Being known and predicted by our dogs is no small part of our fondness for them. If you have experienced an infant"s first smile at you as you approach, you know the thrill of being recognized. Dogs are anthropologists because they study and learn about us. They observe a meaningful part of our interaction with each other-our attention, our focus, our gaze; the result is not that they can read our minds but that they recognize us and antic.i.p.ate us. It makes the infant human; it makes the dog vaguely human, too.
n.o.ble Mind
It"s dawn and I try to sneak out of the room without waking Pump. I can"t see her eyes, so dark they"re camouflaged against her black fur. Her head rests peacefully between her legs. At the door I think I"ve made it-tiptoed and breath-held to avoid her radar. But then I see it: the swell of her lifted eyebrows tracking my path. She"s on to me.
The dog, as we"ve seen, is a master looker, a skilled user of attention. Is there a thinking, plotting, reflective mind behind that look? The development of the human infant"s looking into using attention marks the blossoming of the mature human mind. What does the dog"s looking tell us about the dog mind? Do they think about other dogs, about themselves, about you? And the timeworn but still unanswered question of dog minds: Are they smart?
DOG SMARTS.
Dog owners, like new parents, always seem to have a handful of stories at the ready describing how smart their charges are. Dogs, it is claimed, know when their owners are going out, and when they are coming home; they know how to hoodwink us and they know how to beguile us. News reports buzz with the latest discovery of the intelligence of dogs: of their ability to use words, count, or call 911 in an emergency.
To verify this anecdotal impression, some have designed so-called intelligence intelligence tests tests for dogs. We"re all familiar with intelligence tests for humans: pen-and-paper creations that require you to solve SAT-like problems of word choice, spatial relationships, and reasoning. There are questions that test your memory, your vocabulary, your declining math skills, and your simple pattern-finding ability and attention to detail. Even putting aside whether the result is a fair a.s.sessment of intelligence, the design does not translate obviously to testing dogs. So revisions are made. Instead of tests of advanced vocabulary, there are tests of simple command recognition. Instead of repeating a list of digits read aloud, a dog may be asked to remember where a treat was hidden. Willingness to learn a new trick may replace the ability to figure complex sums. Questions loosely mimic experimental psychology paradigms: of object permanence (if a cup is placed over a treat, is it still there?), learning (does your dog realize what foolish trick you desire him to do?), and problem solving (how can he get his mouth on that food you"ve got?). for dogs. We"re all familiar with intelligence tests for humans: pen-and-paper creations that require you to solve SAT-like problems of word choice, spatial relationships, and reasoning. There are questions that test your memory, your vocabulary, your declining math skills, and your simple pattern-finding ability and attention to detail. Even putting aside whether the result is a fair a.s.sessment of intelligence, the design does not translate obviously to testing dogs. So revisions are made. Instead of tests of advanced vocabulary, there are tests of simple command recognition. Instead of repeating a list of digits read aloud, a dog may be asked to remember where a treat was hidden. Willingness to learn a new trick may replace the ability to figure complex sums. Questions loosely mimic experimental psychology paradigms: of object permanence (if a cup is placed over a treat, is it still there?), learning (does your dog realize what foolish trick you desire him to do?), and problem solving (how can he get his mouth on that food you"ve got?).
Formal studies of groups of dogs on these kinds of abilities-mostly cognition about physical objects and the environment-yield what at first seem to be unsurprising results. By bringing dogs to a field baited with treats and timing dogs" speed in finding them, researchers have confirmed that dogs use landmarks to navigate and find shortcuts. This behavior is consistent with what their wolflike ancestors would probably have done in finding food and finding their way. Dogs are, of course, pretty good at all tasks that involve getting themselves to food. Given a choice of two piles of food, dogs have no trouble choosing the larger one-especially as the contrast between them grows. Turn a cup over a bit of food and dogs go right for it, knocking the cup and revealing the treat. Dog subjects have even learned how to use a simple tool-pulling a string-to get an attached biscuit that was otherwise out of reach.
But dogs don"t pa.s.s all the tests. They typically make lots of mistakes when presented with piles of three versus four biscuits, or of five and seven: they choose the smaller amounts just as often as the larger. And they develop preferences for piles on the left or the right, which lead them to make even more blatant errors. Similarly, their skill at finding hidden food gets worse as the hiding gets more complicated. And their tool use also starts to look less impressive as the trials get trickier. When there are two strings, and only the more distant one is attached to an alluring biscuit, dogs nonetheless go for the nearer string, the one attached to nothing. They don"t seem to understand the string as a tool: as a means to an end. Indeed, they may have succeeded in the original case simply by pawing and mouthing at the problem until accidentally solving it.
A dog owner tallying her dog"s score in these dog intelligence tests might find that he"s scoring closer to Dim but happy Dim but happy than than Top of the obedience cla.s.s. Top of the obedience cla.s.s. Is that it, then? Is he not smart after all? Is that it, then? Is he not smart after all?
A closer look at the intelligence tests and the psychological experiments reveals a flaw: they are unintentionally rigged against dogs. The flaw is in the experimental method, not in the experimented dog. It has to do with the very presence of people-experimenters or owners. Let"s look more closely at a typical experimental setup. It might begin as follows: A dog is sitting at attention and being restrained by a leash. An experimenter comes before him and shows him a great new toy. This dog loves new toys.* The toy and a bucket are clearly shown to the dog, the toy is put into the bucket, and then the experimenter disappears with the booty behind one of two screens in the room. She returns with the bucket-emptied of its treat. This turns out not to be a cruel hoax, but a standard test of invisible displacement: invisible displacement: wherein an object is wherein an object is displaced displaced-moved to another location-invisibly-out of sight. This test has been regularly run with young children since Piaget proposed it as representing one of the conceptual leaps that infants make on their way to becoming incorrigible teenagers and then adults capable of having infants of their own. In this case, the conceptual understandings are of the continued existence of objects when they are out of sight-called object permanence object permanence-and some notion of that object"s trajectory and continued existence in the world. If someone disappears behind a door, we realize not only that they still exist when we can"t see them, but that we might find them by looking behind that door. Children master object permanence before their first birthday, invisible displacement by their second. Since Piaget reified this representational understanding as a stage in infant cognitive development, it is a standard test that is run with other animals, to see how they compare to little people. Hamsters, dolphins, cats, chimpanzees (who reliably pa.s.s), and chickens have all been tested. And dogs.
Dogs" performance is mixed. Oh, sure, if the test is run simply as described, then they have no trouble looking behind the screen for the toy. It looks as though they"ve pa.s.sed the test. But complicate the scenario a little-carry the container behind two different screens, taking the toy out after the first screen and showing and showing them that you have done so them that you have done so before going behind the second screen-and dogs fail: they race to the second screen first, where the toy clearly is not. Other test variations also result in dogs suddenly looking less smart in their searching. We could conclude that here too the dogs appear to be less than genius. Once the toy is out of sight, it may quickly fall out of mind. before going behind the second screen-and dogs fail: they race to the second screen first, where the toy clearly is not. Other test variations also result in dogs suddenly looking less smart in their searching. We could conclude that here too the dogs appear to be less than genius. Once the toy is out of sight, it may quickly fall out of mind.
But the very fact that dogs do succeed, sometimes, renders that conclusion suspect. Instead their behavior points to two explanations. First, it is likely that dogs remember the toy, but do not engage in detailed consideration of what its path might be when it vanishes. Though some dogs are indisputably keen to keep track of a toy, dogs nonetheless regard objects in their environment very differently than humans do. Significantly, what wolves and dogs do with objects is limited: some objects are eaten, and some are played with. Neither interaction requires complex rumination on the object. Dogs realize when a previously treasured object is missing, but needn"t mull over possible stories for what happened to it. Instead they just start looking for it, or wait for it to show up.
The second explanation is more far-reaching. It appears that the very skill at social cognition that is their triumph as a companion to humans contributes to the dogs" failure at this and other physical-cognition tasks. Show your dog a ball, then conceal it from him while you place it under one of two overturned cups. Faced with the cups, and a.s.suming he can"t smell it out, a dog will look under either cup at random: a reasonable approach when he has nothing to go on. Lift one cup to reveal a peek of the ball underneath, and you won"t be surprised that when allowed to search, your dog will have no trouble looking under that cup. But give a peek under the cup holding nothing, and researchers found that dogs suddenly lose their logic. They search first under the empty cup.
These dogs were stymied by their own skill. When presented with a problem of any kind, dogs cleverly look to us. Our activities are sources of information. Dogs come to believe that our actions are relevant-often leading, we might note, to some interesting reward or even food. So if an experimenter ducks behind a second screen, as she does in the more complicated invisible displacement tasks, why, there might be something of interest behind that screen. If she lifts up an empty cup, that cup becomes more interesting simply because of her attention to it.
If the social cues are diminished in the tests, dogs perform much better. When experimenters handle both cups even when showing the dog the empty one, dogs regain their heads. They see the empty cup, and by deduction search under the other cup, which holds the hidden ball. Similarly, dogs who are less well socialized-such as yard dogs yard dogs kept outside for most of their hours-also set right to the problem, while dogs who live inside the house more often plead quietly with their owners to help. kept outside for most of their hours-also set right to the problem, while dogs who live inside the house more often plead quietly with their owners to help.
If we revisit some of the problem-solving tests on which wolves performed so much better than dogs, we now see that the dogs" poor performance can there too be explained by their inclination to look to humans. Tested on their ability to, say, get a bit of food in a well-closed container, wolves keep trying and trying, and if the test is not rigged they eventually succeed through trial and error. Dogs, by contrast, tend to go at the container only until it appears that it won"t easily be opened. Then they look at any person in the room and begin a variety of attention-getting and solicitation behaviors until the person relents and helps them get into the box.
By standard intelligence tests, the dogs have failed at the puzzle. I believe, by contrast, that they have succeeded magnificently. They have applied a novel tool to the task. We are that tool. Dogs have learned this-and they see us as fine general-purpose tools, too: useful for protection, acquiring food, providing companionship. We solve the puzzles of closed doors and empty water dishes. In the folk psychology of dogs, we humans are brilliant enough to extract hopelessly tangled leashes from around trees; we can magically transport them to higher or lower heights as needed; we can conjure up an endless bounty of foodstuffs and things to chew. How savvy we are in dogs" eyes! It"s a clever strategy to turn to us after all. The question of the cognitive abilities of dogs is thereby transformed: dogs are terrific at using humans to solve problems, but not as good at solving problems when we"re not around.
LEARNING FROM OTHERS.
Yesterday Pump learned, courtesy of a pet supermarket"s automatic doors, that when you walk toward walls, they open and let you pa.s.s through them. Today she unlearned it, in a spectacularly poignant display.
Once a problem is solved-a hidden treat is unearthed, an unjustly closed door is opened-with or without a person"s help, the dog is quickly able to apply that same means to solve it again and again. He has identified a state of affairs, fashioned a response, and realized the connection between that problem and that solution. This is both his triumph and, at times, our misfortune. One success at jumping right onto the kitchen counter to get to the origin of that pleasing cheese odor will be followed by much jumping-on-counters. If you provide a sitting dog with a biscuit for sitting politely, expect to be inundated by polite sits. With this in mind it is easy to understand the admonishment that in training a dog you must reward only those behaviors you desire the dog to repeat endlessly.
Such is the dog"s mastery of what in psychological circles is termed learning. learning. There is no doubt that dogs can learn. It is the natural workings of any nervous system to adjust its actions over time in response to experience-and of every animal with a nervous system to thereby learn. Under the heading "learning" comes everything from the a.s.sociative learning used in animal training, to memorization of a Shakespearean monologue, to finally understanding quantum mechanics. There is no doubt that dogs can learn. It is the natural workings of any nervous system to adjust its actions over time in response to experience-and of every animal with a nervous system to thereby learn. Under the heading "learning" comes everything from the a.s.sociative learning used in animal training, to memorization of a Shakespearean monologue, to finally understanding quantum mechanics.
Dogs" easy mastery of new procedures and concepts presumably stops prior to grasping what a quark is. What they learn is neither academic nor scholastic. Still, most of what we ask that dogs learn can only be described as capricious and arbitrary. Surely any animal recently wild will learn how to get its mouth on food. But typically the things we want dogs to learn-to obey-bear little connection to food. We ask dogs to change posture (to sit, jump up, stand up, lie down, roll over), to act in a very specific way on an object (get my shoes, get off the bed), to start or stop a current action (wait, no, okay), to change mood (cool it, go get him!), to move toward us or move away from us (come, go away, stay). This may not be quantum mechanics, but it is just as bizarre to these distant moose hunters. Nothing in a wild animal"s life prepares him to be asked to maintain the state of holding his rump on the ground, unmoving, until released by your cheery okay! okay! It is notable that dogs can learn these seemingly arbitrary things at all. It is notable that dogs can learn these seemingly arbitrary things at all.
PUPPY SEE, PUPPY DO.
One morning, on awakening lying on my belly, I pulled my arms over my head, stretched my legs into pointed toes, and pulled myself up onto my forearms. Aside me Pump stirred, and matched me move for move: she tensed her front legs, stretched them well out in front of her, then straightened her back legs, too, pulling herself forward into uprightness. Now we greet each other every morning with parallel wakening stretches. Only one of us swings her tail.
Even more interesting than learning commands would be the ability to learn by merely watching others-other dogs or even people. We know dogs can learn from our instruction, but can dogs learn from our example? It would seem to behoove a social animal like the dog to look to others for information about how best to negotiate the world. In many cases, though, the answer to this question is clearly no: no: dogs have plenty of opportunity to see us eating politely at the table-yet they never spontaneously pick up knife and fork and join us. Overhearing us talking is insufficient to get them talking; their only interest in clothes seems to be chewing them, not donning them. Amply exposed to our activities, dogs don"t seem to know how to imitate us. dogs have plenty of opportunity to see us eating politely at the table-yet they never spontaneously pick up knife and fork and join us. Overhearing us talking is insufficient to get them talking; their only interest in clothes seems to be chewing them, not donning them. Amply exposed to our activities, dogs don"t seem to know how to imitate us.
This is not a failing, though it would distinguish them from members of our own species, consummate imitators that we are. As children and into adulthood, we goggle at each other to see what to wear, what to do, how to act, and how to react. Our culture is built on our keenness in observing others act to learn how to behave ourselves. I need only see you opening a tin can with a can opener once before I can do it myself (one hopes). The stakes are higher than they might first seem, for success at imitation not only gets you the contents of the opened can, it is an indication of a complex cognitive ability. True imitation requires that you not merely can see what another is doing, not simply that you see how the means lead to an end, but also that you translate others" actions into your own actions.
In that case, dogs are not true imitators, for even after thousands of demonstrations with the can opener, no dog has shown an interest: the opener"s functional tone is mute for them. But this is not a fair comparison, you might complain: dogs simply haven"t the thumbs, nor the dexterity they allow, to operate can openers or cutlery. Similarly, they haven"t the larynx for speech nor the need for clothing. And your complaint would be fair: the question is really if the dogs can be taught, by demonstration, how to do something new-not whether they are mini-humans.
Watch dogs interact for ten minutes and you will see what looks like imitation: one dog flaunts a gloriously large stick; the other finds a stick of his own and flaunts it back. If one dog finds a spot for digging, others will soon join him at the growing hole; one dog"s discovery that he can swim leads another dog to self-baptize, suddenly finding himself swimming, too. By watching others, dogs learn the special pleasures of mud puddles and of bushwhacking through brush. Pump uttered nary a peep until one of her regular dog companions began barking at squirrels. All at once, Pump too was a squirrel-barker.
The question, then, is whether these are cases of true imitation, or of something else. The something else that it might be is opaquely called stimulus enhancement. stimulus enhancement. A minor incident involving birds and home-delivered milk in mid-twentieth-century Britain demonstrates this phenomenon best. At the time, doorstep milk delivery was commonplace in Britain, and h.o.m.ogenization was not. Thus dawn found foil-capped bottles of separated milk idling unattended on front porches, the cream nearest to the top of the bottles. Up at dawn with the delivery men is much of Britain"s bird population, for dawn is a propitious time to sing. One bird, the small blue t.i.t, made a discovery: the foil on the bottles was susceptible to being pecked through, revealing a rich creamy drink just below. A few reports of vandalized milk bottles were lodged, soon a spate more, then a plague of them. Hundreds of birds had learned the milk-bottle trick. Cross with their skimmed milk, the Britons were not long in finding the culprits. For us, the question is not who but how: How did this discovery spread among the blue t.i.ts? Given the rapidity with which it spread, it seemed likely that some birds observed others getting the cream, and imitated them doing so. Clever, pudgy little birds. A minor incident involving birds and home-delivered milk in mid-twentieth-century Britain demonstrates this phenomenon best. At the time, doorstep milk delivery was commonplace in Britain, and h.o.m.ogenization was not. Thus dawn found foil-capped bottles of separated milk idling unattended on front porches, the cream nearest to the top of the bottles. Up at dawn with the delivery men is much of Britain"s bird population, for dawn is a propitious time to sing. One bird, the small blue t.i.t, made a discovery: the foil on the bottles was susceptible to being pecked through, revealing a rich creamy drink just below. A few reports of vandalized milk bottles were lodged, soon a spate more, then a plague of them. Hundreds of birds had learned the milk-bottle trick. Cross with their skimmed milk, the Britons were not long in finding the culprits. For us, the question is not who but how: How did this discovery spread among the blue t.i.ts? Given the rapidity with which it spread, it seemed likely that some birds observed others getting the cream, and imitated them doing so. Clever, pudgy little birds.
By providing a captive population of chickadees with a similar setup, one group of experimenters observed the phenomenon recur step-by-step. Their studies suggest a more likely explanation than imitation. Instead of carefully observing and a.s.similating all that the first, cream-pilfering bird was doing, other birds simply saw that he was atop the bottle. This may have attracted them to the bottles. Once landed on the bottle tops, by doing a natural behavior-pecking-they discovered the foil"s puncturability themselves. In other words, they were drawn to a stimulus, stimulus, the bottle, by the first bird"s presence. Its presence enhanced the likelihood that they too would become cream stealers, but it did not demonstrate how to do so. the bottle, by the first bird"s presence. Its presence enhanced the likelihood that they too would become cream stealers, but it did not demonstrate how to do so.
This may seem nitpicky, but there is an important difference at work here. In a case of stimulus enhancement, I see that you are acting in some unspecified way on the door, after which it opens. If I amble over to the door and kick it, hit it, and otherwise maul it, I might get it to open, too. In a case of imitation, I watch exactly what you are doing with the door and reproduce just those actions-the seizing and turning of the k.n.o.b, the application of pressure after turning, and so on-that lead to the desired outcome. I can do that because I can imagine that what you are doing is somehow related to your goal, your desideratum: to leave the room through the door. The blue t.i.ts, on the other hand, need not have been thinking about what the milk bottle t.i.ts wanted-and probably were not.
MORE HUMAN THAN BIRD.
Dog researchers wanted to test whether the stick-flaunting dogs are acting more like a blue t.i.t or more like a human being. The first experiment was designed to determine if dogs would imitate humans in a situation in which the people were acting to attain some desired object. The researchers were asking, in essence, whether dogs can understand that a person"s actions function as a demonstration that can be followed if the dog is otherwise unsure how to get that desired object himself.
They set up a simple experiment in which a toy or a bit of food was placed in the crook of a V-shaped fence. The dog was seated on the outside of the point of the V, and was given a chance to try to retrieve the food. He couldn"t go straight through or over the fence, but both routes around the fence-around the left stem or the right stem-were equally long, so equally good. When given no demonstration of how to get around the fence, the dogs chose randomly, preferring neither side, and eventually making their way to the inside of the V. But when given a chance to watch a person walking around the left left side of the fence toward the reward-a person actively talking to the dog along the way-the observing dogs changed their behavior outright: they also chose the left side. side of the fence toward the reward-a person actively talking to the dog along the way-the observing dogs changed their behavior outright: they also chose the left side.
It looks as though these dogs were imitating. And what they learned by imitating stuck: when a shortcut through the fence was later introduced, they maintained the route they had learned by watching, ignoring the shortcut. The researchers ran a handful of other trials to be clear what exactly it was that the dogs were doing. They were not simply navigating by smell: laying down a scent trail on the left arm of the fence did not induce dogs to follow it.*
Instead it had something to do with understanding others" actions. Simply watching someone quietly walk around the fence was insufficient to get the dogs to follow the person"s route: the person had to be calling the dog"s name, grabbing attention, yammering away. Watching another dog dog who had been trained to retrieve the reward by the left-hand route also prompted observing dogs to go left. who had been trained to retrieve the reward by the left-hand route also prompted observing dogs to go left.
This result showed that dogs can see others" behavior as a demonstration of how to get to a goal. But we know from experience with our dogs that not every relevant behavior we do is seen as a "demonstration." Pump may watch me navigate around strewn chairs, books, and clothes piles as I head to the kitchen, but she will herself charge right through piles to take the quickest route. Other tests are necessary to determine if dogs are truly putting themselves in our shoes, and not just p.r.o.ne to follow that human, follow that human, wherever we go. wherever we go.
Two experiments have tested just this imitative understanding. The first asked what exactly dogs see in others" behavior: the means or the end. A good imitator would see both, but would also see if the particular means isn"t the most expedient way to the end. From a young age, human infants can do just that. They will religiously imitate-sometimes to a fault*
-but they can also be astute. For instance, in one cla.s.sic experiment, after watching an adult turn on a light in an unusual way-with his head-the infant subjects could imitate this novel action, if asked to do so. But they did not spontaneously imitate if the adult was grasping something in his hands, making him unable to use them to turn on the light: the infants used their hands, reasonably enough. If the adult held nothing in his hands, infants were more likely to turn on the light with their heads, too-inferring, perhaps, that there must be good reason, besides one"s hands being full, for this new maneuver. They seemed to realize that the adult"s actions could could be imitated, and they selectively imitated them only insofar as it seemed necessary to do so. be imitated, and they selectively imitated them only insofar as it seemed necessary to do so.
In the dog variation on this paradigm, a wooden rod taking the place of a light, one "demonstrator" dog was taught to press the rod with his paw to release a treat from a spring-loaded dispenser. The researchers then had the demonstrator dog perform his newfound trick in front of other dogs who were being restrained to watch. In one trial the demonstrator pressed the rod while holding a ball in his mouth; in the other, he had no ball. Finally, the observer dogs were let at the apparatus.
It should be noted that dogs are not naturally drawn to mechanical dispensers, even ones with wooden rods. And pressing pressing is not the first approach of most dogs when facing a problem: dogs can use their paws handily, but they typically go at the world mouth first and paws second. Though they can be trained to push or press an object, dogs" first approach at an object such as this one is not one of intuitive understanding. They will b.u.mp it, mouth it, knock into it. If they can, they will push it over, dig at it, jump on it. But they do not consider the scene for a moment and then calmly press the rod. Thus the first approach of the observer dogs was particularly interesting: Would the demonstration change their behavior? is not the first approach of most dogs when facing a problem: dogs can use their paws handily, but they typically go at the world mouth first and paws second. Though they can be trained to push or press an object, dogs" first approach at an object such as this one is not one of intuitive understanding. They will b.u.mp it, mouth it, knock into it. If they can, they will push it over, dig at it, jump on it. But they do not consider the scene for a moment and then calmly press the rod. Thus the first approach of the observer dogs was particularly interesting: Would the demonstration change their behavior?
These dog subjects behaved just like the human infants with the light switches: The group that saw the demonstration with no ball imitated faithfully, pressing the rod to release the treat. The group that saw the demonstrator acting while holding a ball in his mouth also learned how to get the treat, but used their (ball-less) mouths instead of paws.
That the dogs so imitated is remarkable. This is no mere mimicry, copying for copying"s sake. Nor is it just an attraction to the source of activity. It looks more like the behavior of an animal who is considering what another animal is doing: what his intention is, and how-or how much-to reproduce that behavior themselves, if they have the same intent.
If these experiments represent the performance of all dogs, it looks as though we could say that dogs are, at the very least, able to learn by watching others in particular social contexts-when food is at stake, for instance. One final experiment suggests something even more impressive: that dogs may actually understand the concept concept of imitation. The single subject, an a.s.sistant dog trained to work with the blind, had already learned by operant conditioning to do a number of non-obvious actions on command: to lie down, turn around in a circle, put a bottle in a box. What the experimenters wondered was whether he could do these actions not just to a command, but after seeing someone else do the action themselves. Sure enough, the dog ably learned to turn around in a circle not after the of imitation. The single subject, an a.s.sistant dog trained to work with the blind, had already learned by operant conditioning to do a number of non-obvious actions on command: to lie down, turn around in a circle, put a bottle in a box. What the experimenters wondered was whether he could do these actions not just to a command, but after seeing someone else do the action themselves. Sure enough, the dog ably learned to turn around in a circle not after the Turn around in a circle Turn around in a circle command, but on simply seeing a human do such a thing, followed by the imitation request command, but on simply seeing a human do such a thing, followed by the imitation request Do it! Do it! They then examined what he would do when seeing a human do a new, completely odd action, such as running off to push a swing, tossing a bottle, or suddenly walking around someone else and returning to their starting spot. They then examined what he would do when seeing a human do a new, completely odd action, such as running off to push a swing, tossing a bottle, or suddenly walking around someone else and returning to their starting spot.