The Science Of The Bond with Dr. Marc Bekoff

I  chat with biologist, ethologist, behavioral ecologist and writer, Dr. Marc Bekoff about what science says about the emotional lives of animals and why our deepest bonds with dogs are built on trust, safety, and two-way communication. We break down dog literacy, consent, and the alpha myth so you can create a stronger bond with your pup. 

• reciprocal bonds between dogs and humans shaped by personality and environment 
• emotions as social glue that holds relationships together 
• multisensory communication including scent, sound, posture, and facial cues 
• becoming dog literate through careful observation of composite signals 
• agency, consent, and context as practical rules for happier dogs 
• how mixed human signals confuse dogs and increase stress 
• why dominance and aversive training create fear rather than trust 
• dog park “helicopter parenting” and the power of spontaneous praise 
• the scientific shift toward recognizing animal sentience and emotion 
• His good friend and colleague Jane Goodall’s influence and why naming animals matters 
• what alpha really means as influence, not aggression 
• One Health and One Welfare as a framework for compassionate action 
• intrinsic value of each animal as the basis for compassion and conservation 

You can find Dr. Bekoff's books here- https://amzn.to/3R57jKh

If you enjoyed this conversation, I’d love it if you’d follow the show, leave a review, and share this episode with someone who loves dogs. You can find links to everything we talked about today in the show notes, and I’d love to connect with you on Instagram at Baroo Pup. If you have a story you’d like to share, you can email me Charlotte@thebaroo.com. 

Transcript

Welcome And Why Dogs Matter

Speaker 1 0:04

Hi, and welcome to the Baroo My name is Charlotte Bayne, and in today's chat, I am speaking with Dr. Mark Beckoff. He is a professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado Boulder, a former Guggenheim Fellow and the author of more than 30 books. His landmark work, The Emotional Lives of Animals, first published in 2007, made the case, backed by rigorous science, that animals do indeed experience joy, grief, empathy, and love. So nearly 20 years later, with a newly revised edition and a forward by his close friend and collaborator, Jane Goodall, what was once considered radical is now widely accepted science. So let's just jump into this chat. So nice to meet you. Thank you so much for joining me.

Speaker 0:58

My pleasure.

Speaker 1 0:59

So you're in Colorado. Boulder. Do you live in Boulder? Yeah. Yeah. So I wanted to have you on because this season I'm focused on the human-animal bond. It's in honor of my pup Chance, who passed away after almost 18 years of us together. And I just finished the episode prior to this one. I'm sharing my story, kind of uh how the deep mutual connection that we had, the emotional bond and what I learned from him and what he taught me. So, what I'd love is to dive kind of into what the science may actually show about all of those things that I was feeling and all of those things that I was showing, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1:44

I never know where to start on this, other than to say that, you know, dogs and humans, but dogs and other non-humans and humans and non-humans other than dogs can form really deep bonds, you know, enduring bonds.

Speaker 2 2:00

Yeah.

Speaker 2:01

Um and and I like to think of the bonds as being reciprocal, sure. Give and take relationships, uh, two-way streets. Yeah. Of course, it depends on who the other animal is. Um, you know, so now focusing on dogs, you know, where where the dog and the human live.

Speaker 2 2:21

Yeah.

Speaker 2:22

Um the personality of the human, the personality of the dog, because it's really, you know, an interaction. And I think of um emotions as being what I call a social glue. Yeah. You know, that um really glues the the different individuals. It could it could be more than two individuals together. Um and that, you know, a lot of what goes on between humans and other animals is really um multi-sensorial, if you will, I think the word. But you know, we tend to forget that sometimes when a dog does something and and a person will say, Well, I didn't do anything. Why did my dog do that? Well, you may have uttered something that the dog heard that you didn't even know you uttered. Or it's all factory. You know, dogs really have pretty, very keen noses.

Speaker 2 3:20

Yeah.

Speaker 3:20

You know, so so the relationship is um in ethology we call them composite signals, the contribution of, say, you know, um sight, sound, and smells. Sure. And and they work with one another in tandem sometimes. Um so I think that one of the things I like to say is that, you know, the relation the relationship between a human and a dog can be much more complex than we think it is.

Speaker 2 3:54

Yeah.

Speaker 3:54

But it also could be much simpler than we think it is. So I don't I don't want to I don't want to complex it out of, you know, reality, if you will. Um, you know, there's lots of studies that show dogs read us very well.

Speaker 3 4:09

Yeah.

Speaker 4:10

And there's a lot of studies that show we read dogs very well, but may maybe not as well as we think we do.

Speaker 1 4:17

Yeah, I don't think we I don't think we read them as well as we think we do. And I think that's that part of what we need to start working on,

Reading Dogs With All Senses

Speaker 1 4:24

right?

Speaker 4:24

Yeah, and that and that's why I always write about pe uh the importance of being fluent in dog or dog literate.

Speaker 3 4:30

Yeah.

Speaker 4:31

You know, I always think when well, it could uh I I used to say when a person or family get their first d dog, that they have to take like a course in dog 101. Um you know, maybe at I I've actually suggested it to sus Humane Societies and Rescue Centers that you just put together a little just a it can even be a cheat sheet.

Speaker 2 4:55

Yeah.

Speaker 4:55

You know, the problem is that if you say, well, if the tail is wagging this way, the dog is happy, you know, really free, but it's not necessarily the case.

Speaker 1 5:04

Right.

Speaker 5:05

So simplifying it, but I do think that simplifying it a bit would make it better for the dog. And anything that's better for the dog is better for the human.

Speaker 4 5:15

Right.

Speaker 5:16

And and vice versa. You know, it's a win-win for all when when we become fluent and dog, and your dog becomes fluent and human, um, especially um say fluent and human with the humans with whom they're living. Because we all give off different signals. You know, I could do something, and you might interpret it as being, you know, either pro-social positive or not, or you know, negative. Um, but others who know me would say, no, that's just how he communicates, you know, some kind of closeness or whatever. You know, so be so being fluent in the individual dog um is important. And the and then the dog being influent in the individual human.

Speaker 1 5:57

Right.

Agency Consent And Context

Speaker 5:58

Um and you know, the other thing I always push is that I I spend and have spent a lot of time looking at free running dogs. So some are free ranging out in the wild, some feral, but some at dog parks where the dog has agency.

Speaker 3 6:17

Yeah.

Speaker 6:17

Um, you know, the dog has the ability to make choices, and the human with whom they are visiting is open to allowing the dog to give consent. So those and context. So I call those three C words, but I think they're really important because I think the happiest humans I know and the happiest dogs I know um have lots of choices, so they have agency.

Speaker 3 6:47

Yep.

Speaker 6:47

They have to give consent. You know, it can't always be the case, but you know, you'd like it to be the rule of the road is that you get you get mutual consent as much as possible and context. So what you might accept at home, you might not accept at a dog park or vice versa, or in another person's home. Right. Um, so once again, a lot of people say, Oh, don't bore me with it, it's all too complex. But but it's not really. You know, we do that with other humans with whom we form close relationships, or we decide we don't want a close relationship.

Speaker 3 7:20

Yeah.

Speaker 7:21

Um, but the dog, you know, people say, well, the dogs can't consent. Well, of course they can consent. I mean, if you ask a dog to do something and the dog doesn't do it and runs away, tucks their tail and just refuses, uh they're not necessarily being hard to get or, you know, just being, you know, really obnoxious. It might be they really don't want to do something because they're afraid.

Speaker 1 7:45

Yeah. Or they can't do it. Or they can't do it, yeah. They just you know, and so Or they're confused about what you're asking them to do.

Speaker 7:52

Yes. So that's another big thing that you've that a lot of times the humans' voices and their body language are really um the opposite.

Speaker 1 8:02

Yeah. They don't match up. Yeah.

Speaker 8:04

They don't match up. And and the dogs, once again, depending on the dog, but your average dog, I think, would be very confused because they're sending contradictory signals. Um, and and the dog is just saying, Well, I think you want me to come closer. I think you want me to leave you alone, I think you want me to do something else, but I wrote I don't know because you're sending off these incredible complicated mixed signals.

Speaker 1 8:29

Right.

Why Dominance Training Breaks Trust

Speaker 1 8:30

Um Well, you um you have spoken about kind of the shift away from and you've written about the shift away from dominance dog training. Um and how uh and how that aversely affects the relationship that we have with our dogs. Do you want to expand on that?

Speaker 8:55

Yeah, what I really mean is, you know, you could think of it on you know, your own self, your the humans, you know. Yeah. I mean, you know, it doesn't happen a lot, but I've met humans who they scare me. They just do. So if they ask me to do something, and I don't mean only physically, but in terms of you know, being their energy, their vibe, yeah. Their energy and their vibes. Yeah. Well, yeah, sometimes I'll just do it because I don't want to get into a pissing match with them. I'm not a dog, I don't do pissing matches. But um, but yeah, and so dogs are dogs and other animals would be the same way. You know, so I've heard people say, look, my dog does anything I want them to do. Yeah. And then when I dig it a little deeper, I discover that they use they've used, you know, e-collar training, they've used force free force forced training.

Speaker 2 9:44

Yeah.

Speaker 9:45

Um, so sure. They'll do anything you want them to do because they're stressed and they're scared.

Speaker 3 9:50

Yeah.

Speaker 9:51

You know, so um it I mean, it works for the human, it doesn't work for the dog.

unknown 9:57

Yes.

Speaker 1 9:57

You know, so so I think the human can feel like they're in some sort of control, um, even though it's a false sense of control. Where the as the dog, you know, the dog is is reacting to that false sense of control with fear, essentially. Yeah.

Speaker 10:13

Yeah, it's fear and stress, anxiety, uncertainty. Well, I think you're asking me to do this, so I did it, but that's not what you want. So you're slapping me or you're shocking me or something like that. Yeah. Why don't you just tell me clearly what you want me to do? And if I can do it, I'll do it. And and and I don't mean that in the submissive way. It's just, you know, dogs can be very can be very compliant if they know what what's going on.

Speaker 4 10:38

Sure.

Speaker 10:39

You know, and and and I've always felt that way, but it was over the last decade or two, maybe two or three, where I would describe a situation, one a couple were um that I had, but uh that other people have had, and I would think, well, I'm not a trainer, so it's impossible for me to give you any advice, but I wouldn't say it to them, it's impossible for me to see how some assertiveness wouldn't work. But you can be assertive in a in a non-I mean, we do it with other people. You can be assertive or state your point of view in a non-forceful, you know, aggressive way and stuff. So I just I remember that it was it was not quite an aha moment, but I described a situation when I lived in the mountains of a w um, there was a lot of land, there weren't that many homes, there were tons of dogs on my road, and they would come down to my house because I would feed them, and they didn't have to have leashes or collars. There was very little traffic. I mean, they were safe, never had a problem. Um, there were um cougars and black bears around, so there were predators, but my neighbor moved up there. She she got a dog, it wasn't her first dog, and she got um a shot collar. I I only learned later that she really had not turned it on. There was a vibration and a sound. Yeah. And I thought, okay, so one trial learning, and and what she did was, because she knew that I worked on dogs and that I didn't like that stuff, she put it around her home her own neck.

Speaker 2 12:20

Yeah.

Speaker 12:21

She did to herself what she did to the dog. One trial learning, and for the next eight years, that dog had the life of Riley, could run all over free on a lot of land, a lot of acreage, including my house. So I described that to a dog trainer who makes her living doing dog training and a using positive force-free training. And she said, okay, that would be an example where when I hear about it, I feel better since the woman put it on herself and it was one trial. But she said, I could have had that dog do that without ever collaring him.

Speaker 4 12:58

Yeah.

unknown 12:59

Right.

Speaker 13:00

Great. I'm not a trainer. I never would have thought of the way she did it. You know. So yes, I'm definitely um, and and and just traveling a lot and meeting a lot of different people with a lot of different dogs and going to dog parks. I I I see, and you know, once again, I've sometimes would um take down numbers where the dogs who are treated with respect for whom they are sentient beings, yeah, they just seem happier. They seem more compliant. Yeah. You know? And so when I get to know people in the dog park, some better than others, I'll talk to them about it. And I mean, just across the board, the people who say, I say, Do you think your dog is happy? I don't say he he or she looks happy when they do, or they don't. Yeah, they are. I said, Do they listen to you? Yeah. Do will they tell you when they don't want to do something? Yeah. Are you willing to work with them? Yeah. And it's and those are the dogs who seem to have the most agency and are given the most opportunities to agree or consent with their human when they're asked to do something, even if it's something they don't want to do.

unknown 14:16

Yeah.

Speaker 1 14:16

Yeah, because there's a mutual, it seems like they've built a mutual trust with each other.

Speaker 14:21

And I was gonna get to the two words trust and safety.

Speaker 1 14:24

Yeah.

Speaker 14:24

They trust the human and they believe in dog belief way that the uh human is keeping them safe. And when I lived in the mountains, you know, there were times when I would just have to yell no because the dogs were running free and and they would have sensed, say, the presence of a bear or a a a cougar before I did, but they were playing and having fun.

Speaker 4 14:50

Yeah.

Speaker 14:51

So they're they were oblivious to anything that anything other than the four or five dogs with whom they were playing and running around and you know doing zoomies.

Speaker 3 15:01

Yeah.

Speaker 15:02

But but that's the way it goes. Because somebody once said, well, you shouldn't ever tell your dog no. And I'm thinking, you know, it I could tell you no in a nice way. No, please don't do that, you know, and and stuff. So I don't agree with that.

Speaker 1 15:18

But and also again, back to the safety issue. I think if it's an emergency safety issue, but if you overuse anything, then it loses its power, right? So like if you're overusing no every five seconds and everything is a no, everything's a no, you if someone said no to you every five seconds, I mean, how many would you feel inside?

Speaker 15:36

No.

Speaker 1 15:37

I would feel pretty crappy and I would be diminished and I would feel, you know.

Speaker 15:42

Right. And so and so would a dog. I did a when I would hang out at the dog parks, I did a lot of just sort of pilot studies of things. So I did a I I was collecting data um on how often people said no or stop or don't do that versus just good dog. Yeah. Hi, how are you?

Speaker 4 16:01

Yeah.

Speaker 16:02

And I had about 300 examples. 85% of the time, people were saying things to stop the dog from being a dog.

Speaker 3 16:12

Yeah.

unknown 16:13

Yeah.

Speaker 16:13

Not and I don't mean, I mean, you know, firm nose, stop that. Um even in situations when it was clear that the dog was not was not doing anything to to um harm themselves or other dogs or or people.

Speaker 1 16:30

Right.

Speaker 16:30

You know, and and about, you know, so about five percent, I call them spontaneous good dogs. Only about five out of, well, not five percent, five out of three hundred just actually said, good dog. And I remember I I told my dog when I had a dog, or I was with my friend's dog, I said, you know, good dog. And the people, and the person said, Why why'd you say good dog? They didn't do anything. And I said, Well, they don't have to do anything for them to know that I I could say I love them, but I have a strong bond and I care for them.

Speaker 1 17:02

Yeah.

Speaker 17:03

Yeah. So, so that that was freaky. And I wrote an article for Psych Today because I write for them called Helicopter Parenting Dog.

Speaker 1 17:11

Oh, interesting. Yep.

Speaker 17:12

I I have gotten so many emails about over that, including a few people who actually did little score sheets like I did, and we were right about in the 5%, you know, that people spontaneously say, good dog, just because you love your dog. Yeah. It's like saying to a human being, you're really a nice woman. You're really a nice guy.

Speaker 1 17:33

Yeah. Like I enjoy being with you. Yeah. Yeah, right. You don't have to have a reason. A reason.

Speaker 17:39

I mean, the reason could be that you enjoy being with them. It's not because they bought you a cup of coffee or you know, or or something like that. Um, but yeah, the safety and trust things it that I think are have to be really um buried deeply into the dog's heart and head.

Speaker 2 17:57

Yeah.

Speaker 17:58

They just have to know you care for them.

Speaker 3 18:00

Yeah.

Speaker 18:01

And and they do, by the way. People will say, oh, that's being, you know, anthropomorphic, which I don't even know what that means anymore, or that's just self-serving. Right. No. I've I've watched, I mean, I've done eight and a half year studies on wild coyotes, I've studied penguins in Antarctica, birds, foxes, you know, I've seen the wolves in Yellowstone. They know when another individual is cares for them and cares about their safety so that they could trust them with their well-being. They they do, and they know it of other animals too.

Speaker 1 18:37

Right. Right.

How Animal Emotions Became Science

Speaker 1 18:39

You I I want to circle back to your work a little bit because you um you have said that it's you know it's not radical to really understand and respect the emotional lives of animals, right? And so when you started this work, I mean it was over 30 years ago. 50 years ago. What over 50 years ago. What was like, what was the belief then? Because it has shifted quite a bit. Uh you know, we we're now we we it's a it's common to talk about dogs and to connect with dogs and all of those things. But you know, back then it was a different belief. So what was happening then?

Speaker 19:25

Yeah, it's um, yeah, it was it's almost like a black-white situation.

Speaker 2 19:31

Yeah.

Speaker 19:31

I mean, when I started doing this work, so um, you know, I was really good friends with Jane Goodall, and she had a very strong influence on my life personally and professionally. So I was beginning grad school, she was beginning her work at Gombi, and she was naming the chimpanzees and talking about individual personalities. And my work and and what I'm doing really started decades ago when I was like three years old on the streets of Brooklyn. Wow. Because I my folks were great. I would go outside, I'd talk to the dogs and cats and mice and ants and birds. Um we had that requisite goldfish on the kitchen counter that everyone had at the time. And I I would actually talk to the goldfish, and my parents didn't stop me, although I thought I think they thought I was a little bizarre. But um, but no, the reason I say that, but so years later I was talking to my folks and thanking them for being the people they were, and we were talking about my animal connection, and the phrase minding animals came up, and I wrote a book called Minding Animals that was published in 2002. And my dad and mom said, Well, you were minding animals when you were three years old. I was attributing minds to them, I could feel their feelings, I could feel their intellectual capacities, and I was minding them in terms of caring for them.

Speaker 3 20:57

Yeah.

Speaker 20:58

So that's really what led me through a very nonlinear college career and into grad school and into a PhD MD program for a while. And then I just wanted to just watch animals.

Speaker 3 21:14

Yeah.

Speaker 21:15

And so I don't believe in coincidences. But what happened was I just decided I really, I just didn't want to, I didn't want to be in the hardcore scientific um, well, I shouldn't say that, the biomedical science degree. Um and I went to Washington University in St. Louis for my undergraduate degree. And years ago and soon after that, when I decided I just wanted to really study animal behavior, I I came across a um the Washington University Yearly Magazine.

Speaker 2 21:50

Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 21:51

Not this was before the internet. People say, Oh, did you find it on the internet? The internet was not even.

Speaker 1 21:57

Before the internet, that's crazy. It wasn't

Speaker 22:00

Being tested. You know, you weren't sending attachments. Um, but I was very lucky. I started work uh so I immediately wrote to um called um and and wrote to a guy named Michael Fox, who's been doing canid studies for decades. Yeah. And he was an ethologist, like I wanted to be. And so I got into a grad program with him, and this would have been a little more than a decade after Jane started her work.

Speaker 2 22:27

Yeah.

Speaker 22:28

And, you know, we'd had long talks about naming animals, assigning personalities, um, and doing detailed um observations, because that's really the basis of ethology. And Michael was right on board. But like when Jane came out of the field, she was told by the scientists, mostly men, at Cambridge University in England, well, we don't name animals and we don't assign personalities. And I don't think she said, Well, I do, but she did. And that really laid the groundwork for me. You know, because I I would say to Mike Fox, I said, you know, I'm gonna name all these animals I'm studying and we're gonna talk about personalities. And it was like, well, if you went outside, you're gonna get wet. Of course you are.

unknown 23:11

Yeah.

Speaker 1 23:12

Do you think they didn't name those because name the animals because they either did they didn't see them as having emotional lives and personalities, or they didn't want to have a connection with them?

Speaker 23:22

Yeah, that's a great question, Charlotte. Both.

Speaker 1 23:25

Yeah.

Speaker 23:26

For some, they they they had to know they had different personalities.

Speaker 1 23:30

Yeah.

Speaker 23:31

But there's an African proverb, and I don't remember it verbatim, but it's basically once you name an animal, you have a special relationship and special obligations to that individual.

Speaker 2 23:43

Yeah.

Speaker 23:44

Um, so yeah, so I was doing that. And then in the mid to late 70s, Donald Griffin wrote a book called The Question of Animal Awareness. And he was a National Academy of Science, he was a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He as an undergraduate, he discovered echolocation in his dorm room at Harvard by just stringing guitar strings across the room and noticing that bats avoided them. I mean, you talk about simple ethology. Yeah. But I was in meetings and actually a woman just wrote a paper about it, I was about Don Griffin, where people thought he lost his mind. He was he was a very dignified person, you know, a world-renowned scientist, and he started talking about the evolution of consciousness and self-awareness. And to me it was second nature. Well, of course you are. So there was a lot of resistance to that back then by behaviorists. Um people who followed Skinner, Descartes, that you know, animals were just stimulus response machines. But I just decided I was not going to change what I'm doing. So there were there were costs and benefits. The costs were people thought I was just, you know, flaky and loose and wasn't doing real science. I mean, people would say that about me, Michael Fox. Some people said it about Jane Goodall and others. Well, they're not really doing real science. And I'm thinking, well, yeah, I'm doing real science. I'm collecting data, I'm doing statistical analysis. In 1986, Jane wrote a book called The Chimpanzees of Gombi, that is one of the most thorough data-driven books ever written on chimpanzees. Wow. But I persisted, not to be stubborn, but I persisted because I thought I was right. I thought Don Griffin was right, Michael Fox, and a few others. That you just, I used to say, Do you live with a dog? Uh-huh. Have you ever lived with two dogs? I had two dogs in succession. Uh-huh. Were they the same? Oh no. Well, I mean, regardless of breed, and for a lot of people, they get the same breed or mix of dogs. I said, so they had different personalities. A lot of people would say, Yeah, you're right. Some people would say, well, no, they don't have personalities. So I said, well, if you're talking about a shy dog versus a bold dog, right? Or a we call it neophilic dog who likes new things, neophobic, they're afraid of new things. Yeah. You are talking about their personality.

Speaker 2 26:17

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 26:18

Um, and I said, Do you name your dogs? Uh, yeah. And so, I mean, it took a long a while. I mean, it took a while. Well, then why can't you name, you know, wild animals? But in the first edition of my book, The Emotional Lives of Animals, I talk about a scientist and his dog, but I don't really name them as they were. So the guy picks me up at the airport. We got a couple of hours, he said, let's go to my um, let's go to home. You know, you love dogs. I'll introduce you to my dog. You know, my dog misses me when I'm gone. He smiles, he's happy, does all the things that dogs do.

Speaker 3 27:01

Yeah.

Speaker 27:01

And then I gave my talk that night, and he stood up and said, Well, you know, you've been talking a lot about, you know, emotions and personalities, et cetera, et cetera. Um, but do you really feel comfortable doing that? So my answer was, Well, you felt comfortable doing it three hours ago when I was at your house. Right. And I didn't mean it as an insult. The guy was a great guy. Got quiet really fast.

Speaker 3 27:28

Yeah.

Speaker 27:29

And what I was saying was, well, why is it okay for you to talk about your companion dog that way, but get upset when somebody gives a public lecture or writes an article for a pro professional journal, names their dogs, and talks about personalities. And that would have been about 20 years ago. But things have really changed. You know, um, there's a lot more mons of more research. But but the fact is, and and I've had some really hard, I mean, I feel I'm a hardcore scientist, but I've had some people who really worry about, you know, being anthropomorphic or you know, being too free um agree with me. So when I wrote the sec I uh the second edition of the emotional lives of animals came out two years ago, and while I was writing it, I kept track of new research that either disputed findings in the field of animal emotions or said that, you know, we really don't have to treat animals in the some animals in the way we think we should.

Speaker 1 28:35

Right.

Speaker 28:36

So I had a a a yes and a no column. There was nothing in the no column, and I really mean that, even applying standards. There was nothing done in the last 20, you know, I added some earlier references, but give or take 20 years that disputed attributing emotions to animals or said that we are doing we're doing more than we need to about their well-being being. And I kept a little separate chart about dogs, because so I had a long talk with a few people, and I made a comment, and I make a comment in the second edition that we don't need more data to change our ways and treat dogs and other animals with respect. Right. So some people took that as anti-science. It wasn't meant to be anti-science. What I was saying is that very little that we've learned in the last 25 or 30 or 40 years would say, would unleash us on animals, especially lab animals who we torture to say that it's okay to do that.

Speaker 1 29:43

Right.

Speaker 29:44

So I think slowly over time, but I I would really say my experiences over the last, say, 10 years, whatever, eight, twelve years, has have been that a lot of the skeptics have really come around, if you will, to say and agreeing that, you know, all vertebrates, a lot of invertebrates, you know, there's people working on sentience and plants.

Speaker 3 30:10

Yeah.

Speaker 30:11

Um, that we really need to keep the door open to who they are, what they know and what they feel. And there's nothing lost by doing that.

Speaker 1 30:22

Right. You know, so why is that so why is that threatening to some, do you think? I feel like it's threatening to some.

Speaker 30:28

Well, I think it's threatening to some because if you agree that these animals have deep feelings, you can't do the things you do to them in a lab.

Speaker 1 30:36

Right.

Speaker 30:37

Um it's threatening because there's just a lot of people who write about human exceptionalism.

unknown 30:43

Yes.

Speaker 30:44

And they view humans as above and apart from other animals, not only above them on some smooth scale, but separate from. Yeah. Um so I think I you know, I think that's I think those feelings are basically history. Every now and again somebody will come along and say, Well, you don't really know that I mean I had somebody ask me, uh well, you don't really know that dogs enjoy playing. So I said, Well, if you really want to be hardcore about it, I don't. But I don't really know that you enjoy playing.

Speaker 1 31:23

Right.

Speaker 31:23

Because and they and and and and and he said, Well, I can tell you, and I said, so can dogs.

unknown 31:29

Yeah.

Speaker 31:30

You know, I mean, we can I can't, I mean, we we've all been wrong about attributing certain emotional states to other humans.

Speaker 2 31:37

Yeah.

Speaker 31:37

We think they're happy and they're not. We think they're grieving and they're not. So yeah, we can make mis quote mistakes with dogs, but they're not as voluminous as people think they are. And I've had so many people tell me, you know, including dog guardians, who want to be what one woman said, I just want to be more scientific about it. Just describe her dog, describe her reaction to what was happening, and learn that the dog wasn't using her, the dog wasn't pulling her leg, the dog was really in a state of not to get her.

Speaker 4 32:15

Yeah.

Speaker 32:16

Yeah. Oh, right. Or using her for food. Yep. Um, the dog really was in a bad way, although if you didn't know the dog, you might not know the dog was in a bad way.

Speaker 3 32:29

Right.

Speaker 32:30

You know. So what I'm excited about now, literally just today, is that people are doing non-invasive work. There's a lot of citizen science being done on dogs that's supporting the fact that dogs are deeply sentient, highly intelligent, highly emotional beings.

Speaker 3 32:48

Yeah.

Speaker 32:49

And they're not using you if they refuse. You know, they're not using you if you ask them to do something and they they're stubborn.

Speaker 3 32:57

Right.

Speaker 32:58

I mean, they might be testing you.

Speaker 3 33:00

Right.

Speaker 33:00

But, you know, it's it's you know, this, you know, and and this comes down to what we were, you know, starting about is, you know, it's like people say, well, if I'm not the alpha, then my dog will run, you know, don't just run

The Real Meaning Of Alpha

Speaker 33:15

over me. No, they won't. Um, you know, um, there, you know, wolf packs are very high, can be highly structured. There are alpha males and females, but alpha isn't synonymous with dominance or aggression.

Speaker 1 33:30

Let's explain that a little bit because I think that's a common common thought. When you think of alpha, you think of somebody who's tough, who's in charge, who's a semi-bully, you know.

Speaker 33:40

Yeah. No. Um it means that um, well, there's been a number of studies, but um, alpha individuals in a lot of groups received the most attention.

Speaker 2 33:53

Okay.

Speaker 33:53

And decades ago, one of the grad students with whom I shared my office with Michael Fox did a study of captive wolves in Point Barrow, Alaska. By moving wolves around of a, you know, of a pack. He put up a plywood, uh, a piece of plywood so that the wolf, wolves in the pack couldn't see the one missing member.

Speaker 2 34:16

Okay.

Speaker 34:16

And when the alpha wolf was the one missing, they showed the most attention by trying to look uh over the board or around the board.

Speaker 2 34:25

Okay.

Speaker 34:26

So there's a theory of dominance called attention structure. Um, it's been tested a number of times. I believe it works. Some people found it didn't, but the basis of that is that when you're the dominant animal, you have more freedom of movement because others are watching you more than you watch them. And I know that applies in some human groups.

Speaker 3 34:49

Yeah.

Speaker 34:49

So it doesn't depend on being aggressive and dominant or I'll beat you up. It means that you have more freedom of movement because others are watching where you are going.

Speaker 2 35:00

Right.

Speaker 35:01

Okay. Yeah, you might control the group in terms of movement.

Speaker 3 35:05

Right.

Speaker 35:06

Um, you might have a little more, if you will, influence over um what the other animals are doing and where they're doing it. So you could look at that as being dominant, but it's not being dominant because you're gonna threaten them or beat them up.

Speaker 3 35:23

Yeah.

Speaker 35:24

So I like to think of alpha, and and you know, there's been a mistaken view th in the dog literature which shocked me not 15 years ago, where people say, well, people say that there aren't such there aren't alpha wolves, and uh and wolves can't be dominant. Right. No, that's not true. Dave Mech never said that. And and Rick McIntyre, who has he's the wolf guru in the world, and he's just published recently his fifth book, and the series is called The Alpha Wolves of Yellowstone.

Speaker 2 35:57

Okay.

Speaker 35:57

He's not using the word alpha as dominant, aggressive, right, you know, murderous or anything like that.

Speaker 1 36:04

Do as I say. Yeah.

Speaker 36:05

Right, do as I say, or I'll beat you up.

Speaker 1 36:08

Yeah.

Speaker 36:08

So I and and I really believe this, and I'm I'm a pretty good ethologist, and I've studied a lot of animals.

Speaker 3 36:15

Yeah.

Speaker 36:16

Using the word alpha is a descriptive term, but it's not one that invites dominant, you know, do the thick about aggressive and threatening and fighting and and killing and wounding other individuals. Right. Um, and and there's been a lot of work done now on free-ranging dog packs, some feral dog packs. There's an individual in many of them who would be the highest ranking. If you call him or her the, it could be a female, the alpha wolf, you're not suggesting they're the most um aggressive or injurious. And when you say they dominate what other animals do, you're not suggesting that they're dominating them because if you don't do this, I'll beat you up. So I like to just use the word influence. If you and I are walking towards one another and you move away to let me go, or vice versa, people could say you're dominating me, but you're not intending to. It's just I'm giving I'm I'm letting you go or you're letting me go. Right, right. So I like to think of a synonym for the word dominance as you influence other other individuals.

Speaker 3 37:26

Yeah.

Speaker 37:27

You know, and I can tell you right now that people who study these really believe that in addition to naming animals, in addition to talking about their personalities, and in addition to understanding that you can form social relationships, hierarchies if you want, within a group, it's really opened the door to learning a lot more about social dynamics. It just is.

unknown 37:53

Yeah.

Speaker 1 37:53

You know, so um, do you think they're more like I've read, you know, more like as far as Wolfpacks are concerned, it's it's more like they're a parental figure. Like if you could make the equation.

Speaker 38:04

It it could be in some instances, yeah.

Speaker 1 38:07

Okay.

Speaker 38:08

Um Rick Rick uh uh McIntyre wrote about um the importance of cooperation and that a very high like high-ranking female was the most cooperative.

Speaker 4 38:21

Interesting.

Speaker 38:22

Um and somebody said, well, yeah, that's because if they don't do it, she'll she'll beat them up. You know, no, not at all.

Speaker 1 38:28

She'll just be highly disappointed.

Speaker 38:31

Excuse me.

Speaker 1 38:32

She'll just be highly disappointed like a mother.

Speaker 38:34

Yeah, yeah, right. No, I mean, and there's a whole literature started by a guy named Robert Sussman, um, studying pro doing field work on primates, that a huge percentage of their behavior was what we call pro-social or cooperative positive.

Speaker 1 38:52

Okay.

Speaker 38:53

Um and and when you think about group dynamics, um, you know, there's gotta be that mix. I think what it is is cooperative, pro-social behavior doesn't get the headlines like aggression and fighting. All major newscasts start out with divisive, hostile, blood, bloody stories, because that's what grabs you.

Speaker 2 39:19

Yeah.

Speaker 39:20

But to say that cooperation, fairness, justice are important, it's not to say that on occasion animals don't harm one another. You you'll see headlines in, you know, about riots or something like that. Well, they were acting like animals. No, they weren't. Um, and think about, you know, you can't have a pack of six alpha wolves beating the hell out of one another. You can't have a uh a pack of free-ranging or feral dogs all high-ranking beating one another up, or not, or not working harmoniously for um have the stable um group or pack dynamics.

Speaker 3 40:02

Yeah.

Speaker 40:03

So anyway.

unknown 40:05

Yeah.

Speaker 40:06

And and the way that translated over was when I started writing for psychology today, I started writing about alpha dogs, et cetera. And somebody wrote to me and said, You're dumb. I mean, really, very nasty. You there's no such thing as alpha individuals or dominant animals. No, no, seriously. No such thing. And I thought, well, given the fact that you've never studied animals, um, you're hardly in a position to make that claim. So that that actually f got me motivated, if you will, to um write articles like about the topics we're talking about. And a lot of people understand. So I could, you know, you could say, or I could say, well, I think neither of us would, but people would say, Well, I'm the alpha, I'm the alpha pack member among the dogs in my house.

Speaker 1 40:59

Yeah.

Speaker 41:00

Well, that they're saying it because the dogs basically look up to them and do anything they want.

Speaker 1 41:06

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 41:07

Yeah. So anyway.

Speaker 1 41:09

I think that that all kind of got convoluted with like that terminology being integrated into like the dog training community.

Speaker 41:18

That's exactly where I was going.

Speaker 1 41:20

That's where I was like, oh, there there isn't, you know, an alpha in in nature. You know, I was starting to get confused by it. And um, and I think it's just, it's again, it's just being careful with your words.

Speaker 41:35

And you're exactly right, Charlotte. I mean, they're using alpha with synonymous with shocking and hitting and hanging dogs. Yeah. That's what they're using it. Because they're using it synonymously with the act of dominating. Yeah. And you could say that if I'm walking to you or you're walking to me and I move, you've dominated me because you've made me change my way. To me, that would be a misuse of the term. Totally.

Speaker 1 42:03

I would be like, oh, that person needed some space. Space, right.

Speaker 42:07

You know, it's a good heavy package, or you could be taller than me. Right. So, no, and this is a really valuable conversation because I've done a number of them and I've had a a real a lot of people write say, thanks for clarifying that. You know, and I said, Well, it's because I'm a card-carrying ethologist, yeah, and there's no ethologist I know who would say that there's no such thing as a social relationship called dominance.

Speaker 3 42:40

Right.

Speaker 42:40

But it's once again, not if you don't move, I'll beat you up. If you don't, if you don't leave me, you know, if you don't um s move away from me and give me freedom of movement, I'll attack you and I'll bite your throat out. I mean, you know, stuff like that. Anyway, you got it.

Speaker 4 42:56

And I hope you listen.

Speaker 42:57

No, I hope you're listening to because it's a really important, um, it's a really important difference to mark. You know, given all the junk that's written in popular literature about being the leader of a pack, a dog, you know, be you are the leader of the pack, and all the horrific stuff about aversive training that harms dogs. And what you asked me earlier on was really important. Yeah. I mean, you could have a dog doing anything you want, but if that dog, and you could also m do the analogy with a person, if they're doing what you want and yielding to you because they're afraid of you, that's not a healthy relationship.

Speaker 1 43:35

It is not a healthy relationship. No.

Speaker 43:37

And and that's what the d and that's what and and j the dog is suffering just like you might. Yeah.

Speaker 1 43:43

Yeah. And there will be yeah, there'll be repercussions of that. Either you'll I mean, if someone was doing it to me again, like either I would just start shutting down and not, you know, or I would want to fight or like run away, you know. So yeah.

Speaker 43:57

Yeah. I mean, yeah. And the other thing.

Let Dogs Choose To Engage

Speaker 44:00

That's so important about um the and you know, I'll just make a few brief comments because I've written about it because I'm a field worker, is a lot of the research. I I wrote a paper a few years ago, what do all these dog studies mean? And I wasn't writing it in a negative way, but you know, there's people in different labs studying different dogs, different researches, different um protocols for reward, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. And the results differ. It doesn't mean that one research project is better than the other. These are a lot of very bright scientists. Yeah. It just means context. They've studied, they're trying to study the same question. But once you start looking at different dogs, different personalities, different reward schedules, et cetera.

Speaker 4 44:45

Yeah.

Speaker 44:45

And so I've studied free-ranging dogs a lot and free-ranging carnivores. And one of the things that characterizes the free-ranging dogs, even like at a dog park, is they join or leave social interactions of their own accord. Yeah. Because they can choose to join or decide, I don't want to be here and leave the interaction.

Speaker 3 45:09

Yeah.

Speaker 45:10

Well, a lot of dogs can't do that, especially dogs on the leash. Or people say, Oh, yeah, go play. Why aren't you playing? Well, I don't want to. Well, go play.

Speaker 1 45:20

And then they push them over there into play. Yeah.

Speaker 45:22

Yeah, right. Or or they can't, or if they're tethered or tied up, they can't get away from an interaction. Yeah. So I I mean, I've seen I can't even tell you how many different interactions that resulted in one dog or coyote or wolf or red fox moving out of an interaction because it it's in some way they were sensing they didn't want to be there. Maybe they smelled a pheromone, maybe a dog growled at them, and but we wouldn't have heard the vocalization.

Speaker 2 45:54

Right.

Speaker 45:54

Maybe the dog cocked their eyes over. You know, and and this is why I love these conversations is because if you really want to become fluent in dog or dog lyrics, it's you just got to watch these dogs and watch your own dog and look at all the idiosyncrasies of how your dog, or if you lived with a series of dogs like I have, how they all differ in telling you I don't want to do this, or I do want to do this, or I don't like what you just did, or you could do the same thing, and another dog is not disturbed by it at all.

Speaker 1 46:28

Right.

Speaker 46:29

So anyway, yeah.

Love In Their Hearts And Compassion

Speaker 1 46:32

Yeah. I wanna I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about your latest book, um which is Love in Their Hearts. Yeah, of course. Um and it just came out, I think it came out like yesterday or June 16th or something like that.

Speaker 46:46

June 15th, that's Monday.

Speaker 1 46:48

Yeah.

Speaker 46:48

Yep.

Speaker 1 46:49

So the title itself feels like you know, it's in alignment with what you studied, obviously, but that animals have emotions and that they have love, right? That they they love. So um what made you want to make that argument?

Speaker 47:08

Yeah.

Speaker 1 47:08

What inspired that book essentially?

Speaker 47:10

No, well, the book was really inspired by a lot of work I did with Jane and my co-author who's written young adult books. So the book is a young adult book meant for readers, I don't know, 12 or 13 through high school. But all the adults, teachers, parents, other adults who have read it, it they don't it's they they they really like it. It's getting great reviews because it's a very when I say simplistic, it's not watered down. You know, people said, well, is it a watered-down book, uh version of your book, The Emotional Lives of Animals? No, it's actually totally different. Oh, interesting. It's probably 99% different content and the way it's written. But we really wanted people to use what we know on animals' behalf. So the subtitle is a guide to um a celebration of animal emotions and a guide to compassionate action.

Speaker 2 48:06

Yes.

Speaker 48:07

And so it's written for, you know, preteens and teens, but for anybody to basically use what we know on behalf of animals.

Speaker 2 48:17

Yeah.

Speaker 48:18

So it's it's updated even from the second edition of the Emotional Lives of Animals. There's a lot more references. There's also a lot more stories. Um, all science-based, but really great stories about prankster, uh, chimpanzees, um, Simon Montgomery, who's a very famous writer, her relationship with Octavia and Octopus.

Speaker 1 48:46

Oh, would you share a little bit of that story? I'm so fascinated by Octopus.

Speaker 48:50

Well, it's just be you know, all the trials and tribulations of meeting an octopus and getting the octopus to, if you will, become your friend.

Speaker 3 48:59

Yeah.

Speaker 49:00

Yeah. Um, and and you know, be because, you know, because the octo octopi, octopuses, I suppose, are really alien. You know, I mean, a lot of people who never lived with a dog or never formed a close relationship to a dog have seen and been up close and personal with with the dogs.

Speaker 1 49:19

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 49:20

But a lot of people have never, you know, and this is at the Boston Aquarium, um, just a lot about language. We have little uh stories about Alex, the parrot, Irene Pepperberg's pirate, who learned addition and subtraction and could, you know, basically do math better than I could, or, you know, things like that. Um, so you know, there's just a lot of science in there. There's a lot, you know, a bunch of stuff on dogs. But really, at the end of each chapter, there's a guide to how you can use what we know on the animal's behalf. And Jane wrote a beautiful forward for it. Um, and there's a lot in there about Jane's root, Jane Goodall's Roots and Shoots programs.

Speaker 4 50:05

Yes.

Speaker 50:06

Um, you know, working for animals, people, and the environment. So it's a very strongly pro-animal book, but there's also a lot in there that shows that um when you work for animals, you could also be working for humans and their homes.

Speaker 2 50:23

Can you expand on that a little bit?

Speaker 50:25

Yeah, I mean, there's a movement called the One Health Movement now, and it's also called the One Welfare Movement. Um, and what it basically says is what's good for them, other animals, is good for us. Yes. What's good for us is good for them.

Speaker 3 50:40

Yeah.

Speaker 50:40

That in the in and and there's a strong environmental um message there that what's good for us and good for them is also good for their and our homes.

Speaker 1 50:51

I see. Yes.

Speaker 50:52

Um, so you know, and it it's it's and and we've already I've I've already had emails and texts about it, and you know, people who have pre-read pre-read drafts of it. Just simple things you can do. You know, you can go get a job at your local humane society, shoveling poop and giving you know, taking care of the animals there. Um you can avoid going in areas where um animals are during breeding season.

Speaker 1 51:24

You know, being respectful of their environments. Yeah, being respectful of that.

Speaker 51:28

You know, leave no trace, which is a big movement. Right. Exactly. Um uh, you know, you can just work, you know, one I I've done work um parts of Roots and Shoots, working with inmates and homeless. Um but I think the main message of working for animals, people, and the environment, you know, all together is an inclusiveness message. Yeah. You know, that no no one's more important in a special way. Um but I really am a fan of the One Health movement where work that what's good for them is good for us, and what's good for us is good for them.

Speaker 1 52:09

A hundred percent. Yeah.

Speaker 52:11

Yeah. Um it makes sense. What's what's that?

Speaker 1 52:14

It makes sense.

Speaker 52:15

Yeah. And um, and Jane was always a fan of a couple of things. Every individual can make a difference, so we're empowering people who feel that they can't make a difference. You can do very, very simple things. Yeah. Very simple things. Um, you know, and and another thing Jane always talked about was act locally, think globally. So it's great to think of, you know, I mean, I've traveled the world and I've worked in different, a lot of different parts of the world, but it's nice to think that I could do things right here in Boulder, Colorado that could help a lot of people, and people will see what I'm doing, maybe adopt or modify what I'm doing depending on where they live, the culture, and do it easily. And that and that working for non-humans and humans, it it it can it can be it's cheap. It doesn't have to cost anything.

Speaker 1 53:10

Right.

Speaker 53:11

I mean to make time. Yeah. But but yeah, so we're excited about that because um we've got little vignettes in there of people who have written me, you know, a fourth grader who just said, I don't want to eat animals anymore, but what can I do? A young guy who got interested in mice, and he his father was a contractor, so he came up with a novel study, and his father built a mesh um a mesh fence area so they could have mice running around in a five by eight or four by six area, and he could study them. I mean, what could be better than that?

Speaker 1 53:47

That's so fascinating, that's so interesting.

Speaker 53:49

You know, but but a lot of people, they just don't know what they can do. Um uh, you know, um they don't know what they can possibly do because they don't understand the situation to which a lot of non-humans, you know, and I include dogs, are subjected. So um we spent a lot of time on that subtitle, but you know, celebrating animal emotions and a guide to compassionate action.

Speaker 4 54:16

Yeah.

Speaker 54:16

Just simple things you can do. And like I said, you know, a lot of it was motivated by my years of work with Jane. She wrote a beautiful forward and was real a fan of the book because although Roots and Shoots has extended into senior living residences, into prisons and jails where I've taught, it began with youngsters.

Speaker 1 54:38

I see.

Speaker 54:39

Yeah.

Teaching Justice Through Animal Behavior

Speaker 1 54:40

So, you know But when you when you when you're working with the homeless or you're working uh in in prisons, what is what does that look like? Like what is what are you bringing to them?

Speaker 54:55

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, when I started doing it in Boulder, some of the people running the Boulder County jail laughed because I said, I want to teach animal behavior and conservation. Um they loved it. Videos, every they everyone had a dog or a cat when they were young, you know, or goldfish. But I love that question because part of it was motivated, especially teaching in the correction system, was that there's a lot of different ways to resolve conflict that are non-violent, non-harmful.

Speaker 2 55:32

Yes. Interesting.

Speaker 55:34

And um I I wrote a book with um my friend Jessica Pierce, who's a world-renowned philosopher. And so a lot of that message was, you know, getting back to what we were saying is that, yeah, you see aggression and violence in non-humans, but they're predominantly pro-social. Either they just are very passive about things going on because it's not worth getting involved, or they resolve conflicts in a cooperative, fair, just way. And you know, I mean, you know that I've written a lot about the golden rules of play, um, where there's there's fairness involved.

Speaker 2 56:10

Yeah.

Speaker 56:11

So when I started talking to the people who were running the Boulder County Jail, you know, I said, I want to talk about justice and fairness and resolving conflict in non-violent, more um pro-social ways. And they loved it. And I could tell you, I taught it for 16 or 17 years. They wrote they wrote essays that have won awards, published in local papers. Their artwork is just unbelievable. So I would submit some of their artwork to art festivals, and they've won.

Speaker 2 56:46

Yeah, that's incredible.

Speaker 56:48

And and I've had so many people tell me, as recently as last year, saying, oh, they used to call me Dr. Dog or Dr. Coyote. Um thanking me for giving that class and talking about compassion and justice and cooperation. Um saying that it really changed the way they viewed the world. And I want to be clear here, I'm not being judgmental. If I had been reared the way a lot of these guys had been reared, I would have done the same thing to resolve conflict.

Speaker 4 57:25

Right.

Speaker 57:26

Um, and I I've done a lot of work with Animals Asia and all the bears who were tortured in the bear bile industry, and that really hit home to a lot of them. Um and, you know, talking about recovery and resilience.

Speaker 3 57:40

Yeah.

Speaker 57:41

Um, and one guy wrote a beautiful article before he was released about how important that work was to him in terms of recovery, that if these bears could recover from being treated this way, I, meaning he, could recover.

Speaker 4 57:59

Yeah.

Speaker 58:00

Um and and and Jane visited it once, and we were supposed to be there an hour. We were there for three hours. And you know, they were very cautious. And, you know, Jane said, I don't, I don't, I don't need a guard around me, you know. And um, so that was and and also for, you know, um one day, uh, it was a Wednesday some years ago, I taught, it was really amazing. I taught two and four-year-olds in the morning. I then went to my jail class, and then that night I had formed a Roots and Shoots group in an assisted living place in Boulder where there were centenarians. So I I used to tell Jane that within a 12-hour period, I talk, I taught kindergartners, inmates, yeah, and centenarians.

Speaker 1 58:49

I mean the the stories they could all tell.

Speaker 58:52

Yeah, right, and and stuff. But it was but really it was motivated by talking about animal behavior and talking about um co-op the importance of cooperation, fairness, and justice among animals, and using fairness and justice to resolve conflict in a non-injurious way. Oh, and part of the book deals with that too, because it was such a big message of Jane's.

Speaker 1 59:19

Yeah.

Speaker 59:20

So yeah.

Speaker 1 59:21

I wanted to circle back a little bit to the bond between humans and animals. What is something that maybe you learned from Jane about the bond between humans and animals like around the world?

Speaker 59:33

Yeah, no, that's a great question, Charlotte. Um There's probably so much I've learned about it. But the importance of, if you will, um I'll call it equality. We talked a bit a bit around it before. You know, the importance of forming a relationship and understanding who they are.

Speaker 3 59:58

Yeah.

Speaker 59:59

Right? Yeah, you know, that they're not humans, and yeah, they may be chimpanzees or coyotes or orangutans or goldfish or eagles. Um, and trying to take their point of view because because, you know, late recently, um, the way Jane wanted to be described was as an ethologist and a conservationist. I mean, everybody knew her as a primatologist and a humanitarian. And that was because she spent so much time watching animals and trying to understand who they were in as members of their species, how they formed different bonds, how why bonds could um, you know, break down, if you will. Um and so that was a really important message was taking into account their sensory capacities, their motor capacities, that you know, you can form close bonds with chimpanzees and dogs and, you know, parrots.

Speaker 3 1:01:05

Yeah.

Speaker 1:01:06

But they're very different individuals. Not only, you know, I mean, clearly, you know, there's going to be different sorts of parrots and chimpanzees and dogs.

Speaker 4 1:01:15

Yeah.

Speaker 1:01:16

But, you know, what might apply to chimpanzees doesn't apply to dogs or parrots, or or what applies to what might apply to all three of them. And, you know, learning about who they are, but learning about the formation of these bonds that center on safety and trust.

Speaker 1 1:01:35

I mean, it just It's just it comes down to safety and trust.

Speaker 1:01:38

Yep. It all boils down, just like it does across people. You know, I'm sure you have friends who are radically different from one another, and you can still have good, solid relationships with very different people. But the basic ingredient would be they've you and they feel safe and you trust them and they trust you, regardless of the differences in personalities or politics or anything.

Speaker 4 1:02:03

Yep.

Speaker 1:02:04

You know, so that was really important. And you know, the importance of letting the animals be who they are, because from day one, I've always working with Michael Fox, been interested in animal well-being.

Speaker 3 1:02:17

Yeah.

Speaker 1:02:17

You know, how we can give them the best, if you will, species appropriate life. Sure. We can. Yeah. So what might work for dogs and coyotes might not work for rats and mice, and might not work for, you know, other other mammals.

Speaker 2 1:02:34

Sure. Yeah.

Speaker 1:02:35

You know. Um, but and and you know, getting back to, you know, just that relationships are going to vary depending on your personality and the personality of the other individual.

Speaker 2 1:02:48

Yeah.

Speaker 1:02:49

Um and you know, and and and you know, as we close up, you know, I've been talking about the importance of ethology. There's a philosopher named Matt Halterman, and I met him this year, although I knew some of his work, and he just came up with the phrase slow looking.

Speaker 2 1:03:08

Uh-huh.

Speaker 1:03:09

And I loved it. The first time I read it and then heard it when I heard him give a talk is that's what ethology is all about. Careful, slow looking, stopping to smell the roses, stopping to look at a dog and look at their whole body, you know, the gestalt of where their ears are, how are their eyes looking?

Speaker 2 1:03:31

Yeah.

Speaker 1:03:32

What's their gait?

Speaker 2 1:03:33

Yeah.

Speaker 1:03:34

Are they vocalizing, facial expressions, tail position? And that's getting back to, you know, what goes around, comes around. Yeah. These composite signals.

Speaker 4 1:03:44

Yeah.

Speaker 1:03:44

That I I I remember about two years ago I was asked to review a dog book, and I'm glad I did because I couldn't recommend it, and I don't write negative reviews, so I don't never uh know what happened. But it but it was just simply a wagging tail basically means a dog's happy. No, no, no, it does not. This, you know, that it was an easy review. No, I I looked in the beginning and I thought, no, no, no. Ears up does not necessarily mean dominance. It could be they're trying to locate sound. Ears back doesn't mean submission. I mean, a lot of the dogs I had had floppy ears. Right. And you can see the muscles when they pull them back.

Speaker 4 1:04:22

Yeah.

Speaker 1:04:22

You know, so the reason I mentioned that is because Jane was an amazing scientist and observer of animals. The countless hours she spent alone in the early years, looking for and, you know, watching chimpanzees all day, and then basically pulling a blanket over her and going to sleep out in the wild. I I'm I'm not sure I would have done it.

Speaker 1 1:04:47

That's like and that speaks to trust.

Speaker 1:04:51

Yeah, yeah, right. Right. I mean, um, you know, and and you know, people would ask me, do I think there's a reason why she was able to form these close relationships, some of which, you know, she in the end may have regretted a bit, but the animals came, not all of them, came to like her. And I said, well, she and it was funny because it's getting back to what we started at. It's like when I talked to my folks, I said, I could feel the feelings in these animals when I was three years old. Yeah, I could feel what the chimpanzees were feeling when she went into the field. And that was really important. But I think the bottom line there is they have such powerful, you know, sniffers, noses.

Speaker 3 1:05:39

Yeah.

Speaker 1:05:40

They can hear and see things we can't.

Speaker 3 1:05:42

Yeah.

Speaker 1:05:43

They in I and I know people think this is crazy from a scientist, but I am a scientist. They could intuit trust and safety.

Speaker 1 1:05:51

100% agree with that. And I am not a scientist.

Speaker 1:05:54

Right. But you might be freer to say it than I might be. Could intuit trust. Yeah. You know, so over the years of spending a lot of time with Jane, you know, watching animals, but talking about them a lot and writing about them, those were really the ingredients, I think, of her success. Patience.

Speaker 2 1:06:15

Yeah.

Speaker 1:06:16

Learning who they were, accepting the fact they had different personalities. So there were different ways you might interact with them depending on their personality and how it meshed with yours. But you know, the bottom line, and you hit it succinctly a few minutes ago, was um it's a lot of this just feeds into training, which is teaching, which is educating.

Speaker 3 1:06:40

Yeah.

Speaker 1:06:41

So once again, you know, you set up a situation where an animal trusts you and feels safe with you, you're going to be more successful than if they're scared of you because they can't predict what you would do, or or you're giving off odors or visual signals or sounds. Yeah. And they're going, wait a minute. I mean, they may not, you might not see the bubble, but the bubble might be, but but I thought you were my friend.

Speaker 1 1:07:06

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1:07:08

So yeah.

Intrinsic Value And Final Takeaways

Speaker 1 1:07:10

Well, my last question for you, and then I'll let you go, is what what is the what's the most enduring thing that you've learned from dogs, either the dogs you've studied or your own dogs.

Speaker 1:07:24

The most enduring thing is well, there's there's a lot, but maybe just off the top of my brain, would be that mutual respect and trust is reciprocal.

Speaker 2 1:07:39

Yeah.

Speaker 1:07:40

And they read you just like other animals might. So that's really to me is because you're and and and and bringing in the individual. One of the messages I have in dogs demystify, but it's throughout Love in their hearts and the emotional lives of animals, and I know Jane would agree with this, is that respecting each and every individual for whom they are.

Speaker 2 1:08:03

Yeah. Yep.

Speaker 1:08:04

Um and not because of what they can do for you or because you like their personality, but respecting them because they're alive. And for you know, philosophers talk about inherent um or intrinsic value.

Speaker 2 1:08:19

Yeah.

Speaker 1:08:19

So when you when you when you're respecting a person or another animal for what they can do um for you, it's called their instrumental value. No, you're just respecting and that, you know, it's another time we can talk. That's the whole basis of compassion and conservation. The life of every single individual matters. You can't trade off you can't trade off 10,000 mice because there's a thousand other mice. Those other thousand mice are sentient beings with intrinsic value.

Speaker 1 1:08:50

Yes.

Speaker 1:08:50

Um, so when you start applying those principles to your relationships with dogs, it's every individual dog is valuable. You may not like them because they're aggressive or they're submissive or they don't do what you like. That's irrelevant to the fact that their lives are important to them and they should be to you.

Speaker 1 1:09:14

Yeah. Yeah. That was wonderful. Yeah, I know. We covered the whole gamut.

Speaker 1:09:24

Yeah, no. No, that's great. Well, thank you for your time and your interest. It means a lot to me.

Speaker 1 1:09:30

If you enjoyed this conversation, I'd love it if you'd follow the show, leave a review, and share this episode with someone who loves dogs. You can find links to everything we talked about today in the show notes, and I'd love to connect with you on Instagram at Baroo Pup. If you have a story you'd like to share, you can email me at Charlotte at the Baru.com. Thanks for listening to the Baroo, and let's chat soon.