Dogs come to learn the cadence of a day. But the nature of a moment-the experience of moments-is different when olfaction is your primary sense. What feels like a moment to us may be a series of moments to an animal with a different sensory world. Even our "moments" are briefer than seconds; they are the duration of a noticeable instant, perhaps the smallest distinguishable time unit, as we normally experience the world. Some suggest that this is measurable: it is an eighteenth of a second, the length of time a visual stimulus has to be presented to us before we consciously acknowledge it. Thus we barely notice a blink of an eye, at a tenth of a second long. By this logic, with a higher flicker-fusion rate, a visual moment is briefer and quicker for dogs. In dog time each moment lasts less long, or, to put it another way, the next moment happens sooner. For dogs, "right now" happens before we know it.
... It is fleeting and fast ...
For dogs, perspective, scale, and distance are, after a fashion, in in olfaction-but olfaction is fleeting: it exists in a different time scale. Scents don"t arrive with the same even regularity as (under normal conditions) light does to our eyes. This means that in their scent-vision they are seeing things at a different rate than we. olfaction-but olfaction is fleeting: it exists in a different time scale. Scents don"t arrive with the same even regularity as (under normal conditions) light does to our eyes. This means that in their scent-vision they are seeing things at a different rate than we.
Smell tells time. The past is represented by smells that have weakened, or deteriorated, or been covered. Odors are less strong over time, so strength indicates newness; weakness, age. The future is smelled on the breeze that brings air from the place you"re headed. By contrast, we visual creatures seem to look mostly in the present. The dogs" olfactory window of what is "present" is larger than our visual one, including not just the scene currently happening, but also a s.n.a.t.c.h of the just-happened and the up-ahead. The present has a shadow of the past and a ring of the future in it.
In this way, olfaction is also a manipulator of time, for time is changed when represented by a succession of odors. Smells have a lifetime: they move and they expire. For a dog, the world is in flux: it waves and shimmers in front of his nose. And he must keep sniffing-as if we had to repeatedly look at and attend to the world for a constant image to remain on our retinae and in our minds-for the world to be continually apparent to him. This explains so much familiar behavior: your dog"s constant sniffing, for one,* and also, perhaps, his seemingly divided attention, which races from sniff to sniff: objects only continue to exist as long as an odor is emitted and he inhales. While we can stand in one place and take in a view of the world, dogs must do much more moving themselves in order to absorb it all. No wonder they seem distracted: their present is constantly moving.
The odor of objects thus holds the data of pa.s.sing minutes and hours. As they note the hours and days, dogs can note the seasons through smell. We on occasion notice the pa.s.sing of a season as marked by the smell of blooming flowers, decaying leaves, air about to burst into rain. Mostly, though, we feel or see the seasons: we feel the welcome sun on our winter-paled skin; we glance out the window on a bright spring day and never remark, What a beautiful new smell! What a beautiful new smell! Dogs" noses stand in for our sight and skin sense. The air of spring brings odors in every sniff-ful remarkably different from the air of winter: in its moisture or heat; the amount of rotting death or blooming life; in air traveling on breezes or emanating from the earth. Dogs" noses stand in for our sight and skin sense. The air of spring brings odors in every sniff-ful remarkably different from the air of winter: in its moisture or heat; the amount of rotting death or blooming life; in air traveling on breezes or emanating from the earth.
Navigating the world of human time with their expanded window of the present, dogs function a little ahead of us; they are preternaturally sensitive, a shade faster. This accounts for their skill at catching the tossed ball midair and also for some of the ways they seem out of sync with us, some of the ways we can"t get them to do what we want. When dogs don"t "obey," or have difficulty learning something we want them to, it is often that we are not reading them them well: we don"t see when their behavior has begun.* They are lunging toward the future a step before us. well: we don"t see when their behavior has begun.* They are lunging toward the future a step before us.
... It is written all over their faces ...
She has a smile. It"s one of the panting faces she puts on. Not every panting face is a smile, but every smile is a panting face. A slight fold in her lip-it would be a dimple on a human face-adds to the smile. Her eyes can be saucers (engaged) or half-open slits (contented). And her eyebrows and eyelashes exclaim.
Dogs are ingenuous. Their bodies do not deceive, even if they sometimes cajole or trick us. Instead the dog"s body seems to map straight to his internal state. Their joy when you return home or when you approach them is translated directly through their tails. Their concern is plotted by the lift of an eyebrow. Pump"s smile is not an actual grin, but that deep lip retraction that gives a glimpse of teeth is is used in a ritualized way, part of a communication with us. used in a ritualized way, part of a communication with us.
You can tell a lot about a dog by observing how he carries his head. Mood, interest, and attention are writ in capital letters from the alt.i.tude of the head, the lay of the ears, and the radiance of the eyes. Think of a dog prancing around in front of other dogs, tail and head high, with a cherished or stolen toy: given dogs" usual way of negotiating around each other, this is a clear, intentional gesture-of something like pride. Young wolves too may cheekily flaunt food in front of older animals. The leader in interaction with the world, the head is usually aimed in the direction the dog is going. If a dog turns his head to the side, it is just momentary-to determine if there is something worth pursuing yonder. This is unlike us, who might turn our heads in contemplation, to strike a pose, or for effect. The dog is refreshingly free of pretense.
What the head doesn"t tell of the dog"s intent, the tail does. The head and tail are mirrors, conveying the same information in parallel media, the cla.s.sic ant.i.thesis. But they can also be true pushmi-pullyus, differently sensitive at either end. A dog who balks at being sniffed in the face may be fine being examined at the rump, or vice versa. Either the tail or head is telling you what is inside.
I would be more surprised if I were entirely correct about "what it is like" inside of a dog than if I am entirely wrong. To address this question is to begin an exercise in empathy, informed imagination, and perspective-taking more than it is to discover the conclusive account. Nagel suggested that no objective account can ever be made of other species" experiences. The privacy of the dog"s personal thoughts is intact. But it is crucial that we try to imagine how he sees the world-that we replace anthropomorphisms with umwelt. And if we look carefully enough, imagine skillfully enough, we may surprise our dogs with how much we get right.
You Had Me at h.e.l.lo
I walk in the door and waken Pump with my arrival. First, I hear her: the thump-thumping of her tail against the floor; her toenails scratching on the ground as she rises, heavily; the jingle of collar tags as she wriggles a shake down the length of her body and out her tail. Then I see her: her ears press back, her eyes soften; she smiles without smiling. She trots to me, her head slightly down, ears perked and tail swinging. As I reach forward she snuffles a greeting; I snuffle back. Her moist nose just touches me, her whiskers sweep my face. I"m home.
Here"s a possible explanation for why dogs were not the subjects of serious scientific inquiry until recently: you don"t ask questions when you already know the answers viscerally. The delight of my twice-or thrice-daily reunions with Pumpernickel is matched by their ordinariness. Nothing could seem more natural than these simple interactions: they are wonderful, but it is not a wonder that at once demands scientific scrutiny. I may as well dwell on the nature of my right elbow: it is simply a part of me, all the time, and I don"t puzzle over its helpful placement there precisely between my upper arm and my forearm, or ponder what it might be like in the future.
Well, I should reconsider that elbow. For the nature of what in certain circles is termed the "dog-human bond" is exceptional. It is not just any animal awaiting my arrival, and it is not just any dog. It is a very particular kind of animal-a domesticated one-and a particular kind of dog-one with whom I have created a symbiotic relationship. Our interactions enact a dance to which only we know the particular steps. Two things-domestication and development-made the dance possible at all. Domestication sets the stage; the rituals are created together. We are bound together before we know it: it is before reflection or a.n.a.lysis.
The human bond with dogs is animal at its core: animal life has succeeded by individual animals a.s.sociating with, and eventually bonding with others. Originally animals" connection with each other may only have lasted for one s.e.x-filled instant. But the meeting of anatomy at some point evolved in myriad directions: into long-term pairings centered around raising young; groups of related individuals living together; unions of same-s.e.x, non-mating animals for protection or companionship or both; even alliances between cooperative neighbors. The cla.s.sic "pair bond" is a description of the a.s.sociation that forms between two mated animals. Bonded animals might be recognized by even a naive observer: most pair bonds hang out together. They mind and care for each other, and they excitedly greet each other on reuniting.
This kind of behavior may seem unsurprising. After all, we humans spend much time trying to pair-bond, maintaining or discussing our current pair bonds, or trying to extricate ourselves from ill-advised pair bonds gone sour. But from an evolutionary point of view, bonding with others is non-obvious. The goal of our genes is to reproduce themselves: an inherently selfish aim, as sociobiologists observe. Why bother with others at all? The explanation of a selfish gene bothering to mind and greet other gene forms turns out to also be selfish: s.e.xual reproduction increases the chance of helpful mutations. It also behooves the selfish gene to ensure that one"s s.e.xual mate is healthy enough to bear and raise the new, infant genes.
Sound far-fetched? A biological mechanism has been discovered that supports pair-bonding. Two hormones, oxytocin and vasopressin (known for their roles in, respectively, reproduction and body-water regulation), are released when interacting with one"s partner. These hormones make changes at the neuronal level, in areas of the brain involved in pleasure and reward. The neural change results in a behavioral change: encouraging a.s.sociation with one"s mate, because it simply feels good. In the small, mouselike prairie voles that the researchers studied, the vasopressin seems to work on dopamine systems, which results in the male vole being very solicitous of his mate. As a result, prairie voles are monogamous, forming long-lasting pair bonds, in which both parents are involved in raising the wee voles.
But these are intraspecific pair bonds: between members of the same species. What started cross-species bonding, which now results in our living with, sleeping with, and dressing up in sweaters our dogs? Konrad Lorenz was the first to describe it. He gave a description of what he called simply "the bond" in the 1960s, well before the current age of neural science, and before human-pet relationship seminars. In scientific language, he defined the bond as revealed in "behaviour patterns of an objectively demonstrable mutual attachment." In other words, he redefined the bond between animals not by its goal-such as mating-but by the process-such as cohabitating and greeting. The goal could be to mate, but it could also be survival, work, empathy, or pleasure.
This refocus opens the door to considering lots of other, non-mating kinds of pairings as true bonds-between members of the same species, or between two species. Among dogs, working dogs are a cla.s.sic case. For instance, sheepdogs bond early in life with the intended subject of their work: sheep. In fact, to be effective herders, sheepdogs must bond with sheep in their first few months. They live among the sheep, eat when the sheep eat, and sleep where the sheep sleep. Their brains are in the throes of rapid development at an early age; if they don"t meet sheep then, they don"t become good shepherds. All wolves and dogs, working or not, have sensitive periods of social development. Early in puppyhood they show a preference for the caregiver, seeking her out and responding to her differently than to others, with a special greeting.* For young animals, it is adaptive to do so.
There"s still a big leap, though, between a bond wrought of developmental advantage and one based in companionship. Given that humans neither mate with dogs nor need them to survive, why might we bond?
BONDABLES.
The feeling of mutual responsiveness: that each time one of us approached or looked at the other, it changed changed us-it effected some response. I smiled to see her look or wander over; her tail would thump and I could see the slight muscle movements of the ears and eyes that indicated attention and pleasure. us-it effected some response. I smiled to see her look or wander over; her tail would thump and I could see the slight muscle movements of the ears and eyes that indicated attention and pleasure.
We don"t need to be herded; neither are we born to herd. Nor, as we saw earlier, are we a natural pack. What, then, accounts for our bond with dogs? There are a number of characteristics of dogs that make them good candidates for us to choose to bond with. Dogs are diurnal, ready to be awake when we can take them out and asleep when we can"t. Notably, the nocturnal aardvark and badger are rare as pets. Dogs are a good size, with enough variation between breeds to suit different specs: small enough to pick up, big enough to take seriously as an individual. Their body is familiar, with parts that match ours-eyes, belly, legs-and an easy mapping on most of those that don"t-their forelimbs to our arms; their mouth or nose to our hands.* (The tail is a disparity, but it is pleasing in its own right.) They move more or less the way we do (if more swiftly): they go forward better than backward; they have a relaxation to their stride and a grace to their run. They are manageable: we can leave them by themselves for long stretches of time; their feeding is not complicated; they are trainable. They try to read us, and they are readable (even if we often misread). They are resilient and they are reliable. And their lifetime is in scale with ours: they will oversee a long arc of our lives, perhaps from childhood to young adulthood. A pet rat might live a year-too brief; the gray parrot sixty-too long; dogs. .h.i.t a middle ground.
Finally, they are compellingly cute. And by compelling, I mean a literal compulsion: it is part of our const.i.tution that we coo over puppies, that we soften at the sight of a big-headed, small-limbed mutt, that we go ga-ga for a pug nose and a furry tail. It has been suggested that humans are adapted to be attracted to creatures with exaggerated features-the prime examples of which are human infants. Infants come with comically distorted versions of adult parts: enormous heads; pudgy, foreshortened limbs; teeny fingers and toes. We presumably evolved to feel an instinctual interest in, and drive to help, infants: without an older human"s a.s.sistance, no infant would survive on its own. They are adorably helpless. Thus those non-human animals with neotenized (infantlike) features may prompt our attention and care because these are features of human juveniles. Dogs accidentally fit the bill. Their cuteness is half fur and half neoteny, which they have in spades: heads overly large for their bodies; ears all out of proportion with the size of the heads they are attached to; full, saucer eyes; noses undersized or oversized, never nose-sized.
All these features are relevant in attracting us to dogs, but they don"t fully explain why we bond. The bond is formed over time-not just on looks, but on how we interact together. At its most general, the explanation may simply be that, as one of Woody Allen"s characters says, we need the eggs. He describes his own crazy pair-bonding attempts with a joke about his brother, a fellow so off that he thinks he"s a chicken. Sure, the family could send him to be fixed of this delusion, but they"re too happy with the protein-rich spoils of his mental disease. In other words, the answer is a non-answer: it"s simply in our nature to bond.* Dogs, who evolved among us, are the same way.
At a more scientific level, the question of how bonding came to be in the nature of dogs and humans is answerable in two ways: with explanations that in ethology are called "proximate" and "ultimate." An ultimate explanation is an evolutionary one: why a behavior like bonding to others evolved to begin with. The best answer here is that both we and dogs (and dogs" forebears) are social animals, and we are social because it turned out to confer an advantage. For instance, one popular theory is that human sociality allowed for the distribution of roles that enabled them to hunt more effectively. Thus our ancestors" success at hunting made it possible for them to survive and thrive, while those poor Neanderthals who stuck it out on their own did not. For wolves, too, staying in social family groups allows for cooperative hunting of large game, for the convenience of a mating partner, and for a.s.sistance in rearing the pups.
We might be social with any other social animal; but we do not, notably, bond with meerkats, ants, or beavers. To explain our particular choice of dogs, we must look one step more immediate. A proximate explanation is a local one: what immediate effect the behavior has that reinforces it, or rewards the "behaver." For an animal, reinforcement could be the meal that follows a hunt or the copulation that follows an ardorous, energetic pursuit.
It is here that dogs distinguish themselves from the other social animals. There are three essential behavioral means by which we maintain, and feel rewarded by, bonding with dogs. The first is contact: the touch of an animal goes far beyond the mere stimulation of nerves in the skin. The second is a greeting ritual: this celebration of encountering one another serves as recognition and acknowledgment. The third is timing: the pace of our interactions with each other is part of what can make them succeed or fail. Together, they combine to bond us irrevocably.
TOUCHING ANIMALS.
Neither of us is truly comfortable but neither of us moves. He is on my lap, sprawled across my thighs, his legs already a little long and dangling down the side of the chair. He"s settled his chin on my right arm, right in the crook of my elbow, his head tilted sharply upward just to keep in contact with me. To type, I must strain to pull my trapped arm up and just over the desktop onto the keyboard, with only my fingers able to move freely, and my body leaning precariously. We"re both working to hold on to each other, to keep that gossamer of contact that says we are going to intertwine our fates-or they are already intertwined.
We named him Finnegan. We found him at a local shelter, in a cage among dozens of cages, in a room among a dozen rooms, all filled with dogs who we could just as easily have taken home. I remember the moment I knew it would be Finnegan. He leaned. Outside of his cage, on the tabletop where germ-carrying humans were allowed to interact with the sick dogs, he wagged, his ears flopped around his tiny face, he coughed long bursts of coughs, and he leaned against my chest, at table height, his face tucked into my armpit. Well, that was that.
Often it is contact that draws us to animals. Our sense of touch is mechanical, matter on matter: different than our other sensory abilities, and arguably more subjectively determined. The stimulation of a free nerve ending in the skin could be, depending on the context and the force of stimulation, a tickle, a caress, unen-durable, painful, or unnoticed. If we are distracted, what would otherwise feel like a painful burn might be a niggling irritation. A caress might be a grope if it comes from an unwanted hand.
In our current context, though, "touch" or "contact" is simply the erasing of a gap separating bodies. Petting zoos have arisen to satisfy the urge to engage that animal on the other side of the fence not only by looking at it, but by touching touching it. Better still if the animal is touching back-with, say, a warm tongue or worn teeth grabbing at the food in your outstretched hands. Children and even adults who approach me on the street as I walk with my dog want not to look at the dog, to watch her wag, to meditate on the dog-no, they want to pet the dog: to touch her. In fact, after a cursory rub, many people appear satisfied with that interaction. Even a brief touch is sufficient to bolster the feeling that a connection has been made. it. Better still if the animal is touching back-with, say, a warm tongue or worn teeth grabbing at the food in your outstretched hands. Children and even adults who approach me on the street as I walk with my dog want not to look at the dog, to watch her wag, to meditate on the dog-no, they want to pet the dog: to touch her. In fact, after a cursory rub, many people appear satisfied with that interaction. Even a brief touch is sufficient to bolster the feeling that a connection has been made.
Occasionally one might find one"s toes, hanging off the end of the bed bare, being licked.
Dogs and humans share this innate drive for contact. The contact between mother and child is natural: by dint of the requirement for food, the infant is drawn to the mother"s breast. Thenceforth, being held by the mother may be naturally comforting. A child who has no caregiver, male or female, will develop abnormally, in ways that it would be inhuman to experimentally test. Inhumane or not, in the 1950s a psychologist named Harry Harlow enacted a series of now notorious experiments designed to test the importance of maternal contact. He took infant rhesus monkeys away from their mothers and raised them in isolation. Some had the choice of two surrogate "mothers" in their enclosures: a wire-framed, monkey-sized doll covered in cloth, plumped with filling, and warmed with a lightbulb; or a bare wire monkey with a bottle full of milk. Harlow"s first discovery was that the infant monkeys spent nearly all their time huddled against the cloth mother, dashing over to the wire mother periodically to feed. When exposed to fearful objects (demonic noisemaking robotic contraptions Harlow put in their cages), the monkeys tore for the cloth mothers. They were desperate for contact with a warm body-with just that warm body from which they had been removed.*
The long-term discovery from Harlow"s work was that these isolated monkeys developed relatively normally physically, but abnormally socially. They did not interact with other monkeys well: terrified, they huddled in the corner when another young monkey was put into their cage. Social interaction and personal contact is more than desirable: it is necessary for normal development. Months later, Harlow tried to rehabilitate those monkeys whose early isolation so malformed them.
He found that the best remedy was regular contact with young normal monkeys, whom he came to call "therapy monkeys," in play. This restored some of the isolates to more normal social actors.
Watch an infant child, with limited vision and even more limited mobility, try to snuggle into his mother, his head rooting around for contact, and one is seeing just what newborn puppies look like. Blind and deaf at birth, they are born with the instinct to huddle with siblings and their mother, or even with any solid object nearby. The ethologist Michael Fox describes the head of a puppy as a "thermotactile sensory probe," moving in a semicircle until it touches something. This begins a life of social behavior reinforced by and embracing contact. Wolves are estimated to make a move to touch one another at least six times an hour. They lick-each other"s fur, genitals, mouths, and wounds. Snouts touch snouts or body or tail; they nuzzle muzzles or fur. They are oriented to touch even in agonistic activity, which, unlike many other species, usually involves contact: pushing, pinning with a bite, biting the body or leg, seizing another"s muzzle or head with one"s mouth.
Directed toward us, the dog"s youthful instinct becomes a drive to burrow a head under our sleeping bodies or to rest a head upon us; to push and b.u.mp us as we walk; to gently nibble or lick us dry. It seems no accident that dogs playing at full steam regularly run into any observing owners nearby, using them as living b.u.mpers defining their playing field. In turn, dogs suffer being touched by us. This is to their infinite credit. We find them touchable: furry and soft, right under dangling fingertips and often wearing their neoteny to greatly cute result. The dog"s experience of that touch, though, is likely not what we think. A child may rub the belly of a dog fiercely; we reach to pat a dog"s head-unknowing whether they want to be either fiercely rubbed or head-patted. In point of fact, their tactile umwelt is almost certainly different than ours.
First, sensation is not uniform across one"s body. Our tactile resolution is different at different points on our skin. We can detect two fingers one centimeter apart at the nape of our necks, but if the fingers are moved down the back we feel that they are touching the same spot. The resolution of touch to animals is likely different still: what we think is a gentle pat may be barely detectable or may be painful.
Second, the somatic-body-map of the dog is not the same as our somatic map: the most sensitive or meaningful parts of the body are different on dogs. As seen in many of the aforementioned agonistic contact actions, grabbing a dog"s head or muzzle-the first part a guileless dog-petter reaches for-may be viewed as aggressive. It is similar to what a mother will do to an unruly pup, or an older dominant wolf will do to a member of his pack. Here too are the whiskers (vibrissae), which like all hairs have pressure-sensitive receptors at their ends. The whiskered receptors are specially important to detecting motion around the face or nearby air currents. If you are close enough to see the dog"s muzzle whiskers, you might notice them flare when the dog feels aggressive (it might be inadvisable to be so close in that case). Pulling a tail is a provocation, but usually one for play, not aggression-unless you don"t let go. Touching the underbelly might prompt a dog to feel s.e.xually frisky, as genital licking often precedes an attempt to mount. A dog rolling over on his back is doing much more than simply revealing his belly: this is the same posture dogs use to allow their mothers to clean their genitals. The forceful belly-rubber may find himself urinated upon.
Finally, just as we have highly sensitive areas-the tip of the tongue, our fingers-so too does the dog. There is a species level to this-no person likes being poked in the eye-and an individual level-I might be ticklish on the bottoms of my feet, while you aren"t at all. You can easily do a tactile survey and map your own dog"s body. Not only are the favored and prohibited places to touch different, but the very form of contact is crucial. In a dog"s world repeated touching is different than constant pressure. Since touch is used to communicate a message, holding a hand in one place on a dog"s body conveys that same message writ large. At the same time, full-body contact is preferred by some dogs, especially young dogs, and especially when they are the initiators of the contact. Dogs often find places to lie down that maximize contiguity of body with body. This might be a safe posture for dogs, especially as puppies, when they are entirely reliant on others for their care. To feel light pressure along the whole body is to have a.s.surance of your well-being.
It is hard to imagine knowing a dog but not touching him-or being touched by him. To be nudged by a dog"s nose is a pleasure unmatched.