The Aussie - Spring 2019

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Are Bitches Brighter than Dogs? Talking Point Continuing our series on bitches - in this edition we look at whether bitches are brighter than dogs. everyone has their own opinions of the intelligence of our Aussies, but recently published research tries to establish the truth. Male dogs are from Mars, female dogs are from … Pluto? So is this the case? A new study finds that the brains of male and female canines are not the same -- and in at least one task, the females have an edge. The researchers aren't sure of the root cause of these brain differences, but the study points to the need to take into account whether it’s a male or a female, when trying to understand how your Aussie thinks. Peering into the canine mind Corsin Müller, a cogni?ve biologist at the University of Vienna and his colleagues, tested female and male dogs. They selected standard family pets to see whether they understood a concept called "object permanence. " In simple English, that means whether the dogs realised that objects don't disappear and don't change form just because they go out of sight. To give an insight into humans understanding of this principle, children learn this physical law by about 1 year old. The ques?on, Müller said, was whether dogs understand it too. The researchers set up a wooden board and a system of blue tennis balls aUached to strings. The dogs, 25 female and 25 male, watched one of four scenarios: A small ball disappearing behind the board and re-emerging; a large ball disappearing and re-emerging; a large ball disappearing and a small ball emerging; or a small ball disappearing and a large ball emerging. The first two experiments were the "expected" condi?ons, which didn't break any laws of nature. The second two events, in which a ball would seem to shrink or grow while out of sight, were the "unexpected" or impossible condi?ons. The researchers measured the dogs' ability to understand that something impossible had just happened by measuring how long they stared at the emerging ball. The experiments were conducted exactly the same as they would have been for children. "If something unexpected or, say, impossible is to happen, children and animals will look longer at the event," Müller said.
Who's smarter? At first glance, dogs did seem to look longer at the event when the ball seemed to mysteriously shrink or grow. But when the researchers broke the results down by dogs' sex, they found that male dogs hadn't no?ced anything odd at all. Female dogs, on the other hand, stared at the "unexpected" condi?ons for more than 30 seconds on average, more than three ?mes longer than the 10 seconds or so they spent looking at the balls when they didn't change size. The sex difference emerged across all the breeds, which ranged from large to small, purebred to mixed, Müller said. There are three possible explana?ons for why male and female dogs -- or any animal -- might show sex-based brain differences. The first is that evolu?onary pressures in the past might have subtly shi\ed the male and female brains. If one sex hunts while the other builds nests, for example, the nest-builder might gradually become beUer at spa?al reasoning, while the hunter might evolve to be beUer at naviga?ng through unfamiliar territory. Another possibility is that brain differences arise because of offspring rearing du?es; a female solely responsible for rearing her offspring might show greater nurturing skills than a male that has liUle to do with his offspring a\er ma?ng. Neither of these is a good explana?on for dogs because their sexspecific differences seem very limited, Müller wrote. Instead, he suspects a third possibility: That the sex differences in the brain are a side effect of other biological sex differences. Muller believes that this is just a byproduct of sex hormones working on the brain, without necessarily having a func?on. Although this experiment gave female dogs the cogni?ve edge, Müller said it's likely that future findings of sex differences could even out the abili?es. In humans, Müller said, "there's tons of differences you can find, but for everything where you find men are beUer than women, you can find something where women are beUer than men." So what do you reckon? Are the Aussie girls brighter than the boys?
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The Aussie - Spring 2019

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