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The "I am eccentric" thread

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oddtail:
Plus, any ad hoc experiment like this is likely to produce flawed results, due to factors not taken into account. Even people who study animal behaviour professionally have made (sometimes astonishing, once you know the full picture) leaps of logic, ommissions or let their personal biases influence their conclusions.

(incidentally, my own experience with dogs suggests that they are usually capable of recognising a few dozen words, independent of tone of voice and context. But even if that's true, it varies VASTLY between two dogs. Some dogs are remarkably good at regognizing words, or seem to be, and some dogs either are kinda dumb, or just don't care enough to react in a way that's expected. Which - i.e., the willingness to DO something - by itself is a source of potential bias, because we tend to equate "dog responds" with "dog understands", and it's obviously not a one-to-one correspondence. In either direction.)

Cornelius:
Really, people don't talk to their pets?  :-o I'll bet they don't listen to them either.

With my dog, I can generally tell when she doesn't want to understand, and when she doesn't understand. But then, I've been around dogs nearly all my life. Same with the ones before that, although the willingess to respond does vary between individuals, and between breeds.

sitnspin:
I didn't expect it to be indicative of anything, I was just curious.

pwhodges:

--- Quote from: sitnspin on 25 Jan 2018, 03:15 ---
--- Quote from: pwhodges on 25 Jan 2018, 00:03 ---My father-in-law once decided to test the theory that dogs responded mainly to voice recognition rather than actual words by walking around Hampstead Heath with his dog calling him back by shouting out "Income Tax!".

--- End quote ---
What were the results of that experiment?

--- End quote ---

The dog continued to ignore him, as before, of course!

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