Study: Dogs Understand Human Language


WASHINGTON — As many a dog owner will attest, our furry friends are listening. Now, for the doubters, there is scientific proof they understand much of what they hear.

Science magazine reports that German researchers have found a border collie (search) named Rico who understands more than 200 words and can learn new ones as quickly as many children.

Patti Strand, an American Kennel Club (search) board member, called the report "good news for those of us who talk to our dogs."

"Like parents of toddlers, we learned long ago the importance of spelling key words like bath, pill or vet when speaking in front of our dogs," Strand said. "Thanks to the researchers who've proven that people who talk to their dogs are cutting-edge communicators, not just a bunch of eccentrics."

The researchers found that Rico knows the names of dozens of play toys and can find the one called for by his owner. That is a vocabulary size about the same as apes, dolphins and parrots trained to understand words, the researchers say.

Rico can even take the next step, figuring out what a new word means.

The researchers put several known toys in a room along with one that Rico had not seen before. From a different room, Rico's owner asked him to fetch a toy, using a name for the toy the dog had never heard.

The border collie, a breed known primarily for its herding ability, was able to go to the room with the toys and, seven times out of 10, bring back the one he had not seen before. The dog seemingly understood that because he knew the names of all the other toys, the new one must be the one with the unfamiliar name.

"Apparently he was able to link the novel word to the novel item based on exclusion learning, either because he knew that the familiar items already had names or because they were not novel," said the researchers, led by Julia Fischer of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (search) in Leipzig.

A month later, he still remembered the name of that new toy three out of six times, even without having seen it since that first test. That is a rate the scientists said was equivalent to that of a 3-year-old.

Rico's learning ability may indicate that some parts of speech comprehension developed separately from human speech, the scientists said.

"You don't have to be able to talk to understand a lot," Fischer said. The team noted that dogs have evolved with humans and have been selected for their ability to respond to the communications of people.

Katrina Kelner, Science's deputy editor for life sciences, said "such fast, one-trial learning in dogs is remarkable. This ability suggests that the brain structures that support this kind of learning are not unique to humans and may have formed the evolutionary basis of some of the advanced language abilities of humans."

Perhaps, although Paul Bloom of Yale University urges caution.

"Children can understand words used in a range of contexts. Rico's understanding is manifested in his fetching behavior," Bloom writes in a commentary, also in Science.

Bloom calls for further experiments to answer several questions: Can Rico learn a word for something other than a small object to be fetched? Can he display knowledge of a word in some way other than fetching? Can he follow an instruction not to fetch something?

Fischer and her colleagues are still working with Rico to see if he can understand requests to put toys in boxes or to bring them to certain people. Rico was born in December 1994 and lives with his owners. He was tested at home.


Heat can kill

With the weather heating up, The Humane Society of the United States would like to remind readers that summer temperatures can be deadly for pets left unattended in parked cars. In just minutes, pets left in parked cars can suffer heat stress, brain damage and death, even if you park in a shady spot or leave the window cracked. Pets just can't adjust to the quick rising temperatures inside a car. The best place for your pet is at home.

If you see a pet in a parked car, notify the closest business and ask them to make an announcement. If necessary, contact your local animal control officer or police officer to rescue the animal.



Licking diabetes with lizard spit?


An experimental drug that suppresses the appetite and causes a reduction in high levels of sugar in the blood may be the next big thing in treatment for people with the most common form of diabetes, studies presented Sunday suggest.

The drug exenatide, a man-made version of a hormone found in the saliva of Gila monsters, reduced high blood sugar levels and led to weight loss in tests on more than 1,000 people whose type 2 diabetes was not being controlled by current drugs, researchers reported at a meeting here of the American Diabetes Association.

In two 30-week studies in which patients were given two different doses of the drug, those who got the highest dose had the greatest reduction in blood sugars and an average weight loss of 6.3 pounds. The benefits were sustained in patients who decided to continue taking the drug for a full year.

In a third study, exenatide improved the ability of cells in the pancreas to pump out insulin in response to the blast of sugar that enters the blood after meals, researchers said.

Given by injection at breakfast and dinner, the exenatide acts when blood sugars are too high but not when they're in the normal range, reducing the risk of a dangerous plunge in blood sugars called hypoglycemia.

Developed by Amylin Pharmaceuticals and Eli Lilly, exenatide is a synthetic version of a hormone in the saliva of Gila monsters, a lizard that eats only four times a year. When it eats, it secretes the hormone, similar to GLP-1 in humans, to activate insulin production in the pancreas.

Exenatide is the furthest along in development of several drugs that focus on GLP-1, an intestinal hormone that is released after a meal. The drug will be submitted to the Food and Drug Administration this summer and, if approved, could be available next year.

Novartis won't be seeking FDA approval for LAF237 until 2006.





Tips for retrieving pets that take to the road


Everything was as it should have been in the Carrboro home of Sara and Jim Kennedy. Then Stella went missing.

The 17-year-old, de-clawed indoor cat slipped out the back door in October 2003 and vanished. The Kennedys searched for her in vain.

“She’d gone away for three days about eight years ago, so we gave it three days,” Sara Kennedy said. “When she didn’t come back, we assumed she’d gone off to die. But I didn’t want to admit to that yet.”

She filed a missing animal report at the Orange County Animal Protection Society, checked there every day for two weeks and, after that, every three or four days. Several times a day she called for the cat in the yard.

“We’d lost hope, but I kept going,” she said. “A week after Thanksgiving, the shelter called. They had Stella. She was found literally across the street in a neighbor’s garage, and this is where I went wrong — I should have put fliers in the neighborhood.”

Kennedy rushed her starving and flea-ridden pet to the vet. After four months of nurturing, Stella was her old self. She still eyes the back door she slipped out of.

It’s a fact of life that pets do slip away, whether it’s a cat chased away by a rambunctious dog or a dog that finds the stray raccoon too irresistible to avoid. But when pets stray, there are ways to go about retrieving them, and some tactics can be more effective than others.

Barbara Long’s setter Selkie has never gone AWOL, but if it ever does, Long has a missing-dog flier stored on her computer. The flier includes a photo of Selkie, a description of her, where she was last seen (this can be easily amended), Long’s phone number and the promise of a reward.

Long has extensive experience with dogs and cats. She was the APS shelter manager from 1987 to 1993, owns the dog-training business Paw in Hand, and helps run the APS dog-training program. Long has come up with a list of tactics for finding a lost pet, and she has written a brochure that includes tips on keeping a pet from running off as well as what to do with someone else’s lost pet.

Long first recommends doing a search of the area where the animal disappeared. If that doesn’t turn up the pet, do the following:

-- Notify the shelter and humane society in your area and surrounding counties as well.

-- Put up posters.

-- Advertise in the local papers.

-- Contact all local veterinarians.

-- Change the message on your answering machine to state that your pet is missing.

-- Put out food and a T-shirt with your scent on it.

-- Visit the shelter twice a week.

-- Don’t give up hope.

Long knows that animals can be veritable Houdinis, but there are measures that owners can take to cut down on pets performing a disappearing act.

-- Keep cats indoors.

-- Check your fences.

-- Teach your dog to respond to a particular call.

-- Identify your pets with a properly fitting collar and ID and rabies tags.

-- Microchip your pet.

-- Take a picture of your dog or cat.

-- Keep the number of the local humane society and animal shelter handy.

One woman took a creative approach to finding her two lost dogs. She contacted the utility workers in her area, provided them with descriptions of the animals and, voila, one of the drivers spotted the dogs and they were safely retrieved.

Another method is to e-mail the lost flier to people in the neighborhood, friends and rescue groups.

“Pets lose themselves for any number of reasons,” said Amanda Stipe, Carrboro’s animal control officer. She cited the cat that never steps off the front porch until one day a stray dog comes by and chases it.

“If you have a cat that is missing, cats tend to be more nocturnal, so chances of finding them are better during dawn and dusk,” she said. “You very rarely see many cats active during the day.”

Stipe said animals can feel the need to flee when their routine is disrupted or if there are disorienting sounds, like gunfire.

“One of my neighbors shot a very wobbly fox one day that looked rabid,” she said. “My beagle dog, Barkley, was in his pen and forced his way out through the gate and took off. Luckily, within five or 10 minutes I realized he was missing and enlisted the help of my neighbor. His kids and we got him back.”

Firecrackers sent Margarita fleeing from her yard in the Morgan Creek neighborhood on New Year’s Eve 2002. Tom and Vici Cook posted 50 laminated posters with the weimeraner’s photo, checked the shelter and scoured Chapel Hill and Carrboro. At midnight on the second day after Rita went on the lam, she returned, whimpering, at the back door, spent and with a leg wound.

“The people whose house had the firecrackers are dog people and felt terrible, and they went out and put up posters, too,” Tom Cook said. “They were just great, and now they call to let us know when they are going to shoot off firecrackers to make sure Rita is all right.”

Long said that in searching for a dog, one needs to enlarge the circle of the search area every day that passes. Remember the Highway Patrol drug dog that was in a car wreck on Memorial Day and escaped the scene? He was found the next day six miles from the accident.

A photo of one’s animal can be key. Stipe took a missing report from a couple whose dog had gone astray. Unbeknownst to her, the dog had been found by a Chapel Hill resident who checked the APS lost-and-found reports and posters.

Stipe said one person’s brown is another person’s tan, one’s spaniel mix is another’s chow mix, and with no photo of the missing dog on record, a reunification didn’t happen until Stipe saw the dog running around in the resident’s yard. She recognized the pooch, who had been missing for a year.

Some disappearances happen at the worst time. The owners of one cat were preparing to move to California in April, but their feline disappeared. The APS had a report along with a photo, so last week, the cat was turned in at the shelter, where one of the employees recognized its distinctive markings. The gleeful staff called the owners, who had former neighbors come in on Friday to make positive identification. It was a go.



Best Regards,


Dr. Pennington
http://www.priestlakevet.com
priestlake@mindspring.com
615-361-4646

Dr. Pennington