who take them for the walks, the ones who notice when they're feeling rambunctious and want to play – the ones who give them their food wind up usually being the favorite person.
So I'm pretty sure you can do that.
And what kind of memories do dogs have?
Can they remember their early lives as puppies?
Can they remember how long ago you left them when you go away to work?
Well, we know that they have pretty good memories.
It's not as though, just because they can't talk to us about their memories, they don't have memories.
And we see this every day in their behavior.
You know, they recognize you even if you've been gone for a day or a week or a month or a year.
You know, they can remember you and will recognize you pretty quickly.
But we don't know, and it's hard to get evidence for, how much of what we would call episodic memory that they have.
In other words, memory for episodes of their life.
So if they were at a shelter early in their life and it was a scary place...
And it's hard to test for episodic memories.
You know, we can ask a person, what do you remember about when you were four years old?
But we can't ask an animal, a nonverbal animal that.
So you have to get to it by just seeing, hmm, do they recognize being in particular places?
Do they show familiarity with people who they've met once before?
And it does look like they recognize people in places just as we would expect.
So their memory is pretty good.
What is the thing that people misunderstand about dogs' mind the most?
It's a great question.
I think that most people think of dogs as just like us, only smaller furrier, maybe a little less smart.
But I think in many ways they think really differently than we do.
And that starts with the fact that they smell the world where we see it.
I should say to that question you know that I have a theory that that they can pretty much tell how long you've been gone.
If you're gone the same amount each day, by how much less of your smell is in the house.
Because everybody has a smell.
You know, your house has a smell.
It smells like the people who live in it and the dogs who live in it.
Sometimes when I go on vacation, I come back and I open the door and I smell dogs.
And that's because there's a smell in the house and I don't usually notice it.
But our smell would diminish over the course of the day.
So if you're in the next room, your dog can smell it.
If you leave the room, there's still some smell of you in that room, normal smell of person.
But as the day goes on, the smell would dissipate.
So in some sense the dog can tell how long you've been gone by how much of your smell has disappeared from the house.
Isn't that wild?
That's really cool.
Thank you for answering our questions.
Yeah, my pleasure.
Molly, speaking of dogs, do you think we can sneak back into the dog advisory council meeting?
They were all so cute.
We can try, but we have something else to sneak in first.
It's time for the mystery sound.
Mystery sound.
Here it is.
Uh.
I don't know.
Maybe someone pouring dog food into a bowl?
Hmm.
Very good guess.
We're going to be back with the answer in just a bit.
Do you have a mystery sound you want to send us?
Maybe a drawing of Sandon leading the Dog Advisory Council meeting?
Or a question you want answered on the show.
Send it to us.
You can go to brainson.org slash contact.
And keep listening.
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But now the stories are floating off the page and into Afternoons with Mimi, a cozy storytelling podcast for ages two to five.
Listeners will fall in love with Mimi, as she shares everything from classic folk tales to modern fables.
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It's me, Evelyn.
Can I come in and hang out with you guys?
Sure.
We're doing some testing.
Oh, fun.
So, everybody.
Okay, let's see.
Which of these questions would make a better episode topic?
Why do cats lick themselves or do dogs dream?
Wow.
Unanimous vote.
Dog dreams it is.
Wait.
Dogs dream?
Are they like our dreams?
Oh, yeah.
Researchers think dogs totally dream.
Bark!
Well Pepper, the Pointer over there, says dogs are expert sleepers and their sleep is a lot like ours.
Interesting, huh?
What?
What did she say?
Oh, she said dogs typically spend about half their day sleeping, which totally jealous.
But scientists think they are only dreaming for a small portion of that.
Also, we tend to sleep in kind of like one long chunk overnight.
But dogs, they get a lot of their sleeps in little chunks, you know, like cat naps.
Oh, sorry, sorry.
Dog naps.
Oh, good point, Mr. Muffin.
What did he say now?
I really need to learn to speak dog.
Oh, just that dogs have both rapid eye movement sleep or REM sleep, and non-rapid eye movement sleep or non-REM sleep.
Just like us.
Us non-dog people, we've been known to dream during both phases of sleep.
But the dreams we typically remember, you know, like the weird ones where your best friend shows up, but they're also a bee and they sting you and you swell up and explode, but it's okay because it turns out you were really a piñata this whole time and now there's candy and everyone gets candy.
You know, those kind of dreams.
Those are mostly associated with REM sleep.
Oh, interesting.
Weird, but interesting.
Yeah.
Dogs enter...
Rem sleep about 20 minutes into a snooze, and that's when you might see their breathing change a little or their legs twitch, and that's a sign they're dreaming.
In fact, there's a part of the brain called the pons that seems to keep humans and dogs from acting out their dreams when they sleep.
Some studies have found that when that area is not working in dogs, they actually get up and do the stuff in their dreams, like they act it out.
Like what?
Well, a pointer dog might get up and point at dream birds.
Or a terrier might dig for dream rabbits in a dream warren.
Oh, French Fry over there says she dreams about owning a small bed and breakfast in wine country where the dogs and people can go and sign up for spa treatments.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I misheard.
She dreams about eating garbage.
It sounds a lot like owning a bed and breakfast.
It's easy to confuse the two.
Time for our break.
All right, everybody.
Take five.
There are bowls of water on the table in the back and a fire hydrant outside if you need to use the restroom.
We'll meet back here to review new taglines for the show.
Right now the top contenders are let's see Brains On where we're serious about chasing squirrels, and Brains On Bark Bark, Woof Bark.
Thanks for letting me duck out for a second.
Shannon's quite the facilitator.
That he is.
Are you ready to answer another listener question about dogs?
Yes.
My name is Claire and I'm from Vancouver, Canada.
My question is, do dogs bark in different languages like humans do?
In different countries, we definitely hear their barks differently.
Like, what word do we use in the United States, Evelyn, for the sound a dog makes?
I say bark or woof.
Exactly.
But if you grew up speaking Spanish...
You say that the dog goes, or in Somali, or Hmong, or like this.
That was Russian, Polish, and Chinese.
But the answer to whether or not dogs actually speak different languages is no.
Again, our friend Alexandra Horowitz.
Dogs speak the same way no matter where they're from.
There are no dog dialects that we know about.
The only difference is how we, as different language speakers, refer to the sounds they're making.
Dogs will learn whatever language you can teach them, but it's not like they speak English.
Like you could train a dog to say, whenever you say the word glarp, or roll over when you say schmagoozle.
Yes, and I would love to hear that next time I go to the dog park.
Glarp, didgy, glarp.
Exactly.
And speaking of things I want to hear, it's almost time to go back to that mystery sound again.
But first break.
Brains On is an independent podcast featuring real science and made by real people.
If you want to support this kind of work, it would mean a lot if you subscribed to our Smarty Pass.
Not only do you get ad-free feeds of all of our shows, but you also get access to virtual Smarty Parties with me, Markin Sandin.
In fact, our next Smarty Party is in December.
So if you want an invite to the party, head to brainson.org and subscribe to our Smarty Pass.
Your support means the world.
Thank you.
Okay, Evelyn, it's time to hear that mystery sound again.
So any new thoughts after hearing it again?
Not really.
Yeah, it's a tricky one for sure.
Well, here is the answer.
So that was the sound of a toy T-Rex dinosaur stomping on the floor.
Oh, yes.
Does that make sense?
I would have never gotten that.
Well, the woman you just heard is Vanessa Woods.
She's often surrounded by dogs at Duke University, where she helps run the Duke Puppy Kindergarten.
We're actually using this with 16-week-old puppies to see if, just like kids, if they are attracted to new things or scared of new things, if they're brave or a little bit shy.
And understanding what the personality of a puppy is really helps us understand also how they think and what kind of problems they'll be able to solve.
Dogs are becoming this amazing research model for us because they have such a special relationship with humans.
So it's very, very rare to have an animal that we can read.
If a dog is happy, you can tell if they're happy.
If they're sad, you can tell that.
And not only that, but dogs really also seem to understand us in a really special way.
They, you know, understand our gestures and our body language in a way that almost no other animals do.
And not only that, but in some cases they can also read our minds.
Mind reading dogs?
What?
Say you know, there's like a baby in front of me and I hide a toy from them under one of two cups.
But then I the cup where the toy is hidden.
Even though the baby can't talk yet or really understand language, or is just basically brand new by the time they're about nine months old, they'll start following my gestures.
And it might seem really simple, but actually they know that.
I know that they don't know where the toy is and that I'm trying to help them.
So that's what we call theory of mind or one variation of mind reading.
And it looks like dogs also do the same thing in a really sophisticated and flexible way that we don't really see in any other animal.
Vanessa puts this T-Rex stomping puppy research to use by helping service dog organizations better train and choose dogs that will go on to help other people.
Hey, Molly and Evelyn, sorry to intrude.
Look, I know you're in the middle of a taping, but we were just finishing up our dog advisory council meeting and we're doing a quick tour and the council just really wanted to see the studio.
All right, I mean, I'm sorry.
They really wanted to smell the studio.
Sure, sure, sure.
Come on in.
We're almost done.
Dogs have a sense of themselves, but it probably has more to do with smell than anything else.
We think dogs dream in a pretty similar way to humans.
Dogs don't bark differently depending on where they're from, but they can learn to respond to whatever language their humans are speaking in.
You can even teach a dog to read your mind.
The council is very impressed with the canine representation here.
They pass along their kudos.
Aw, thank you, little, cute, snug machines.
They prefer to be known as daring, brave squirrel hunters, but they appreciate the sentiment.
All right, I'm going to walk them out.
Oh, no, no.
I'm going to like walk out like it's time for you guys to leave.
I'm not I'm not taking for a walk.
I don't I don't have time.
Like I got appointments.
There's other council meetings.
And I mean, I'm not even wearing my good walking shoes.
That's it for this episode of Brains On.
Brains On is produced by Mark Sanchez, Sandin Padden and Molly Bloom.
We had production help from Ned Liebrich-Stryker and Otis Gray.
We had engineering help from Matt Porter, Johnny Vince Evans, and John Miller.
Many thanks to John and Barb Ebersole, Margaret Gruen, Ellen Furlong, Angie Johnston, Vicki Kreckler, Nancy Yang, Abdi Warsami, Jacob Maldonado-Medina, Elizabeth Shockton, Ralphie McInerney-Pormart, Lisa Gunter, Chrissy Peace, and Jinju Yu.
Now it's time for the Brains Honor Roll.
These are the kids who make this show possible with their questions ideas mystery sounds, drawings and high fives.
Ava from Harvest, Alabama.
Freddie from Alpharetta, Georgia.
Rebecca from Plymouth, Michigan.
Ethan from Cupertino, California.
Aniket from Belmont, California.
Elodie from Albany, New York.
Elizabeth from Springfield, Virginia.
Riley from Toronto.
James and Lydia from New York City.
Ruby from Houston.
Dylan from Medfield, Massachusetts.
Paige from Naperville, Illinois.
Amado from Laredo, Texas.
Lola from Duluth, Minnesota.
Taman and Junie from New York City.
Joanna from Grayslake, Illinois.
Zoe from Brooklyn, New York.
Juno from British Columbia.
Emmy from Dallas, Texas.
Cirrus from St.
Adolph-Doward, Quebec.
Kennedy and Cade from Indiana, Pennsylvania.
Amelia from Illinois.
Maslow and Lisson from Springfield, Vermont.
Leah from Edmonton, Alberta.
Charlotte from Tuscumbia, Alabama.
Emma from Holly Springs, Georgia.
Everly from Hermantown, Minnesota.
Abigail and Ido from Israel.
Hannah from Boca Raton, Florida.
Hugo from Kingston, New York.
Nathan and Jedediah from Lake Worth, Texas.
Maggie from Dedham, Massachusetts.
Casper from East Hampton, New York.
Johanna from San Jose, California.
Noah from Eureka, Australia.
Kesley from Lake Bluff, Illinois.
Arabella and Isla from Athens, Georgia.
Robin from Evanston, Illinois.
Oliver from Huntsville, Alabama.
Theo from Norfolk, Virginia.
Ellie from Lafayette, Colorado.
Mallory from LaGrange, Illinois.
Hayden from Sella, Washington.
Finn and Rowan from Altoona, Pennsylvania.
Casey from Milton, Massachusetts.
Sam from Paradise Valley, Nevada.
Helena and Vernon from Reading, Pennsylvania.
Lucille from Roseville, Minnesota.
Lucas and Noah from Madrid.
Maisie from Huacas, Costa Rica.
Harper and Finn from East Brunswick, New Jersey, Iris from Memphis, Tennessee.
Miriam Penny from Berwyn Pennsylvania, JB from Wasco Oregon, Michael and Zoe from Atlanta, John from Seattle, Sammy and Charlie from Beaverton Oregon, Colson from Chicago, Gemma from Old Alberta, Chammy from Philadelphia, Cecilia and Timothy from Norwalk Connecticut, Claire from Arlington, Virginia and Ariana from Apex, North Carolina.
Make sure to tune in next week when we might get an answer to this question.
How do they get music into CDs, tapes and records?
Thanks for listening.
