4 replies to this topic

[aidogs]

NewSCientist

Barking dogs might be better communicators than we thought, according to a new study.

Computer software can distinguish individual dogs by their barks, and also suggests that certain barks act as a "universal language", carrying information about the dog's mind-set that is readily understood by their fellow pooches.

Csaba Molnár and his colleagues at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, recorded 14 Hungarian sheepdogs barking in a range of situations: when approached by a stranger, during play, during a fight, and when the dog was alone.

Then they fed the sound recordings into an artificial neural network developed by a team led by Frédéric Kaplan at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland.

The artificial neural network identified key audio features of each bark and Molnár's team found that the computer software could identify the situation in which a bark was recorded.

Varied accuracy

The accuracy of the software varied, however – while it correctly identified a dog barking at a stranger in 63% of cases, it correctly identified a bark recorded during play just 6% of the time.

The software also varied in its ability to identify individual dogs, depending on the context in which the bark was recorded.

When played samples of dogs barking during play, the software could correctly identify individuals 60% of the time, but it struggled to distinguish between different dogs barking at a stranger – it could do this only 30% of the time.

The results show that dog barks carry a wealth of information, says Molnár. "In the past, scientists thought that dog barks originated as a by-product of domestication and so have no communicative role," he says. "But we have shown there are contextual differences."
Human selection

Molnár thinks that selection by humans could explain why an artificial neural network is better at recognising that a dog is fighting than playing. Domestic dogs have always been used for their vigilance, and so it may be important for humans to quickly identify when a dog is barking at a stranger.

"In this context, every dog barks singularly," says Molnár. "But in a play situation, there has been no strict selection for creating a uniform bark among dogs, so each has its own individual style."

"The idea sounds totally cool," says Brian Hare at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, US. "This is animal behaviour research at its best. You see a pattern that no one else knew was there because we can't hear the difference ourselves."

"It's interesting that the domestic dog's communication may be more flexible than was formerly thought," adds Juliane Kaminski of the Max Planck Institute, Leipzig, Germany.
Learned patterns?

She says there are other possible explanations for Molnár's results, however.

"In play situations" she says, "dogs have many opportunities to learn something about the correlation between their vocalizations and the human's behaviour: 'which variation in my bark elicits what type of behaviour in the human?'"

If this is the case, it might be that it is the "play" barks that have evolved with time rather than the "fight" ones. "In fight situations, the dog barks aggressively and the human runs away, end of story," she adds, which might explain why these barks have changed little.

Either way, Hare thinks the new study shows the importance of research into dog behaviour. "People used to say dogs are really boring because they were artificially created by humans," he says. "But actually that's exactly why they're really cool."

[Paul and Angelique]

Why are humans so sure they are the only ones that have developed a languish? Just because WE can not understand what other animals are saying, does not meen they can't understand.
We always need scientific proof! How boring is that.

[Allison]

How right you are.

There is a terrific book, called "The Parrot's Lament" by Eugene Linden. It is full of tests used by zooligists, etc., designed to show the intelligence of animals. The frustrating thing is, all the experts denials of the findings. They had to explain away the truth that makes them uncomfortable, i.e., that humans are not the only sentient beings on Earth. It reveals, however, that they are by far the most egotistical.

[liz]

Paul and Angelique, on Jan 18 2008, 05:23 AM, said:

Why are humans so sure they are the only ones that have developed a languish? Just because WE can not understand what other animals are saying, does not meen they can't understand.
We always need scientific proof! How boring is that.

When will scientists tell us something new! I think anyone who has had a dog knew all this anyway!

I may not know precisely what Shunka is saying, but his body language and type of woof or whine lets him communicate with us.

It is like the scientists who said they also have emotions like frustration and grief etc, who said they didn't not us!

[aidogs]