88 thoughts on “D-g plays with itself”

  1. I dunno…if it really was a smart d*g, it would have figured out how to turn itself into a cat. Until we see that happen, I’m afraid that claims of canine intelligence must be summarily discounted as pure fantasy.

    b&

    1. Reason there’s a dog in the video is there’s no comparable video featuring a cat.

      1. I had a cat that devised a game for herself.

        She’d place objects on a sweater dryer–a net that was stretched on a low rack and effectively acted as a trampoline. She’d pull down on the net from underneath and then release it, causing the objects to spring around. She’d then try to catch them. If an object fell off, she’d pick it right back up and put it on the net again and resume playing.

    3. Credit where it’s due. The d*g has clearly been able to escape it’s owner’s faux-Gucci handbag (purse), and also seems to be engaged in a simple experiment in fluid dynamics.

      1. You can’t use that word here! At least, not in that form. Approved forms include ‘d*g’, ‘doG’ and ‘notacat’.

        You should also ignore what it says in the upper left-hand side of the page, and not use ‘blog’, either. 🙂

    1. Nope. Dogs stink within a day of a bath. And you have to bathe them weekly in order to be able to tolerate their presence at all. And they friggin’ well bark!

      2. And you have to bathe them weekly in order to be able to tolerate their presence at all.

        When I still worked in IT, some of my male colleagues would have that too. The smell would not always be taken away by the airconditioning.

        They didn’t play fetch, though.

      3. Depends on the breed. My gigantic lab doesn’t need a bath or smell. She also stops barking when told but I appreciate it when she alerts me with her bark. She’s a good watch dog even though too friendly.

      4. depends on the breed, and you can teach them not to bark (and some breeds are more prone to it) 🙂

      5. Our Boxer didn’t stink. She didn’t even smell, that I noticed. And she was bathed only once in a blue moon (she resisted baths.)

  4. Frankly, I think this is a remarkable video. It’s one thing to get a dog to bring a stick back to you, but it’s another thing to see a dog play a game with itself, a game that the dog created, however odd it may seem to use that word. There’s some degree of low-level “thinking” going on here. What’s it like to be a bat? Here’s a good reason to ask what it’s like to be a dog.

    2. There is no evidence presented that this dog taught itself this game. It is an assumption on your part that is probably not justified.

      1. It is an assumption on your part that is probably not justified.

        I would see that as an assumption as well. Stalemate.

  5. Ha ha! My dog throws her ball for herself too. She also knows the names of all her toys.

    I don’t buy the anti-dog stance with Jerry either. I think he likes animals too much to hate one particular one. 🙂

    1. Yeah, me too – I think Jerry likes d-gs really. I am an ailurophile of long standing, but was decidedly agnostic on dogs. It took one special dog in my life to make me more open to dogs in general. But I never really disliked them.

      1. My dog knows the name of all her toys, too, including Wiley the Coyote and her platypus…D-gs are just as wonderful as cats!

        P.S. Not to be rude, but wouldn’t it make more sense to say that the dog is playing BY itself rather than WITH itself??

    2. I agree. Jerry’s just acting curmudgeonly not being so. He obviously marvels at all living things, just as I do. The relationship of dogs with humans is fraught with specialness.

      I’ve been tempted to send him one of my favorite books, Inside a Dog by Alexandra Horowitz,

      See http://insideofadog.com/

      I’d like to send it to you if I could Dr. Coyne.

      1. “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.” – Groucho Marx

      1. Mostly the game involves throwing the ball then running to get it as it moves in all directions. Sometimes she waits looking at it with pent up excitement. I take this as I’m a crappy dog owner that doesn’t play with my pet enough so the pet is forced to improvise. 🙂  Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone. From: Why Evolution Is TrueSent: Wednesday, August 14, 2013 7:30 AMTo: ddmacpherson@gmail.comReply To: Why Evolution Is TrueSubject: [New comment] D-g plays with itself

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        gbjames commented: “She also knows the names of all her toys.

        Do they come when she calls them?”

    4. Anybody know *where* this practice of writing dog as “d-g” originated? I do get that g-d backwards is d-g, but… is this just one of those endearing idiosyncrasies?

      2. How dare you! d-g backwards is g-d. This can be assumed with confidence as the dog as a species is older than the myth referred to as god.

        I think the “d-g” references the unspeakable as in “g-d”, which could be traced back at least to the convention of substitution when spelling swear words.

      3. How dare you! d-g backwards is g-d. This can be asserted with confidence as the dog species arrived long before the god myth.

        I think the d-g refers to the disgusting or unmentionable, such as g-d. Which can be traced to the convention of spelling swear words with a “-” or “*” replacing one of the letters.

        1. Sorry, about the duplicate comment. Something has gone haywire in the processing. Unusual browser behavior after clicking submit and apparent delay in comments being displayed. I’ll have to fiddle and see if the answer falls out.

    5. I don’t buy the anti-dog stance with Jerry either. I think he likes animals too much to hate one particular one.

      That is blasphemy I tell ‘ya, and it can not be tolerated!

      This picture wherein a d-g is choked with great force and passion to within mere miles of ending its life, should silence any doubts.

    2. There’s some abstract thinking going on here. This dog recognizes that that mass of brass is in the form of a man. It also knows that men are potential partners in stick tossing games. I don’t think a lizard, pigeon, guinea pig or mouse could do even the 1st part of that.

      Our dog recently saw a life-size statue of a deer in a front yard while we were out on a walk in a new neighborhood and she was immediately alert and very concerned about it. I don’t think she’s ever seen a real deer, but she seemed to know immediately that this mass of plaster was shaped like some animal. She apparently has some generalized abstract concept of what an animal looks like, even when it’s a species she’s not seen before.

      1. Additionally, do dogs have color vision? If not, then the statue would be even more life-like.

        1. They have black and white with some colour. An episode of the Simpson’s where we see things through a dogs perspective did a good job of showing this. My dog will lose a red ball in green grass as to her the red is just a brighter grey than the green I suppose.

  8. The water on the rocks suggests that when he goes in after the ball at the end isn’t the first time.

  10. My dog pushes her ball off the sofa or bed or another dog’s back then runs to chase it. The other dog does NOT appreciate this, as it’s usually sleeping at the time. Sometimes in the morning she will drop it on my body and let it roll while I’m sleeping. Just coincidence that she’s hungry for breakfast at the time…

  13. How clever of this dog. It has invented a game for itself – and it uses a tool to play that game. I agree — it is a sentient mammal playing a game. Smart dog.

  14. p,s, I once had a Weimaraner bitch who used to throw sticks for herself, when I got tired of throwing them for her. And I have known dogs who would throw a Frisbee – very satisfying game.

  15. Yes, “Inside of a Dog” is a book well-worth reading.

    Dog intelligence should be measured on a dog scale, not a human one. For any species, the measure of its “fitness” is the relevance of adaptations to survival and reproduction. “Play” is common in many animals, and it defies “scientific” explanation. However, that is not a testimony of any feature’s relevance, only to incapacity to understand and our penchant for projection.

    “Homo ludens” is another book worth reading.

    1. Play isn’t really that hard to understand, at least on a general level. Certain behaviors and actions generate positive reactions in the mind. These reactions are meant to encourage that behavior. They evolve because they improve animal fitness.

      Playing is merely triggering those positive reactions without practical results. Like when we have sex with birth control.

      As such, I’m not sure if it could be seen as a sign of intelligence. But perhaps it’s higher level intelligence that can determine some barrier between “Idiotic repetitive behavior” and “playing”. Or perhaps I’m just wrong about my analysis. Could be either, really.

  16. I know a cat who regularly plays fetch with himself in much the same way. Drops a ball down the stairs, chases down after it, then brings it back up to the top, over and over.

  17. You know, when trying to demonstrate sentience, it’s probably not a great idea to demonstrate a dog apparently stuck in an infinite loop. You could program this dog in BASIC.

    Now Cats are more complex. It’s actually what the C stands for in C++.

    2. Probably someone didn’t map out the process in a process map and went right to development.

  18. We had a cat that would play fetch with a little rubber ball down our basement stairs. At the time my parents locked her in the basement at night, so some nights we could hear her run up the stairs, hear the ball bounce down, and her run down the stairs to catch it. She would do this until she would lay down and start panting. Literally.

  19. Cats and dogs are such different creatures, and yet each with its own personality-type. But although all cats all seem to play the same games, some cats play those games differently. I think that personality types are enjoyed both in observing animals at play and also in the interaction of species. I have been intrigued for a long time by the possibility that several personality types have evolved simultaneously, and that the common surviving personality types are not even confined to mammals. (I mean ‘personality’ as commonly used as a range of individuality, and not the narrow and unworkable definition of personality as used by psychologists!) There is a hill of evidence mounting, and the subject is sometimes casually mentioned in science journals. It is best seen in group behaviour of unrelated species. In Key West, Florida I used to feed my Alsatian (German Shepherd. US) on an upturned trash-can lid. My daughters’ two cats joined-in at feeding time. Then their guinea pig. And then the duck, and two ‘fruit-rats’ who lived up a palm-tree. And then a large dry Land-Crab who lived under the house. The whole lot of them, in a circle, eating dogfood together in the hot sun. The guinea pig was the most belligerent. He would use his nose to push his neighbours either side away from him to make himself a bigger quadrant. The duck was the most cunning, who would stand on the food so to conceal some under his feet until it was all gone. Afterwards, they would all sneak away so as to avoid confrontations.
    I keep all kinds of animals on my French farm for study. Geese never play. Ducks are much smarter than geese, and are playful rather than playing. Many wild birds will play. I have many swallows who, each spring, will play a communal game by lifting a fluffy goose breast- feather high into the air for her and others to catch, time and time again. It seems to be after nesting and before laying. And I have watched swallows playing a game with an early evening bat. It seems to me that we have a world of rarely observed behaviours, and the most obvious differentiation is between those that play and those that do not. Young foxes play, and lambs bound, but older sheep and foxes lose the ability to play. I post this hoping that other have observed play in other species. The golden prize is for anyone who has seen play outside of mammals and birds.
    The playing dog in the video opens all kinds of thoughts concerning our fellow creatures. Perhaps what we always thought was common humanity is really common among so many creatures. Who would have guessed that swallows play with improvised ‘tools’ until observation demonstrated it to be so? Sadly there are those in both the religious and the scientific community who claim that observation is not data. For them all observation is proscribed by authority. Some ‘pure’ scientists even refer to my observation as pseudoscience. They seem to forget that Darwin and Russell wrote whole books of nothing but observation.

    1. Too bad this fundamental point can’t be more widely disseminated–that it will lie here unappreciated by the multitudes.

  20. Excellent!
    Play is a really important aspect of learning about the environment for young mammals. We select for infantile characteristics in domestic animals – this is puppy-like behaviour, but could have survival value in a wild animay – catching food – & certainly has value to the humans who breed & keep such animals.

  21. C’mon Jerry, you love dogs. Just admit it. That you leave out the vowel is proof that you see them as deities.

  22. I prefer to think of it as the ball using the d-g to give it some exercise… 😉

    1. You didn’t complete the word “Danielle”. You shortened “will not”. Heavens to murgatroyd.

      Jerry is a cat lover. D-g is a joke, representing an affected cat-like disdain for the fidgety slobbery barky critters. The famous Henri the cat, before selling out to corporate pet food interests, was a good example of cat aloofness, regarding not only dogs as too trivial and absurd to merit notice, but extending his disdain even to some younger foolish kittehs.

      There is much of interest here, whether you like cats, dogs, or even squids or turtles. But I would agree, this place is probably not ideal for those with no sense of humor and rigid sensibilities. For all I know, your real name is “Barker”. Infiltrator! 😉

      1. I once had a German shepherd/Malamute mix, who merely walked between my Belgian Malinois and my mother-in-law’s Shitsu-mix and saved the little mop from certain death.

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