Dogs Read Minds
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Research indicates dogs might be able to perceive our thoughts.
Generally, the definition of family includes children. Human children. But what about dogs? They’re our children too, right? While dogs may not have the ability to read and write, according to a new study dogs are highly intelligent and might be able to read our minds.
To prove this theory, Canterbury University psychology researcher Michelle Maginnity had dogs go up to people and determine whether or not they were secretly harboring food.
Most of the time the dogs were right. We don’t know if this proves dogs can read minds, or if people are just really bad at hiding food from dogs.But hey, If you’re having telepathic conversations with your dog, maybe you think this is old news. But here at Mom•Logic, we have our doubts about the validity of this research.
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or… the dogs can smell the food. Reading minds… please.
- Jenny L
Ah yes, the incredible psychic powers of dogs. I recommend anyone who doubts a dogs ability to mysteriously divine the presence of food to show a dog a chunk of dried liver first, then put your hands behind your back, move the liver from hand to hand, and bring your hands forward with the liver concealed inside one fist. Ask your dog to “find the liver” and with very little prior thought your dog will paw, lick or bite the hand concealing the liver. If your dog fails to choose the correct hand you are probably not sending out clear enough mind rays, and should consider removing your aluminum hat.
- Oiorpata
OR… the experiments were well controlled for such possibilities (e.g., that the dogs could sniff the food out or that people are bad at hiding food etc) and the article (note: NOT scientific or even thorough in any respect) didn’t report all of those details… Perhaps the full details of such research should be sought BEFORE judgments on the scientific validity of the research are passed??? p.s. the research is actually about whether dogs can think about what people think/know, nothing to do with being psychic
- smart doggy
Having just completed Michelle’s course the study had nothing to do with mind reading & was carefully conducted to eliminate obvious variables like scent. Her conclusion was the study indicates dogs MAY have a theory of mind. She is going to expand the study and hopes to run a study using children of different developmental stages to compare results. Michelle was very disappointed by the whole ‘psychic’ dogs slant the media put on her research.
- dalfyre
