Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
So you would say yes?
  

    

Well, it depends.
  

    
Oh, playing hard to maul?
  

    

Always.
  

    
I love this stuff, and can go on about it endlessly.  Right now I'm
reading some material Marc Bekoff kindly sent me, about social morality,
fair play, and the senes of justice in animals, and its possible
development through play.  It could almost be a companion to that book
that was such a hit some years back, "Everything I Needed To Know I
Learned in Kindergarten" (or seomthing close to that).
  

    
Just as with When Elephants Weep, I can't think of anyone on my list
who wouldn't love this.  Do you know if it's coming out in German soon?
  

    
I do not know, but I was wondering that very thing myself today, and
I hope to find out what's being done in the way of foreign sales.
  

    
They'll need to get very fine translators who can capture that voice.
  

    


susiemac, how do you feel about the notion that humans are the superior
animals?
  

    
Superior at what? I would ask, temporizing.  We are superior at
conquering the planet, superior at writing books, superior at
inventing steam engines.  We are terrible at echolocation,
detecting magnetic fields, and modesty.  We do excellently
on tests that we ourselves have designed to measure excellence.

But many intelligence tests have a section where you have to
mentally rotate objects to see which ones are the same.  Pigeons
can do this too, and they can do it faster than people.  The
excuse we give is that pigeons have to navigate in 3 dimensions
more than we do, what with flying and all.  But that is obviously
just an excuse.  I dread going on a game show and being forced to
compete against a panel of pigeons at this task.
  

    

how is it we haven't talked about puppies?
  

    
You never asked!
  

    
I like puppies.  Of course on the cover it says "In the Wild", but I'm glad
you found occasion to talk about puppies, kittens, and captive animals as
well.
  

    
Dingo puppies are pretty wild, and I talk about them.
  

    
sumac, on some pet nutrition yahoo groups I've been on, people easily
switch their adult dogs from dry dog food to pieces of raw meat. But cats
seem to be much harder to switch, even though cats are more strictly
carnivorous than dogs. I haven't got the book yet. Does this come up in the
book - how animals learn what is food, and how flexible they can be in
their definiton of food? Does this dietary inflexibility of cats that some
people describe fit anything you've studied?
  

    
OK, so I have a dog question.  Our dog Zoe is going blind and deaf, at 
least when we ask her to do something she doesn't want to do (for 
example, when I say "Zoe, don't chase that skunk" she still chases the 
skunk).

I've noticed though, that when I throw a ball into the ocean, she will 
go an get it, drool on it for a while, then drop it at my feet.

Sometimes she can't find the ball in the water, so she'll walk in the 
shallow water looking for it.  I stand on the beach and look for it.

If I find it first, I point at it and call her name.  It seems like she 
has an easy time hearing me, seeing where I'm pointing, and 
triangulating to find the ball based on where I'm pointing and where 
we're standing.

She's only blind and deaf when the ball's not lost?  She's got a little 
pigeon in her genes?  She thinks I'm not noticing her intermittent 
ability to see, hear and triangulate?

Please explain.
  

    
My grandmother (peace) was like that. She was only deaf when we
weren't talking about her ...
  

    

what are dingos?  are they dogs that went feral?  And what about jackals?
and coyotes?  did it all begin with the woof or what?

also, and perhaps more to the point, does one have any sense of the
difference between wolf/dingo/jackal puppies, esp compared to our domestic
types?
  

    
Bought book last night.  Flipped through it on the way home.  Found
story about dog and rabbit hunting squirrels together.  Have now
recovered purchase price of book in repeated giggles all day.
  

    
I love your stories, sumac. Don't stop!
  

    
Marty, I certainly talk about how young animals learn what's food and
what's icky/inedible.  I'm not sure why cats would be harder to switch,
but I wonder if it might not be related to the fact that dogs --- canids ---
often eat dinner together, so to speak, with the pack all gnawing on
large prey, whereas cats --- felids --- do so less often.  But maybe not,
since mother cats often share with kittens.

So in fact, I have no idea.
  

    
Um, (bbraasch), Zoe has learned your number.  But very few dogs can
parse "Don't chase that ----."  But when she's looking for the  ball
you guys are working as a team, you have the same goal GET IT GET IT,
whereas when you're giving her unwelcome commands like Don't and Drop
it and even Come when she's doing something interesting, you're working
at cross-purposes, and of course she's payng less attention.  In those
situations the 2 of you aren't working together.
  

    
Dingos are dogs that went feral a long time ago, apparently.  Jackals
have always been wild, as have coyotes.  I can't even keep up with the
arguments about what canids came first, but I suspect there has always
been an array of sizes, following the sizes of availbale prey.

There is interesting research about the difference between wolf puppies
and dog puppies, and one that came out recently is that wolves are
terrible at figuring out what's going on in the human mind.  Even though
wolves have larger brains, if a human-reared wolf is in a room with a
person who knows where there is a snack, the wolf has a terrible time
figuring out where the snack is, whereas the dog effortlessly reads your
mind and gets the snack.  WHen I say the dog reads your mind I mean that
it reads your signals and your body language in a way that's much harder
for a wolf to do.

A classmate of mine had a lovely dog/wolf hybrid.  Margot is a vegetarian
who occasionally eats salmon.  At dinner, her pet sits quietly in the
dining room.  One evening at dinner the wolf-dog turned her head and looked
alertly toward the front door, a thing she does when someone is approaching.
Margot went to the door, but no one was there.  When she returned to the
dining room, no fish was there.  She thought hte wolf-dog had simply yielded
to temptation.  Only after a couple such evenings did Margot realize that
the wolf-dog was *only* wrong about whether someome was at the door when the
entree was salmon.

Some people who hear the story ascribe the wolf-dog's brilliant deception to
the wold side of the family, but maybe it comes from the dog side....
  

    
I love the story about the dog-rabbit team.  Mighty hunters, both of them.
  

    
Hypothesis: when dogs were domesticated, they were fed by their humans,
whether it be their share of the mutual hunt, or more commonly table scraps.

When cats were domesticated, many of them were domesticated precisely in
order that they continue to provide most of their own food, by mousing.

So it makes sense for dogs to trust whatever humans give them, and for cats
to be cautious about what's edible.

Oh, I dunno.

Speaking of cats, mine demonstrated an innate response I didn't know he had
last night.  I had the radio on and they were doing a story about wolf
reintroduction in France and other places.  Meanwhile I was also reading
sumac's book and the cat was sitting quietly on a pillow near my shoulder
(we were in bed).

When the story ended, they played a soft wolf howl.

Satchel always ignores the sounds that come from the radio and TV, but at
this he raised his head and widened his eyes, looking that direction.  His
nostrils worked: he was sniffing, and breathing a little harder too.  It was
a howl of several syllables and every time it restarted, his eyes and pupils
widened further.  He glanced at me to see what I was doing about it.

I turned off the radio and reassured him that I'd never let a wolf, or any
wild canid, in the house, but his tail switched for a minute or two
afterwards.  He was riled up.  Now, to my knowledge, Satchel has neither met
a wolf, nor seen the reaction of any other creature to a wolf call.  So for
him to pick that sound out of a million other radio/TV noises that he didn't
give a flip about--gotta be hardwired?