http://www.theage.com.au/national/does-mans-best-friend-really-give-a-damn-20090\
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Does man's best friend really give a damn?

Stephen Cauchi
June 28, 2009 - 3:21PM

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DO DOGS really care about anything other than wolfing down their nightly
meal? The oft-asked question of whether or not dogs can empathise with
other animals and humans appeared to have been answered last month when
renowned animal behaviourist Marc Bekoff confirmed what most dog owners
believe: canines do possess a moral compass.

Emeritus Professor Bekoff, of the University of Colorado at Boulder, said
he and a "new breed of behavioural experts" believed that dogs had the
ability to experience many emotions, from guilt to jealousy, remorse to
grief.

"We're not trying to elevate animals," he said. "We're not trying to
reduce humans. We're not saying we're better or worse or the same. We're
saying we're not alone in having a nuanced moral system."

But it seems a large contingent of behavioural experts do not share
Professor Bekoff's certainty. They, along with the professor, will present
their theories and research into how dogs think at next month's Minding
Animals conference in Newcastle, NSW.

Researchers from Barnard College, in New York, will present the findings
of tests to determine if dogs can empathise. In the test, owners ordered
their dogs not to eat a tasty treat, then left the room. Some dogs ate the
treat, others didn't but the researchers deliberately told the owners the
opposite of what their dogs did. Owners led to believe their dogs had
eaten the treat then scolded their pets.

The researchers found that the dogs that had been obedient and not eaten
the treat but who had been scolded looked more "guilty" than those who
had disobeyed. They concluded that the dogs were simply reacting to the
angry faces of their owners, rather than feeling the emotion of guilt.

Researchers at Monash University's psychology department are conducting a
similar experiment. Two people will be in a room one acting happy, the
other sad and researchers will note whether dogs entering the room
gravitate to one or the other. The aim is to establish if dogs can
recognise emotion.

Monash PhD student Tiffani Howell, who is participating in the experiment
with her Weimaraner bitch Silver, said it was debatable whether animals
could recognise emotion, let alone show empathy and act morally.

"We haven't even established scientifically if dogs can recognise emotions
in humans," she said. "If we establish something like that, then we can
move on and try to look closely at the possibility of empathy but that's
really a complex issue."

Professor Bekoff says dogs are empathetic animals, like humans.

His recently released book, Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals ,
examines cases where caged rats won't push a lever for food if it gives
the rat in the next cage an electric shock; where vampire bats will share
the blood they collect with bats who can't hunt; where elephants in a herd
will slow down and feed a fellow elephant with a leg injury; where dogs
will ostracise a fellow dog who's playing too roughly clear cases of
animal morality, he says.

Ms Howell said her dog "knows when I'm feeling happy, she knows when I'm
feeling sad".

"I wouldn't say she responds accordingly she's not one of those
sympathetic dogs who gives me a lick on the cheek when I'm crying but she
definitely knows when I'm calm or excited she responds accordingly then,"
Ms Howell said.

But, she said, Silver's behaviour was not scientific evidence of
recognising emotion, or empathy, which she said was "the ability to feel
what another person is feeling And we have no evidence that dogs are
capable of that".

Ms Howell's supervisor, senior lecturer Pauleen Bennett, said it had been
assumed that chimpanzees were the animals most likely to mimic human
behaviour, but "it turns out that dogs are better at some things than
chimpanzees are Dogs are top of the list in terms of understanding
humans, they're very, very good at it. Whether they're good at reading
human emotions that's the thing we're going to try and test," she said.

Andrea Griffin, from Newcastle University's school of psychology, said she
was a sceptic of animal empathy. "An animal that watches an animal that's
really scared will become scared, but that's because it's a contagious
effect. It's very different from the empathy in that sense of, I feel for
you. It's a reflex."

This story was found at:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/does-mans-best-friend-really-give-a-damn-20090\
627-d0la.html