How Do Animals Think?

I just had a kind of strange perspective shift into what it would be like to be a dog.

And it got me thinking, how do animals think?

Do they think in words, pictures, simple feelings and nuances that are simply subjective without literal content?


What do you think?

E

We have to start with the basics of a dog. From birth. It smells the mother, it's milk source and its siblings with the hearing, smelling and taste senses.

[BlueSky]

It is a great mystery...............if only they could talk!...LOL

I wonder if it's similar to a baby, purely subjective and abstract..

[Smiler]

Maybe it's all LOVE being a dog :)

And maybe they are more evolved.( who knows).....Funny I was thinking this week who says Humans are the most evolved species here ,(humans ****)

place the word *DOG* in a mirror............. got to wonder lol :)

Originally Posted by Smiler

Maybe it's all LOVE being a dog :)

And maybe they are more evolved.( who knows).....Funny I was thinking this week who says Humans are the most evolved species here ,(humans ****)

place the word *DOG* in a mirror............. got to wonder lol :)

"Treat dogs as you would want Gods to treat you"

like animals

Originally Posted by WhiteShaman

It is a great mystery...............if only they could talk!...LOL

Shaman,

But they do!! You simply have to learn to speak "Dog" Why should they be expected to do all the work in learning OUR language when THEIRS (which is telepathic in nature) is so much more precise and rich?

[Lovely]

They think probably like a human baby thinks before it learns a language.
They probably think in emotion, instincts and memories. For example
if they are in pain they think of ways to escape it. Or if they see someone
they know they will run to or away from that animal or person. Animals are so
smart and I often think they may be wiser/intuitive than us sometimes.
For example I heard a story from an online friend of mine who rescues animals.
One day her cows were all freaking out and pressing up against the fence
and trying to escape. She was confused until she found out a slaughter
house was 5 miles away from her. The cows could actually smell the blood
from the cows and got scared....
It's amazing how we underestimate the animal mind.
If humans were being killed 5 miles away I wouldn't even
notice in the slightest.

Just imagine how you would think if you never learned a language
and that is pretty much how an animal thinks.

A while back NGeo did a series on investigating the intellegance of dogs. Blew me away.

For one thing dogs carry a gene that none of the other canids have and it's believed that this gene is the one responsible for dog's devotion to man.

Give a dog and a wolf the same problem to solve and a wolf will nearly kill itself trying to achieve the solution, a dog will try and when unsuccessful will literaly look to a human for a clue.

Dogs can puzzle solve and given a new set of circumstances re work the answer to fit the new challenge.

A dog adopted from a pound was suspected by it's owner of laying it's many many toys into recognisable patterns. A psychologist was called in and verified the animal was using patterns arranging either by color, by type of toy, or in geometric arrangements.

To some extent i can speak 'dogese" which most observant people can learn. Dogs use body language to convey thier wants and read ours very well. If intelligence is measured by language dogs are smarter, they find it easier to learn words then we do learning thier posture signals.

i won't eat calamari....there is the famouse story of the scientist who couldn't figure out how the shrimp was disappearing from the tank in his lab. They set up a video camera which recorded the octopus, removing the cover to it's tank, crawling across the counter, removing the top of the shrimp tank and having itself a little midnight snack. And then like all smart thieves covered it's tracks by replacing the shrimp tank cover when it left and replacing it's own tank cover when it returned to it's quarters. It learned this by watching the scientist at work. Since then there have been experiments with octopi... so far the evidence points to extreme intellegence. maybe it will turn out that we can be out thunk by something 8 armed and squishy( and can spell better then some humans)

After watching some of the investigating into animal intellegence i've learned science has concluded it needs to scrap just about every preconcieved notion it had regarding it.

Facinating subject.