 Hi, I'm Catherine Bowers, a Future Tense fellow and the author of Wild Hood and Zubiquity. Welcome to another social distancing social from Future Tense, a partner of Slate, New America and Arizona State University. Today, we're talking about what we can learn from our pets while in quarantine. I'm joined by Clive Nguyen, the founding director of the Canine Science Collaboratory at ASU, and the author of Dog is Love. Hi, and how your dog loves you. Hi, Clive. Hi, Catherine. Great to be with you. Yeah, it's so great to be with you too. The last time I saw you, we were at a beer garden in DC doing a live event at which people were allowed to bring their own dogs. So we're a little more virtual this time, but I think we're still gonna have a great discussion. Yeah, that was wonderful. I would love, it was so fun. I would love to know how you and Zephos are coping with quarantine and lockdown. Well, I'm coping fine. We're business more or less in some sense as usual. And you know what? I think Zephos is just loving us. I think she's absolutely loving it. I think when she comes to write her memoirs in a few years' time, there's gonna be a whole chapter on this period of her life because it's just... What are some of the things you're doing with her? Well, we're doing... We're doing all of her favorite things. We're hanging around the house. We're watching TV together. We sometimes go out in the backyard and throw her a toy around, which I confess we are generally speaking too lazy or busy to be inclined to do because we humans don't find it really all that satisfying, but she loves it to pieces and we've been doing more of that. And she's been getting so many walks from all the people in the house who otherwise have no excuse to go outside that she's become... I don't know whether your social media feed has had the same cartoon in it that mine has of the dog who's hiding on top of the cabinets because he doesn't want to be taken out for any more walks. I haven't seen that one, but I did see the joke or maybe it was true. I didn't fact check it about the dog who sprained its tail from it wagging too much. I haven't seen that one. But I also... I mean, I have... When this lockdown started two, three, four weeks ago, we were all in a different point of it, there was sort of a trend of the dog... This is great for the dogs. Maybe they even engineered it so that their owners could be home more, their people. But there does seem to be a trend more now toward is enough enough, like have they had enough of it. Do you think it's possible for our beloved companion animals to be a little bit sick of us at this point? No. No. Well, I mean, obviously there are individuals that I have to be a little bit careful. I mean, when I talk about dogs, I have my own dog often in my real eye now and often in my mind's eye. And no, I don't think she could ever have too much of us. I mean, I guess we're going to be halfway serious about it. Dogs do need to sleep more than people do. Dogs need to sleep maybe 14 hours a day. So it is possible to sort of stimulate your dog to a point that they would find too much. That is so interesting. I just thought that my dog is... He's sort of naturally low energy, but I thought he was just being an extra much of a slacker while we're all hanging around watching TV. But no, he's just a little bit low. No, it's good for them. They need more sleep than we do. But that doesn't mean to say that... I mean, even when she's sleeping, Zefos likes to be close by one of us. I mean, she's a very social being. I mean, she's clearly somewhere way up that scale. But you know, dogs typically enjoy company. Yep. I want to pause for one moment to introduce our two K9 guests on the screen. We have two Corgis named Victoria and Elizabeth. They are in DC enjoying our talk today and enjoying their chance to lounge more on the couch. They are both rescued from a puppy mill and living the happy life with their people in DC. So welcome to them too. I had a couple questions of if a dog is maybe not wanting to sleep as much and maybe you're both going a little stir crazy in a small environment, are there some games or activities that you've experienced either with your own dog or in the work that you do at ASU that we can use to enrich our pets' environments at the same time that we're kind of trying to keep our own sanity? Sure, Catherine. Well, I like to say that dogs are individuals just like people are. Just as with your human companions, you need to interact with them and find out what kind of games they would like to play with you, how they would like to spend their time with you, so too with your dogs. I mean, some dogs are crazy for tracing balls, right? I mean, there are dogs that are completely nuts for that. And if that's your dog, then you should indulge in that so far as your home arrangement allows you to throw a ball around. Sampos, we don't throw balls. I mean, it's not that she wouldn't take a little bit of interest, but she's never understood. She's not the smartest. She's never understood that if it's going to be a game and we're going to keep doing it, then she needs to bring it back. She's never grasped that side of it. So it's not something we do a lot of. It's all going out. There's none of it coming back. Yeah, so people need to get to know their own dog just like you would with a human companion and find out what do they enjoy. There's no purpose in me saying, well, you know, Sampos loves to do this because your dog might not like that. What do you do with your dog, Catherine? We've been like, like I said, he's on the older end of the age range. He's 11. Still has a lot of energy when he's outside, but he really likes to just kind of lie around. He's a golden retriever. But what's interesting is that he had been really enjoying going out into off-leash areas. We've just moved to a place where that's possible. And he could run on the beach and he could run on the cliffs and through meadows. And there was this moment where it was like just as things were starting to be taken a little bit more seriously here in the US. And he was off-leash and he went running toward this other dog. And that dog's people kind of pulled back. It didn't really want him to come near. And that was my first indication that we are going to have to be changing not only our own behavior, but the behavior that we were doing with our dogs as well. So we've changed to some more indoor. I mean, he gets walked multiple times a day. But I've also been doing something called nose work. Have you heard about nose work? So what my dog loves, cheese, and the idea behind nose work is that you take a piece, little bits of some high value treat, some piece of food that your dog really likes. And you hide them around a room and then you allow your dog to go find them simply by using his or her nose. And at least the course that I took on it, you weren't supposed to give it praise or sort of corrections or anything. Just let your dog experience the sense of that smell in its own unique way. And it's kind of fun to see your dog do that. Zepos did this some years ago. I'd forgotten all about it. But now that you mention it, she did a class some years ago. And to my total astonishment, she was really quite good at it. I'm always the one saying, oh, I don't know, sorry. She greatly enjoyed it and was very good at it. And now that you mention it, it would be a good thing to do when you're stuck in the house with your dog because it doesn't, you know, chasing a ball or whatever you could end up with a lot of broken glassware. The nose work thing is relatively gentle and certainly intellectually stimulating for the dog. I mean, Zepos just likes, you know, or at least Zepos and I, we just like watching television together. I mean, she's often facing entirely the wrong direction and asleep, but she's like a ritual. That's so funny. My mom, Dreilly, commented when she saw a video of my dog doing some nose work that he's not quite ready for the airport. But that is the sort of the basic idea and training behind what service dogs do in airports and other places, sniffing out various things. Oh, it's quite a bit. And another thing Zepos loves doing is she loves barking at people who come and deliver things to the door. And it's a simple, it's a simple skill, but now that we're in lockdown and I haven't been to a store for over two weeks, it's very exciting when deliveries come and the fact that she relishes this too, it gives us that feeling that we're all in this together, you know. When somebody comes to the door, we cheer and it makes us feel good. That's such a positive outlook on that behavior because that might not necessarily be behavior that everyone would want their dog to do. Well, we're lucky. I would not claim credit for this, but we are lucky that Zepos just decided for herself that there was no need to bark at somebody who stays on the sidewalk. It's only when somebody turns on to the short pathway to our front door that she feels the need to alert us. And that only happens at most a couple of times a day. And indeed, it is usually something that's pretty interesting in our lives, too. So we're happy to be a set up and for her to tell us about this. If as, you know, when when I walk her around the neighborhood, there are any number of homes where the dogs bark just because you're going past on the sidewalk. And that would happen dozens of times a day. I mean, soon get on your nerves. Yeah. I wish I could claim some credit for it. But no, she just she just, well, I mean, maybe I explained it to her early on and she grasped it immediately. She's a quick study. So I would love to hear a little bit more about the work that you do at ASU in the in your in your lab and your in your study and research. And maybe we could talk about it by taking a look at the subtitle of your book, which is why and how your dog loves you. So maybe you could start off with how dogs love us and then get into the why they love us. Sure. Sure. So how they love us, I mean, it doesn't take. It's not rocket science, right? It's not rocket science and it's not brain surgery. Remember, there's science, probably. It's not rocket surgery and it's not. Yeah. Remember, Catherine, when we used to be able to leave our homes, you remember those days? We used to leave our homes and go off to work or whatever we were doing. And you would go away. And sometimes, you know, so it was tough. Sometimes you'd be away six, eight hours, 10 hours, and you'd come home. And, you know, I live with my wife and I have a son and you come home and you come in and you say, hi honey, I'm home, hi, I'm home. And if you're lucky, you know, the distant corner over there, you get a, oh, great. And over there, you get maybe a grunt from your child, you know. But the dog, you know, the dog is absolutely thrilled to see you. And that's a real thing, right? That's a real thing. Sometimes things that we experience almost every day, we take them for granted and we don't stop to think about this, that here is this animal expressing in its whole being as thoroughly and completely as it can possibly do with every fiber it's being, expressing its pleasure to be reunited with you. And we've actually turned this into a fairly simple experiment where we set up a scenario so that when a person comes home, we actually set up outside the door, the person, one location, and an equal distance and the same angle in the other side of all of food so that and we don't give the dog any food while we're out of work and the home is empty. So the dog is now deprived of human company, let's say eight hours and deprived of food for the same exact same length of time. And then here's a choice. Does your dog love you or does your dog love food? And well, most dogs, most of the time, the person is more important to them, not that they won't eat sooner or later. Right. The immediate choice situation. They want the person, they need their human being. So you can take a more or less every day experience, a very straightforward thing. And you can show that this is this really shows us how our dogs love us. And of course, you can go beyond very simple things like that. And I was saying, it's not it's not brain science, but actually people have done neuroscience on dogs. There's a professor at Emory and Atlanta, Gregory Burns, who actually trained dogs to lie perfectly still in MRI scanners. I saw those photos and some of the videos. It was amazing. It's absolutely amazing, right? I mean, the training that that requires, I mean, when a human is in a brain scanner, right, you can tell them, OK, you're going to have to keep very still. This won't work on people. Understand what they listen and whatever. But how do you explain to a dog? Well, it takes a lot of very careful training. But ultimately, all positive reinforcement, just food treats. Ultimately, they have now quite a number of dogs who will keep perfectly still in the scanner. And then you show the dog a sign that means, hey, in a moment, you're going to get a piece of sausage. OK, so you know how the reward centers of the brain light up when a dog is expecting a piece of sausage. Yeah. And then you show them a second sign. And this sign means in a moment, you're going to get to see your beloved human being. OK. And you can look and find that, not all dogs, but most dogs, the reward centers light up more when you tell them, hey, you're the love of humans just around the corner. When you tell them, you're going to get a bit of sausage. So you can you can see how it's programmed into their brains. It's really quite amazing. That's so. And is some of that, some of that have to do with the evolution of dogs? I mean, is it and I've also heard over the years that a human that like the dogs that live with us today are sort of puppy ish. Is that help clarify some of that? Sure. Sure. Sure. So so absolutely. So. So yeah. So now we're sort of segueing from the how the dogs love us to the why the dogs love us and, you know, why questions like how questions can be answered at many different levels. And one thing is the yes. How are the dogs that we live with today show maintaining to adulthood, many of the behaviors and many of the signs that you would only expect to see in wolves. And all our dogs are descended from wolves. You only see in wolves when they're due. So dogs have this kind of childish manner, which is part of their job. Part of why we love them back is because they're so loving and dependent like that. And ultimately, why do dogs love us? Ultimately, their love for us is the secret of their success. I mean, very, very few dogs on this planet survive without people somehow helping them, even though only a minority of dogs are pets in First World homes. Nonetheless, the majority of dogs need people to help them along. Very few populations of dogs succeed as hunters, as true wild animals. So they're dependent on us and their interest in us and their capacity to form affection of bonds for us is what gets them in the door, right? I mean, some people are interested in having as pets, I don't know, snakes and various other animals that don't show much sign of affection towards people. But ultimately, most of us want to believe that our pets love us. That it's dogs affection and nature, which is the secret of their success. They're an amazingly successful species on this planet. The most widespread, large mammal left on the surface of the earth, aside from ourselves. And the answer, how is that possible? What makes dogs so special is that their affectionate interest, their capacity to love us, you can't help. You know, what kind of a heartless person can resist that entreaty? When a puppy says, I love you, I want to be with you, I want to be cared for by you. What kind of heartless person can say, well, I don't care, you know, well. So love is the answer. Love, yeah, absolutely. I am in my research for Wild Hood, my book about adolescence. I learned a term called puppy license, which is the the leeway that we give to younger animals. Puppies are easy to imagine, but there's also something with monkeys. That's monkey license or, you know, whale license, where the older animals are a little bit more forgiving for social transgressions or mistakes in judgment than they are at a certain point in animals development. And when they hit that kind of adolescent period, their puppy license expires and they're suddenly meant to to act more and more like a mature adult. OK, that's so interesting. I mean, obviously I've I've noticed the phenomenon, but I never realized it had a name. Yeah, yeah, I learned it from a behaviorist, James Haw, who teaches at the University of Washington and he's an applied animal behaviorist and used that term a lot. And what's what's interesting about that is that there is this adolescent period in that we see in humans, you know, when they become a little bit harder to to live with as a, you know, can be found in other species because no animal just is born mature. So some of the things that you find in adolescents, the the risk taking, the kind of socializing, but even the volubility, the talkativeness. You can find in other animals and it it turns out that animals are most likely to be surrendered to shelters when they're in this adolescent period because through no fault of their own. It's a normal development. They're suddenly doing things that their owners showing behaviors that are hard for their owners to handle. And their and their puppy license has expired. So I guess I just think that's really, really interesting that just because they're adolescents, it becomes a very dangerous time for them sort of socially and in our own human created communities. But that actually leads me to another phenomenon I've seen over this lockdown, which is people fostering dogs. I know you've worked a lot with shelter communities and dogs and are a proponent of fostering and sheltering. And would love to hear if you have any experience or thoughts about that. Oh, yeah, Catherine, I'm so glad you brought that up. So we're actually in the middle of a large study that we're doing across the United States for a Charity Called Maddie's Fund, where we've been looking at the benefits of fostering for sheltered dogs. And the benefits are definitely very real. The dogs are in a much better position, both in terms of their psychological health and in terms of their chances of getting adopted into a permanent home if they are out in the community in a fostering situation rather than stuck in a shelter. And then when everything happened, that's the new circumstance in which we find ourselves, we rapidly pivoted towards helping shelters get some emergency fostering going because shelters are having a lot of trouble keeping their regular operations going. They cannot bring the public into the shelter to invite adoptions. And it's just difficult getting staff and volunteers to take care of the animals. So we've been helping a number of shelters through Maddie's Fund to get some emergency fostering up and running. And fortunately, it's going really well. It's going really well. But we certainly we certainly need more help on that. And if I was just a tiny bit more organized, I would have the web address at the top of my head to be able to deal with people. People could probably search Maddie's. Is that? And P-T-I-E? M-A-D-D-I-U-S. Let me maybe if I'm very quick. Well, you're doing that. What what is sort of the process of fostering? Would you do people, I mean, is it what kind of commitment is it on for someone? Well, so in in the normal run of things, shelters can adapt fostering to suit the capacity of the people coming and volunteering to help. So we started out studying weekend fostering programs. And we've been moving on to study longer term fostering programs where people take dogs for weeks or even months. In the present emergency situation, it would be kind of difficult for people to return dogs. There would be little value, let's say, in people taking dogs just for a weekend. So really in the present emergency situation, we're looking at longer term longer term fostering options. And I was able to find the the web page. It's just Maddie's fund dot O-R-G slash foster hyphen care. And that's in Arizona. That's in the Arizona area nationwide. That's nationwide nationwide. All around the country. OK, fostering is a wonderful thing. I mean, we have to, I think, move away from taking it for granted that pets should be in animal shelters. Animal shelters were started in the late 19th century. And I don't want to say they're in the state. People in animal shelters do wonderful things and put so much into helping the animals that end up in their care. But I think as communities, we would be much, much better off if we avoided having warehouses where spare pets were kept in kennels. It would be much better if as communities, we could work to, you know, so supposing, you know, as somebody is no longer able to care for a pet, couldn't we have communities where instead of pushing that animal into a shelter and then letting it, forcing it to wait there until somebody comes for it, couldn't we use like social media to advertise, hey, these families no longer able to care for this dog? Would somebody else, could somebody else help there? So we minimize sheltering. That would that would be my dream. And to do that in a more organized way than just the sort of, you know, someone's email thread or something about the day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Well, maybe something like that will come out of this lockdown where we've got some time to think about doing things in that kind of way. Yeah, I think we might have some questions coming from the, from the audience. Let me just check here. Do you have any thoughts about if somebody has a very high energy dog that they just can't run as much during this time? I guess you would, I guess you just have to run them in your house or? Well, I'm not an animal trainer. So so I have to be careful not to go beyond my expertise. But one thing to keep in mind is that there is there has been a belief that because of course, in the short term, it's obviously true. If you exercise an animal, the animal is tired at the end of the period of exercise. But it's not possible to exercise an animal forever and ever and ever. I'd always have it physically tired. And one thing is if an animal is very if a dog is very high energy, try boring that animal. Responding to energy with energy, try responding to the energy. So we actually did a study where in a shelter, in a shelter, where we compared what happened if volunteers came in and every time a volunteer came in, they exercise the dog. And what happened if we had volunteers come in and instead of exercising the dog, these were students, they sat down on an upturned bucket in the kennel and got on with their homework, like reading. Which again, and what was interesting was that the dogs that were exercised every time a human showed up, the dogs got very, very excited because they learned the relationship human equals excitement. Whereas the dogs who had a student come in and just read a boring textbook, not that the dogs understood quite how boring the textbook was. The dogs who had a student come in and do something uninteresting, those dogs over time, when a person came in, they were not so excited to see human being. So I think it is possible to respond to energy with calmness. And that can be helpful in teaching an animal to remain more calm going forward. What an interesting idea. That's I like that a lot. It's also putting me in mind of those wonderful photos you sometimes see of programs where they match children learning to read with pets and shelters. Oh, I love that. Yeah. Yeah, seems like a nice thing to do. Let's see. So we've got some questions. We have Carla Etherington and she's wondering, do you think the large amounts of time many of us are spending with our dogs will result in increased levels of separation anxiety when we go back to work? And if so, how can we reduce this? That's a great question. And I've seen that come up on social media and I was wondering about it as I was out walking with Zephos this morning and it's possible, it's possible until we come to that day, we won't know, but it's a possibility. But I think the solution is not so terribly difficult either. And that is we can just we can just start small. We can just practice leaving our dogs alone. I mean, right now, I don't think Zephos has been alone for more than while she goes sunbathing. So here it is already quite warm. She likes sunbathing. Black dogs. So apart from 10 minute periods where she's sunbathing, she has not been alone for about three weeks. And so there will come a time where. And so so when that day comes, I mean, I guess we'll just go for walks without her. And we'll start small. I mean, well, wouldn't it be fantastic when we can go to bars and cafes again? And so we'll just start, we'll go out for an hour or two for lunch without her and, you know, she won't be too happy about it. But it's it's not a psychological trauma that we need to be ashamed of exposing her to. It'll do her good here. And we'll see. We'll see. We have a device that actually detects when she barks. So you see if she barks or if there's anything else. I mean, just knowing her, I don't expect any trouble. But I think if people if people have dogs that have shown separation problems in the past, then here is an excellent opportunity in normal daily life. Of course, sometimes you're forced to be out of the house for 10 hours and your dogs traumatized by that. Well, here's an opportunity you can start gradually building up your dog's tolerance to being left alone. Not that I think it's fair to leave dogs alone for long periods of time. I mean, we love them for their intense sociability. What's so wonderful about having a dog is that they want to be with you. And that's, you know, every dog is a therapy dog, at least in my view. And we take these beautifully social animals into our lives and we enjoy them for their highly loving natures. And then we leave them in solitary confinement for hours on end. So I really think it's a shame that people do that. And I don't advocate it. Maybe maybe they can get some of their sleeping into while we're gone. Maybe that can be. So we did once do a study where we had a webcam on dogs that were left home alone and it did turn out that most of the most of the time do just sleep. Yeah, interesting. OK, we have another question from Diane Sylvester, and it is, should we be worried about animals getting COVID-19 like the tigers in the New York Zoo, the Bronx Zoo? Let's talk about how not to catch COVID-19 from your tiger. I think that's something people need to get. I think step number one, don't over-tie it. I would say if you're within six feet of a tiger. You have bigger problems. COVID-19 is your problem. I mean, what's interesting to me about this is my first book, Zubiquity, was about the overlap between animal and human medicine. It was more medical focused and one chapter was on zoonoses, these diseases that cross between animals and humans. And it's important to note that the tigers got the virus from their handler, who was asymptomatic from the person who was working with them. And so it wasn't being transmitted to humans from these pets. I recommend that anybody watching this, if you really want to know what the kind of official word is on this now, you can go to the American Veterinary Medical Association website or to the Wildlife Conservation Society website, UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine also has a lot of information on this. And what they're saying is, is that if it were easily transmissible between people and their pets, there would be a lot more infected pets at the moment and there isn't a few animals here and there. Dogs and cats have tested positive for it. And so they recommend using good hygiene when you're around your pets that you would anyway, you're washing your hands after you play, maybe not have them up in your face. And if you know that you're infected to isolate from your pets as you would any other member of your family. But again, for the latest on the public health information on that, I would suggest contacting those other, going to those other websites that I mentioned. Do you have any other thoughts on that or does that seem... I think that's great advice. I think that's great advice. And I was thinking the exact same thing, that there must be by now millions of cats and dogs that have been in close contact with people. And the fact that we don't hear about any cases of transmission, except for the tiger. Even the tiger hasn't infected anybody. Right. Well, and it is, I mean, it is true that we can. I mean, we can pass flu to pets and when I've sat in on some of the procedures at various zoos around the country where we're helping animals that need to consult from the human side, we've always worn masks and gloves to protect the animals from us and anything we might be carrying, not to protect us from the animals as much. Yeah. Yeah. OK, I don't see any other. Oh, here's a question. This is from Eva Pazikowska. How can people socialize puppies during this period of isolation? Oh, well, that is. That is a very, that's a really tough question. I mean, one thing is the... Well, I mean, ideally, puppies should be socialized to a variety of different human beings and to other species, too, if they're going to be expected to live alongside those species growing up. That's really tough. And I'm not sure I know a good answer to that. I mean, I think we do need to expect our pets to keep the same six feet distance from other people as we are ourselves. And that's surely going to be a problem for those pets. I don't know, Catherine, do you have any thoughts? You know, it's so funny. I was just thinking of how great it would be to have those few months of not having to go to work. I mean, obviously, trying to work, but maybe not having to leave the house. And I had only thought about the human side of that. But of course, puppies need to be socialized with lots of others, although I have also heard to avoid the dog park when they're very, very young. But I guess that would be... Yeah, well, it's a certain... I mean, in normal times, there's a certain level of controversy with veterinarians advising people not to take their puppies to a dog park until they've completed all of their vaccinations, which, of course, is good advice in itself. But there is something of a problem there because all animals early in life go through the critical period for socialization. And if you don't meet individuals of different kinds when you're in that critical period, then it's much more difficult to learn to form social connections with those kinds of beings later in life. And the problem is, dogs have an exceptionally long critical period for socialization. But even in dogs, it doesn't go on forever. It's all more or less closed up by 12 or 14 weeks of life. So if you keep puppies isolated for the first 12, 14 weeks of life, then they're not going to be comfortably socialized. Yeah, yeah. I found that in my research on adolescents, too, that kind of important early socializing during that time is it can determine whether an animal has friends later in life and is able to court other animals more or even if we were speaking in human terms, be happy in a way to understand how to fit into groups, when to be on top, when to not be. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. So I feel that this is going to be tough for puppies growing up at this time. It's going to be tough because I cannot think of a workaround. I mean, for us humans, we get some social satisfaction from what we're doing now, although it's nothing like giving a friend a hug, but it's still something. But I don't think our dogs get anything. There's no evidence that our dogs get anything out of this dog. Except the case when you're in a business meeting and your dog starts barking and then some dog through your Zoom meeting on the other side of the country starts barking as well. I love that infectious barking virtually. Yeah. The Future Tense team wants to know if one of us has watched the Tiger King TV show and what we thought of it. No, you haven't. I haven't either. Why have you decided not to tune in? Because what I've read about it, it just sounds like the kind of thing that would so make my blood boil. And that's really not what I need right now. Yeah. It reminds me when I first came to the United States, which is getting on 20 years ago now. And I was on the faculty at the University of Florida and I had a journalist from Miami phoned me up asking whatever the Miami paper is, asking, did I have a professional opinion on this thing that a tiger had escaped from a backyard in the outer suburbs of Miami, where it turned out that there was a guy, a retired actor who had a collection of lions and tigers and one of them had gone out and I hadn't even heard the story. So the journalist had to explain to me, weren't you, tiger gets out of the backyard roaming the outer suburbs of Miami. The police have been called, wildlife control have been called. And one of the wildlife officers spots the tiger and hides behind a tree, calls for backup, calls for the guy with the dart gun. He didn't have a dart gun. He had a real gun. So he calls for the guy with the dart gun, but before that guy shows up, the tiger spots him and starts coming towards him. So he shoots the tiger dead. Now, obviously that's a tragedy, but it seems to me, it's an incredibly defensible thing to do under the circumstances. A tiger coming towards you, that's one of those rare occasions where using your deadly weapon is entirely appropriate. And the reason the journalist was phoning up was because this guy, the wildlife control officer, was now getting death threats. Because there were so many people who were furious with him for killing this tiger, which was itself turning on him, right? And the guy whose tiger it was, was getting a great deal of sympathy from the public because the wildlife control officer killed his valuable animal. So I really just thought that was an amazing story about misplaced priorities regarding caring for exotic wildlife. Yes, yeah. It seems to me don't have a tiger in the first place would be the place to start. Let's start with that. Let's start with that. Isn't it the case that there are more tigers in captivity in the United States than wild in their native lands? I heard that, but I think it was in the sort of the media surrounding Tiger King, which I haven't watched. So now I feel like I can vouch for that. Let's see. Oh, here's a good question from Alan Brown. Do dogs ever get sick of their humans? Might they want to break from us? I doubt it. I mean, again, allowing of this individual variation. Okay, so I mean, there are dogs that are indeed a loof and by and large, I doubt it with the proviso that they're getting enough time to sleep, keeping in mind that they need maybe 14 hours of sleep a day. And that I think if you're hanging out with human beings who are only gonna sleep for eight hours a day and the humans are stuck with you, perhaps in a small apartment and are relying on you, the dog for entertainment or whatever you want to say, then I think it's possible that the dog may just get physically tired, want to sleep, need to sleep. I think aside from that issue, I doubt that they tire a company. Okay. Okay, again, the answer is love, right? Yes. We have time for maybe one or two more questions. Tina Cummings is asking, I have an 11-year-old standard poodle. When he is asking for treats by standing in front of the treat cabinet, is it possible for him to understand me when I say, you want treats, you have to finish your dinner first while I am pointing at his bowl? Sometimes it seems like he understands, but maybe it's just the coincidence. What do you think? So if we generalize the question, is it possible for a dog to know that to get something it wants, it first has to do something it is less interested in doing? Yes, I think in general, there's no reason why a dog could not learn that relationship. Whether this particular dog in this particular home, under these particular circumstances, is learning that relationship depends, well, it depends on the individual dog, and depends on how consistently the message is put across. So if you only say those words under those circumstances, and if it's always true that you don't ever give in and just let him have a treat anyway, then I think in time he should be at a level. Certainly within the realms of possibility, but so much depends on consistency, otherwise, you know, otherwise why should be learning? And she did say it's a standard poodle, which I've heard have, I wanna say a certain kind of intelligence, maybe more of a recognizably human intelligent qualities than other breeds, but can you speak to that? Are there, is there a range of cognitive abilities across breed? Oh, Catherine, you've come back to that old chestnut of a question that people always ask, or rather phrase as a statement in an upturned tone of voice, because everybody has read this online and elsewhere that this breed is smarter than that breed. Well, here's the thing, as a scientist, as a professor, there is no evidence one way or another. Nobody has ever done a study, relative intelligence of different breeds of dog. Should we do it? You know, well, if somebody gave us the funding for it, we would certainly do it, but on the other hand, it doesn't strike me as particularly important, so I've never made it a particular priority. Interesting, interesting, because I know there's a lot of work going on, sort of genomically and genetically on breed characteristics, and it's extending into behavior. Because would you call cognition an extension of behavior or are cognition and behavior separate? Oh, absolutely. But the thing is, Catherine, you're quite right, you're quite right that there is behavioral genetics going on in dogs and in dog breeds. Behavioral genetics tends to focus on behaviors that are fairly clear-cut, right? So for example, pointing, which is a particular characteristic thing that certain breeds of dog, when they spot something, they stick their snouts out and their tails out the back, and that's pointing. And that's very genetic and people have identified genes that are involved in that. And it's very clear-cut. Whereas intelligence, cognition, problem-solving, reasoning, well, that's extremely much more difficult to pin down and surely involves a very large number of genes. So it's always gonna be at the far stickier end of thing that you could try and investigate from a genetic point of view. I also, it seems like it might have more of a human overlay to how we define it too. That too. One thing I can say to contradict myself is that in the history of the world, there have been, I think, four or five dogs that have been proven to understand more than 100 words of human language. Oh, wow. Four or five dogs and a whole history of dogs, 15, 20,000 years, that have clearly shown that they understand hundreds of words. Every single one of those dogs has been a border calling. Oh, interesting, interesting. I love watching them work. So I think we're about at the end of our session here. Was there anything else you wanna leave our viewers with in terms of sit, stay, and lock down with pets? So I would encourage people just to enjoy their dog's presence and company. Just to enjoy the love that your dog has for you and to enjoy loving your dog back. It's not crucial, although these are satisfying things to train your dog, to play with your dog, whatever. But there's also so much, especially because we're all living under kind of constrained circumstances, so let's not set ourselves challenges. You know, let's just enjoy the beauty of K9 Company. I think that's a great place to wrap it up. Enjoy the beauty of K9 Company. Thank you so much, Clive. It's been great talking to you again. I wanna thank Victoria and Elizabeth for sitting in so patiently and adorably in on this. There are more future social distancing socials coming every Tuesday and Thursday through Future Tense. And thanks for joining us today. Bye, everyone.