Instant Genius - Dog intelligence, with Jules Howard

Episode Date: May 15, 2022

Zoologist Jules Howard, author of the new book Wonderdog, tells us how smart our pet pooches really are. Once you’ve mastered the basics with Instant Genius, dive deeper with Instant Genius Extra, where you’ll find longer, richer discussions about the most exciting ideas in the world of science and technology. Only available on Apple Podcasts. Produced by the team behind BBC Science Focus Magazine. Visit our website: sciencefocus.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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In this episode, I talked to zoologist Jules Howard, whose new book, Wonder Dog, How the Science of Dogs Change the Science of Life, is out now. In this episode, he tells us all about dog intelligence. Just to start off then, how intelligent are. dogs. Yeah, that's a good, that's the big question. Intelligence is one of those words, isn't it, that it kind of means different things to different people. And when I think of the word intelligence, this is going to sound really weird, but I always, like my, my dad had this fascination with IQ tests. I don't know if this was a former, you know, previous generation thing, but he would

make me and my brother and sister, he would say, like, come on time for your IQ test. And, you know, that to me is the problem with the word intelligence as it means different things. You know, to different people, I suppose. So are dogs intelligent, absolutely, in a general sense, totally. Often, you know, scientists prefer this term cognition, which is kind of like the science of how our brains process the senses, you know, the things that dogs are gathering about the world and how they make kind of sense of their world. So, yeah, are they emotionally intelligent? Absolutely. There's some fascinating research, particularly in the last 10 years, about how dog emotions and by extension other animals, their emotions are like ours.

Are they socially intelligent? Yeah, totally. You know, the way that they interact, the way that we see our dogs play is kind of evidence of that. And are they intelligent in terms of understanding commands and are they kind of trainable? You know, that's something we all see in our day-to-day lives. So they are really unique. I was going to say they're uniquely intelligent. I suspect there is intelligent as, you know, chimpanzees and dolphins, but those animals

traditionally are much harder to research and get in their brains, you know? So you talk there about emotional intelligence. Now, I've got two Jack Russell's, and if I'm feeling sad, they'll come and sit on me. Are they actually detecting my emotions, or am I just sort of putting that onto them? Yeah, I do the same with our dog as well, our dog Oz. Sometimes if I sit down, he's like, oh, hello, because he knows that I'll sit down when I'm tired. And I often think, you know, exactly the same thing. Is he detecting like, oh, this guy needs a cuddle?

Or is he like, okay, he's sitting down. That's a good time for me to, you know, that's when he's not doing other jobs and he can focus a bit on me. And in a way, that kind of gets to the center of the kind of weird relationship, I suppose, that we have with dogs. The reason, in fact, the book, actually, the reason I settled on Wonder Dog for a title is because, you know, it's in those moments we get a chance to really connect with an animal,

you know what I mean, and think, oh, I wonder what that expression means. I wonder what that behaviour means. And, you know, lots of the scientists and lots of the kind of animal cognition centres that are sprouted up all over the world in the last 20 years, you know, have been directly inspired by those questions that we have about the animals kind of nearest and dearest to us. So how smart are domestic pet dogs when compared to their ancestors, which are wolves? Dogs, wolves thing is really, really super interesting. And I think traditionally, you know, wolves were were considered the Crem de la Crem.

You know what I mean? Like, the ethological circles that started sprouting up in the 1940s were very much about studying wild animals. So it's kind of like, okay, dogs are kind of like the adapted form. You know, they're the corrupted form, I guess you could say. So that was the popular idea of dogs. And they were often called dumb wolves for that reason.

And I think, again, it's just really interesting. I mean, for a long time, that was the received wisdom, if you like. Some science to support that, you know, wolves smarter than dogs. But I'll give you an example of one of the bits of research that really shaped and changed the way we think about dogs. And it was this, right? So the experiment was dogs versus wolves. This is the experiment in early 90s. And dogs, wolves kept separate and they are given like a saucepan of meat.

that's in a kind of hard to get to laboratory setup. So they've got to work out how to get this frying pan out from underneath. I think it was like a fenced area, how to do that in the best way possible. And the wolves did it. They looked and they scurried around. They tried a bit of trial and error. And you know what? They did really well.

They got their food. And the dogs, the dogs by comparison, were just sort of whimpering and not really achieving as much. And everyone was like, well, there you go. That's proof, you know, wolves there. brilliant, you know, dogs by comparison, they're just not all there. And then in the late 90s, they redid this study and they accounted for the fact that humans were present in this laboratory setup. And basically what was going on was the dogs could have done the task, but they were just kind of around humans. And so they're just like, hi, can you help me get this meat from the frying

pan? So in a world, they weren't operating, you know, they weren't operating in a traditionally clever way. They were just used to being around humans. And they're like, well, humans do everything for us so they can help us out in this situation. So that's a good example about how, you know, what I love about this book and I'd say what has really inspired me and renewed my love of science is the fact that we think of the things scientists say at any given moment, you know, in that case, wolves, they're amazing, dogs, they're not. And then a few years later with a few different tests, you know, our scientific knowledge changes really. And dogs give us a really good way to see how science adapts and evolves over time. And then,

So, yeah, wolves, dogs, I would say one is super adapted to wild ecosystems. One is super adapted to the human ecosystem, I guess. And a certain dog breed is really smarter than others as well? This is really, really topical. Have you heard about this research, I guess you have, that came out last week? Did you hear about this? And it was really cool, wasn't it? It's great.

So it's like a really, really big sample size, investigating the behaviours of different dog breeds and trying to work out which are down to breed genetics and which are down to nature versus nurture, essentially. And this paper, one of the biggest of its kind, one of the biggest studies of its kind, basically says, well, you know, breeds matter a tiny bit, but they're not the best predictor of what behaviour a dog is going to have. I think it accounts for something like 7% of the behaviours that we see. breed accounts for 7% of those behaviours. And in fact, that goes back. That's actually a kind of repeat of a longitudinal study that was done in the 1960s

when the genetics of behaviour was first being explored, like a 10-year study, looking at different breeds and seeing how they behave and also comparing the raising of puppies and seeing the effect that childhood, if you like, in dogs has on the adults that they become. And yeah, this is clearly, clearly, you know, nature is a factor in the behaviour that we see in our dogs. But also nurture is too. So there are certain things. You mentioned your Jack Russell's. So your Jack Russell's obviously, you know, they have been bred for chasing small mammals.

And so, you know, naturally they will have features around them. Same with our dog. Our dogs are lurcher. Ozzie's a lurcher. So, you know, Ozzy goes into a field. and he is like robocop. He'll like scan the field for, you know, for any signs of movement. And that's very much in his nature.

That's been bred into him. So that's something we kind of have to manage. So there's these kind of two opposing camps. The dog world, I mean, I had no idea like how sort of political it is in many ways. And there are people that are like, okay, dogs are a blank slate. If you have a good dog, that's because you have provided a good home. and there's other people that have kind of got dogs with trouble, you know, with troubles, and they're confused, you know.

You know, for instance, there's, I came across a few dog owners, for instance, who had dogs that were kind of, you know, chasing around the kids in a nice way, but, you know, in a very boisterous way chasing around the kids and trying to herd them. And they're like, oh, this is all my fault. This is all my fault. And it's like, well, no, to a degree, those are bred behaviour. So I guess what I'm trying to say is dogs are a complete meringue of all these different ingredients and I suppose that's kind of the fun in trying to interpret what they're like.

It's a little bit like, you know, I don't know if you do this, but I sometimes think of science is like the topic of dogs. Dogs are a big marble, you know, chunk of rock. And I suppose over the last 50 years, scientists have been chiseling away at this rock. And we're getting ever closer to what the truth is regarding nature and nurture and what the truth is regarding dogs and how they behave. We're still chisling away and we'll get there eventually, but it might not be, we kind of have to accept it might not be in our lifetimes. There's a sort of magic and beauty to it, I suppose. So you discussed one of those studies that you read about when you were researching your book,

where you put the wolves against the dogs. But what other studies have there been that have labelled us to establish dog intelligence and to help us sort of get a good idea of it? Yeah, this started about 20 years ago, once dogs were brought back into the team, the science team, I suppose, in around. the 2000s. There's a few different studies that really enlighten us about what dogs are capable of. One of the most interesting ones was it all started with a dog on Germany's version of U-Bet, and this is a really popular Saturday Night TV series. And they had a dog on this

that had been trained really well, and it could collect more than 200 different toys by name. And this was a big deal. There was a couple of evolutionary biologists who were, watching this on telly and they were like, that is unusual. You know, that's really weird. So they set about trying to, you know, understand what was going on here and exactly how dogs manage this. And in fact, when we hear about this thing about, all dogs are as clever as a three-year-old, that's often what they're referring to is this, this ability dogs have to interpret words and give them a degree of meaning, you know, object meaning, I suppose. So there was those studies that really started to wake cognitive scientists.

up to the feats of dogs. And later on, many dogs went on to be trained, you know, in collecting more than 300 items. One of these dogs, Chaser, was able to collect more than 1,000 items and understand things like put the dog on the table or put the toy under the rock, you know, is able to do this. It's called many-to-one mapping. So those kind of studies became very interesting to scientists. And then there was the emotional intelligence kind of studies. one of the most interesting was the one that I keep coming back to

is a really good proof of concept, I suppose, and that is the fact that about 10 years ago dogs started to be trained, house dogs, family dogs, trained to sit in fMRI machines and basically allow their brains to be scanned and so scientists could see for the first time the emotional centres of dogs and how they light up in the same ways that we do, you know, when we see an object, we love a family member, for instance, you know, dogs have the same part of the brain called the chordate nucleus

lights up in the same way. So there are two examples of the kinds of studies that are, that have moved us forward, I suppose, you know, in our knowledge, in how, in our understanding of dog example. But there are, you know, others out there, you know, too, including this, the whole idea that dogs are very good at understanding human gestures. So the human points, you know, for a long time we thought humans were the only apes, and by extension animal able to understand the massiveness of I'm pointing at that object and my pointed finger is an indication of the direction of that object.

And again, dogs have been shown to be one of the animals capable of understanding pointing gestures. And, you know, those kinds of experiments are what makes dog cognition so exciting, I suppose. You know, we've got these family dogs and they're treated with love by, you know, the scientists and the volunteers who work in those schemes and give us some really good pointers, I suppose, a good way in to understand animal minds. One thing I've seen a lot of online recently is these speakers where you can sort of set them up to say different things and then the dog will hit them in turn saying like, I want a walk. And I'm always a bit dubious about how real that is.

You think, is the dog just know it gets a treat if it happens to hit these in the right order or does it really understand what these sounds are meaning? Yeah, that's really interesting. Early on I mentioned that longitudinal study about nature versus nurture. And the fact we're talking about this now 40, 50, 60 years later, one of the things that I came to appreciate is much, not all, but much of the science we consider today, these amazing new methodologies that we're using,

they've been done before. And this latest one is a great example. So there's a few accounts on Instagram that are doing really, well and the dogs have a soundboard, don't they? And they go, they go up to the soundboard and they might press like food, outside, play. And they choose the button and get the reward. And in fact, that goes back to a guy called John Lubbock, who was actually the inventor of bank holidays. He gave his dog van different signs. So there was like food, there was like bone. There was another sign, a handwritten sign that said like outside and another sign that said water and basically

trained the dog to pick up you know rewarded the dog depending on the sign that he picked up and within like three months he had a dog that essentially was in in Lubbock's mind you know communication genuinely communicating and in fact the fact that I think in 150 trials the fact that the dog was picking up the food you know sign in something like 100 almost 100 of those trials you know led book to be kind of like, okay, well, that is essentially the basics of animal communication. This dog has learned sign language and even spelt out the words phonetically for the dog. And in many ways, that's what we're seeing with these soundboards, the dogs using soundboards. The contentiousness of it, I suppose, and the reason that that kind of science in most animal

cognition studies is kind of not necessarily being explored is because it's impossible, really hard to separate the variable. So, for instance, the example that the dog scientist Andrea Horowitz uses is, you know those in Australia, you've got minor birds and they, you know, famously imitate the noise of chainsaws and stuff, don't they? And if you have a minor bird, this is her example, if you have a minor bird that, you know, called out timber, does the minor bird understand the concept of timber? Does it understand that it's about the direction the tree might fall or that it's associated with chainsaws or that it's associated with chainsaws or that it's. to do with harvesting or it's a word that, you know, we use across cultures for this one particular moment. It doesn't need to. I mean, it can just be just a noise that it's associated to. So, ascribing an understanding of words to these behaviours, I'm a little bit, a tiny bit uncomfortable

with it, but I'm not completely closed to the idea. But with those tests, I always think with these videos on Instagram, and this applies to loads of things, it's like, I wonder how many tests there were before that. You don't, there's no, they need a little statistic in the corner, like trial number 140 or something like that to help us kind of understand that. So yeah, I want I want that sort of science, but I want it to kind of be done, you know what I mean, in like test worthy conditions, I suppose. But it's fascinating. It's really, really fascinating. But, you know, our dogs in some ways are using sign language on us all the time. You know, you must have it the same as me and your listeners will feel the same. You go and get the dog lead or there's a certain

routine of behaviours, I do in a row. And the dog's like, right then, here we go. I'm going to get groomed. I'm going to get a nice little treat. And that is, you know, emptying the dishwasher, emptying the washing machine, putting the clothes out on the radiators. And the dogs like, okay, and here we go. You know, so in some ways, the dogs, you know, the dogs, not manipulating me, but the dogs manipulating the routine behaviours that I'm doing in the same way that dogs in Lubbock studying on Instagram are kind of doing too. So we talk about intelligence, but do dogs have a sense of self? I mean, I know psychologists love the mirror test to say whether an animal can identify themselves in the mirror,

and that's a sign of higher intelligence. Do dogs show this at all? Yeah, I mean, this links back to what I was saying about IQ test, really. The mirror test is, in principle, it makes a lot of sense. And so the mirror test was kind of made famous in the 80s and continued on through the 90s. And this was like you had chimpanzees. In fact, Darwin started all off, you know,

more than 150 years ago with orangutan and orangutan. at London Zoo. But basically, you give the animal a mirror. And if it seems to be using the mirror in a way that suggests they know the thing in the mirror is them, then, wow, you've passed the mirror test, you are self-aware. That study. I'm basically being a bit mean on those scientists that did those early studies. But, you know, that's essentially the leap we're supposed to make with that. You know, if you see yourself in a mirror and you use the mirror, then you must be the upper echelons of animal intelligence. And in fact, dogs don't pass the mirror test, as you've probably seen.

Do you remember a mirror moment with your dogs? I've tried it with them. I've sort of held them up to the mirror and said, oh, who's that in the mirror? But they weren't really that impressed. They didn't really notice. I mean, occasionally they'll look at the window at night and they'll start barking,

but they see their reflections. We had it, like, you know, it worked. Not it didn't work, but, you know, we could get a response from him for about two or three times. He's like, oh my gosh. when he was a puppy, like, that's incredible, there's a dog here. And then it's so weird, isn't it? They just sort of go, oh, I get it.

It's just a little weird trick of the light. Apparently they can see an approaching human. So if you go behind them when they've got the mirror, then their tail might start wagging. So they can clearly, you know, see something and use a mirror, you could say. So, yeah, dogs a long time, you know, they weren't considered capable of passing it.

It was mostly an ape thing, kind of dolphin thing. and that was where we were. And some fantastic science, Mark Beckoff, kind of kicked it off, an ethologist in the US. And he did something like the yellow snow test with his dog. And basically the yellow snow test is you go for a walk in the snow with your dog. Dog does a wee. You lift up some of the yellow snow and then you surreptitiously on your walk, carry it off and place it in another part of the walk.

And then you observe whether the dog goes up. to it and thinks, oh, this is a nice yellow smell, nice rival smell, or whether they just go, oh, that's just me, and then they just walk on and don't investigate the smell. And in that case, that single study, you know, that was what happened. So it's like, okay, very interesting. Dogs recognize their own smell, just as we recognize our own face in the mirror, and they act, you know, appropriately. And in fact, that study has been repeated with much more scientific rigour by using test tubes of different odors and different urines and seeing, you know, how dogs respond and yeah, you know, confidently we can say they recognise their own smell and behave

accordingly. And that's a great example of, you know, I often think with animal science and I wonder, with your background, if you think the same, this really massive human tendency to just go, the human brain is the antithesis, it's where we were all supposed to be heading and these mere animals, like can they really see things like we can? This massive assumption, I suppose, is that the human way, the human senses are, you know, how you interpret the world in a really full way. And in fact, I've said this a few times, you know, over the years, that, you know, this, you know, humans, we hold a magnifying glass to nature.

And too often we just go, oh, look, there's our reflection in there. And we forget to still actually look through the magnifying glass and what animals are kind of seeing and doing and smelling in this case. And in fact, that, that sniff test, you know, went on to, I suppose, encourage scientists or dog scientists to look at other ways you can test self-recognition in animals. And one of the other big ideas in the 70s and 80s was this idea of kind of theory of mind. So can animals appreciate that they are just one mind in a sea of other minds and can they manipulate other minds if they need to? And again, it links to that understanding

of self-awareness. And one of my favourite, genuinely one of my favourite studies relating to all animals on earth, right, is the one to do Alexandra Horowitz's play study where she basically gets loads of dogs and she records them in slow motion, frame by frame, she analyzes their movements. And really what she has proven in the last 15 years is that actually dogs, when they're playing, are making these minute judgments based upon their wants and needs. And I've got a dog that absolutely loves playing, absolutely loves it. He's quite shy. He's a bit like me, really.

He's quite shy, but actually when he's going to get himself there, he just loves it. And in fact, those sorts of dogs, what they're doing is they're just running up to other dogs in a good way, running up to them and just kind of like, hey, hey, can we play? Can we play? And if there's something else going on, if that dog they're trying to play with his got his eyes on, like, having a bird or something like that, then, you know, my dog or other dogs are like, kind of they're getting into the field of view of the other dog, hey, can we play, can we play?

And if that's not working, then they're kind of like barking a little bit. bit like, hey, can we play? So, you know, these are, if this was apes, we'd be like, oh, yeah, that's totally ape behavior. But it's not. It's an animal, you know, that we once considered cognitively inferior, I suppose. So again, it's that theme of how ideas change and again, how dogs can sort of reframe the science of animal minds, I guess.

And on that subject then, so can our improved understanding of dog intelligence lead to new understandings of human intelligence? can they teach us about ourselves? Yeah, this is one of the most exciting areas of animal cognition. And again, it's something that goes back like 50 years in time. The example I'll take is actually from early studies of something called learned helplessness, which is something that was first seen in dogs, first described in dogs. And unfortunately, you know, it was because it was actually 70 years ago,

this involved dogs being given electric shocks, which is a history of science that I kind of want to, I do want to talk about because I think it's important for us to know the kind of trajectory where we've come from in understanding animal minds. But, you know, one of the observations from some dogs given electric shots, they're basically given away a little cage really in which there's a pad which gives electric shocks and there's a safe zone. And what they noticed is that some dogs given electric shocks didn't, even bothered to find a safe zone. So they basically just endured. And they just, you know, they just didn't even try basically to get away from this really negative, horrible stimulus. And the scientist called it learned helplessness. And they wondered whether or not this could explain some aspects of human society and human culture.

And the interesting thing, they wanted to repair these dogs that had learned helplessness. So they basically helped the dogs. They physically manipulated them to actually move away from. from this electrical charge and realize that, oh, wow, that's interesting. You can kind of cure learned helplessness. And in fact, those ideas directly inspired cognitive behavioral therapy, so CBT, which is obviously used by, you know, millions and millions of people, including the NHS, obviously, rely on it to a degree as well.

So CBT is about reframing negatives, I suppose, and associating, not necessarily going down a path of kind of like, there's no point in trying everything's bad, but picking out the positive associations and really working on those. And in fact, there's, again, longitudinal studies that investigated the use of CBT in children in schools,

you know, suggests that actually year on year that does have an improvement in terms of mental health outcomes. So that's an example of, from the horrible age, I suppose, of dog experimentation that has directly influenced, you know, knowledge today. Now my hope is that now, now we're in this boom time for understanding dog cognition, that there will be applications possibly that humans can take on, I suppose.

And again, they might be, you know, an understanding of depression. It might be understanding anxiousness. My gut feeling is actually it will be the other way around. I mean, there is more psychologists working today than there are zoologists or animal cognition scientists, I think, or I suspect. So my gut feelings will be the other way around. We learn more about humans and we can apply those, our learnings, I suppose, to dogs. And there's a market for that because I think the vast majority of dog owners

definitely, definitely want their dogs to be kept in, you know, a really positive environment where they're kind of flourishing, I suppose. But it's really interesting. That idea that, oh, wow, human brains, dog brains, you can apply similar treatments, if you like, to both. That was an idea that was a long time coming. You know, Darwin kind of posited it first. and then it takes, what, 150 years for it to become the kind of like, oh, so they, you know, dogs and humans and other mammals are on a spectrum, I suppose, of intelligence.

And intelligence means many things. And it's very much a kind of movable feast, I suppose, between animals. So again, the history of these ideas, for me, it's been really enlightening just considering science for the first time for me to actually considering this as a journey rather than a kind of like, here's what dogs know, here's what they think, here's what they smell. which is very useful, but it's a different kind of story, I guess. Yeah, because there are a lot of similarities between human brains and dog brains, aren't there? You've said we've put them into the fMRI scanners and just to how we now understand them. You can just see how similar they are, really. Yeah, and also to a degree, some of the neurotransmitters and hormones that we share, all mammals share.

Oxytocin is one. Your listeners, you know, I'm sure know about it because we talk about it quite a lot. I'm not going to call it the love hormone because I absolutely hate that term. But, you know, it's obviously clearly associated with attachment in mammals. And the fact that we can show really easily, just basically by weeing into a cup, you know, we can show that oxytocin levels do seem to rise and fall depending on even just gazing at a dog or even having the dog gaze at us. You know, those attachments are really, really clear and obvious. And in fact, in the book I mentioned the, there was a, in the 1960s,

1950s a psychological, it's called the stranger, the strange situation test. And you have like child and you have a parent. And in a strange situation where say a stranger enters the room, the child will naturally find sort of shelter behind the adult or naturally the child will come towards the parent, sorry. So the stranger comes in, child moves towards parents. So it's a nice simple study you can just do. And in fact, that was then applied in 1999, I think,

to dogs and dogs do the same sort of thing in strange situations. So it's another example of actually where psychology, modern day human psychology, I suppose, it is starting to overlap with other animals. And again, the key theme is family dogs. You know, often in the modern day, the last 20 years, these are family dogs. They are like kept the same kinds of dogs that you and I and your listeners keep, but they are through fun and through positive rewards, getting involved in some really, really cool research in a way that we can't manage with

apes. I love apes. We all love apes and dolphins. They're clearly really intelligent, but I suspect trying to do these kinds of studies on apes and maintain their psychological health and physical health is really, really, really tough. Hopefully we'll get there. But my gut feeling is that dogs will help us do that. So speaking of house pets and how they've helped us understand more about psychology and cognition, my dogs, they've been trained, but sometimes they're just refused to do what I ask. So are they stupid or are they stubborn? What do they, what do you, what are you asking them to like assemble Macaano or what? No, I'll ask them to go on their beds and they know if they go on their beds, they get a treat and most of the time they do it, but sometimes they'll just look at me

and just go, no, no, not today. My dog does that as well sometimes. I sometimes feel, I really envy those people whose dogs really, really do kind of I don't like the word obey, it just sounds awful doesn't it? But like, you know, who will do basically anything they're told almost without expectation of treats.

And our dog isn't like that. He's only one, but I wonder if you see this as well. There's a kind of weird negotiation. So if I say to Oz, our dog, like, you know, on your bed, you know, he'll do it. And then if I say it again, if he gets up for some reason and I do it again, it definitely

gets this look in his eye that basically is like, I'm ready to negotiate. Are there biscuits? Are there biscuits? Sam, any biscuit, let's see, let's see how many biscuits there are. And in some ways, a little bit of me, I quite like that in a way. I like, I like the fact that there is, you know, this sort of interplay. And so I don't, I don't know. I think, I don't know.

I think dogs can clearly be stubborn. And I'm not, I'm not comfortable really, you know, saying that it's stupidity. So, yeah, I'm going to sit on the fence. Is that, okay, I'm going to sit on the fence on this one? So is it possible to teach an old dog or a rescue dog new behaviour then? There is such an amazing community of dog rescuers who are able to do just that. And they put in, I mean, some of these guys, I'm in total awe of them. You know, they're putting in, basically their day job, I suppose, is rehabilitating these dogs

and slowly getting them used to new situations. Even going out on lead can be really, really difficult for a lot of restaurants. rescue dogs. Interacting with other dogs, obviously now there are, you know, there are clearly, you go for most walks around most towns, you're going to bump into a lot of dogs. And this is a really, really taxing situation for a lot of dog rehabilitators. So yes, absolutely, but it takes work. It takes work in older dogs that have kind of been abused their whole lives.

You've got mountains of issues to sort of overcome. But I think that's one of the most wonderful things really about the hours these guys are putting in is that you know, you do see, you do see differences in nearly all cases. So yeah, absolutely, definitely. And my dogs at the moment, they're young, they're nine months old. But as they get older, is there any way I can keep their brain sharp? Yeah, that's such a good question. You know, we've talked a bit about this overlap between human brains and dog brains and mammal brains by extension. So in situations with questions like that, I'm always like, well, what would humans do? And I don't know about you, but I love a bit wordle and crosswords and things like that.

And certainly I've seen the effect that crosswords and those kinds of puzzles have had on, even my family in terms of keeping their brains really, really, really sharp. Now, obviously dogs, there's no such thing as a dog crossword. As far as I know, there probably is, though, isn't there? Someone's probably invented a dog crossword with little biscuits. But I don't know. But those kind of puzzles, I think, are really good for keeping dogs sharp. some dogs obviously can't necessarily be outdoors if they are in terms of rescue dogs

and if they're being rehabilitated that's going to be difficult but clearly getting dogs out and seeing new things and experiencing new smells and the classic one is you know giving dogs time to smell you know is really really important smelling is like I always think it's like their version of reading you know I've read a good book today I've smelled a really good rotting carcass But you know, those things, the multitude of experiences are really, really important. So I think that's a kind of lesson to us and it's a lesson to dogs as well. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius. That was zoologist, Jules Howard.

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