Dogs can watch TV!!!

[russingram]

our cat likes to watch Meerkat Manor on the animal channel.

 

[Jeff Corey]

On the issue of dog's color vision and their perception of television images:

I have wondered about that. Does the method used to simulate colors on a television produce an image that a dog would perceive in the same way as the dog sees the world....

Probably. Their cones are sensitive to 329nm (blue) and 555nm (yellow).TVs additively mix red(about 600+nm)and green(about 500nm) to produce yellow for us. The summated waveforms peak about 555nm, so would stimulate the dog's "yellow" cones.

 

[l0rca]

Okay, I gently tossed the remote. He fetched it, dropped it back in my lap but this time he asked why did you throw it, I just wanted to you to turn on Animal Planet for me.

Lol.

Mean, of course, that if you continue to toss it, you'll either notice his esteem to hand you the remote to be reinforced, or drop off, which would highly suggest if he's handing you the remote on expectation to turn the TV on, or fetch with it.

 

[ktesibios]

My dog doesn't pay much attention to the TV but I have a cat who does. The funniest moment with my cat was when I was watching a show on cheetahs. They showed some baby cheetahs on the show. My cat got up, jumped up on the TV table, stared at the screen, tapped it with his paw, and then ran around the back and looked. I think he was searching for the baby kitties who were trapped in that strange box!

I had a cat that showed similar behavior. She was interested in any program that showed animals, but one case that stuck in my memory was when we were watching a program about lions. Feedback watched them raptly for a few minutes, jumped up and tried to touch them and then climbed on top of the TV, hung over the edge and continued trying to touch the images of the moving lions. She acted like she wanted to play with what she apparently saw as other cats.

As for audio, I once was watching a program on PBS about domestic cats. One of my other cats jumped on my lap and went to sleep while the show was on. Blob continued to nap peacefully until the program got to a scene of two tomcats fighting. When that MEEEOOUUWWWOUWWW! came out of the speakers he jumped up, back arched and fur fully fluffed and looked wildly around for the interloper who was threatening him.

 

[bruto]

My mom has a dog who pays considerable attention to the TV, but responds only when animals come on screen. She then jumps up and barks and wags her tail at the screen, growls, and often offers them a bone. She's been mostly broken of the habit of crashing bones up against the screen now, and trained to offer a squeaky ball instead. She is generally very good at recognizing what animals to respond to. Apparently she was a neglected dog, found abandoned along with a number of other dogs, later taken to a shelter, and spent part of her youth on a farm. She is excited by dogs and horses, generally ignores cats, and ignores most other animals. She rarely misses. It's hard sometimes to figure out whether she is friendly toward the screen dogs or hostile. Sometimes it seems as if she is chasing the screen dogs away. She is never visibly puzzled when they disappear. My mom, who has Alzheimers and arthritis, spends a LOT of time in front of the TV, and the dog has now come to recognize certain commercials, even coming into the room from elswhere when she hears the lead-in to a commercial in which a dog will later appear. It reminds me a little of the movie The Triplets of Belleville, in which the dog, all its life, runs up the stairs on schedule to bark at the passing trains.

She has done this for about ten years. Does she still think the dogs are real? Is she just star-struck for canines? Does she think she's peforming a service? Who knows? It's interesting to watch an animal being exceptionally clever at doing something exceptionally stupid.

 

[nemo]

My Shih-tsu loves Meercat Manor on Animal Planet. Highly recommended. Just noticed russingram's cat is a fan as well.

 

[Hokulele]

I didn't think the problem would be so much the color perception as the different ways canines and humans process vision. I thought that humans, being language oriented, were already primed to think symbolically and thus could sense that the two-dimensional images on TV corresponded to three-dimensional images in the real world.

In order to do this, you have to pretend that depth perception doesn't matter, and judge relative distances by relative sizes. I thought dogs might have a problem with this.

What would happen if you covered one of the dog's eyes, in effect giving it the appearance of 2D vision? We had a friend who had a dog that was blind in one eye, but it didn't seem to bother the dog.

 

[Wolverine]

Has anyone else seen this behavior in their dogs?

My pooch displays some really odd responses to TV stimuli. She'll growl and/or bark at certain types of animals, but not others. She seems completely disinterested in gorillas and orangutans, for example. Elephants and giraffes cause her to growl. Horses drive her straight up the wall and she leaps up and barks loudly -- this one I thought was more of an auditory response due to the jingling of bridles or other equine appointments (she hates anything that jingles, like keys, which I'm pretty sure she associates with the approach of strangers), but she's no less angered by them if the volume's muted.

It's almost a given that she'll growl (if not bark, depending on their motion) at dogs on the screen, which I can always remedy with a spoken "It's okay, they're just TV puppies."

However -- she not only barks at dogs, but at certain animated dogs and other animals, e.g. Santa's Little Helper on The Simpsons (Snowball's various incarnations don't grab her attention in the least). But, she isn't the least bit disturbed by Brian on Family Guy.

I've largely stopped trying to figure it out, but it's quite amusing.

 

[MSgtWeiss]

TV and Dogs

We've trained working retrievers for 30-some years, and done mostly all-breed rescue the past ten years, and now have 16 dogs "loose" in the house. We've watched their various reactions to TV and computer screens over the years and largely have never seen much reaction unless it was also associated with a sound. Even then, our gut feeling that it was primarily a sound reaction, and any response to the movement was ....well, strictly a reaction to movement, and didn't last long. Reaction to sounds vary, but it usually has to be a strong or loud sound they would respond to in real life: loud barking, howling, a dog fight, meowing ... a doorbell, or a knock on the door. We have had cats and a few dogs that would (on rare occasions) pay a lot of attention to the TV when a sound occurred, but it seemed to mostly a curiosity as to where the dog or cat was in that funny box. Several cats would go around the back of the TV, apparently looking for what seemed to be inside it. Usually this response was short, and they seemed to figure out that it wasn't real. Trying to guess what a dog (or especially a cat) is thinking, though, is highly speculative. Whenever I think I know what they're thinking, my next thought is that I'm probably wrong, and I try to pick it apart.

My gut feeling is that they definitely know that TV isn't real, after a bit of exposure to it -- based primarily on their near-lack of response compared to their reaction when looking out a window or glass door. Cats and dogs will spend hours staring out a glass door, especially when something -- anything -- is going on in their field of view. However, when I found a screensaver of moving tropical fish and installed it just to see the cats' reaction, it was nearly zip. One kitten who jumped on my lap did show some mild interest and watched for about 30-45 seconds, but never again. I suspect he'd have paid about the same amount of attention to moving trees or geometric shapes as he did the fish.

I don't disbelieve that some dogs or cats do show more reaction, especially "only dogs" or cats that don't have much other distraction to amuse themselves with. With a pack this size (five to twenty, usually), they have plenty of social structure and interpersonal (?) relationships to keep them busy, and the dog toys are literally a minefield here.

It would be extremely interesting to actually experiment with this a bit, with single dogs, especially. We aren't well set up for that, but it sounds like a good Psych 101 experiment. Put a TV set at ground level, where they live, and watch reactions to (especially) life-size images they're familiar with ... other dogs, cats, cars, people. Especially interesting would be images, still & video, of their owners or people (or dogs) they are very familiar with. Doing this, with and without sound, would be interesting -- though perhaps a bit hard to interpret since the second or third trials might easily be colored by their earlier exposures. It might be tough to come to any firm conclusions, and I suspect reactions might vary a great deal based on the individual dog, and probably even their breed -- sight-hounds, like Afghans or greyhounds, might be far more interested than scent-hound breeds like bloodhounds or Bassets.

One has to suspect that this has been tried before by someone, and I'd sure like to see the results.

 

[Jaggy Bunnet]

It reminds me a little of the movie The Triplets of Belleville, in which the dog, all its life, runs up the stairs on schedule to bark at the passing trains.

Belleville Rendez-Vous in the UK (for no obvious reason as the original French title is Les Triplettes de Belleville). Nice film.

 

[Jeff Corey]

...I don't disbelieve that some dogs or cats do show more reaction, especially "only dogs" or cats that don't have much other distraction to amuse themselves with. With a pack this size (five to twenty, usually), they have plenty of social structure and interpersonal (?) relationships to keep them busy, and the dog toys are literally a minefield here...

I suspect you are right because none of our dogs(2) or cats(3) presently show any interest whatsoever in the TV. When we had a single cat or dog, they did.

 

[aggle-rithm]

My pooch displays some really odd responses to TV stimuli. She'll growl and/or bark at certain types of animals, but not others. She seems completely disinterested in gorillas and orangutans, for example. Elephants and giraffes cause her to growl. Horses drive her straight up the wall and she leaps up and barks loudly -- this one I thought was more of an auditory response due to the jingling of bridles or other equine appointments (she hates anything that jingles, like keys, which I'm pretty sure she associates with the approach of strangers), but she's no less angered by them if the volume's muted.

Shiner becomes hypnotized by what I call "Hamstervision". In pet stores, when he gets too hyper, I take him over to the small mammals section where he stares, fascinated, at the hamsters, mice, and rats. I don't know how long he would stay there without moving if I didn't finally drag him away, but it's a great way to get him to calm down.

("Calm down" doesn't adequately describe it. He goes from being a "monkey on a rope" [our dog trainer's description] to a statue within seconds of spotting the hamsters.)

Interestingly, he is not interested in birds, lizards, hermit crabs, or tarantulas. I can understand the slower-moving animals, but why not birds?

 

[Mojo]

We have two cats, one reasonably intelligent (for a cat, anyway) the other, er, not.

The less smart one used to be very interested by small animals and birds on programmes on the television, but not by large animals. This was the case even if, say, a mouse was magnified up to full screen or a cow was shrunk to a couple of inches: she'd still be interested in the mouse but not the cow (so smarter than Father Dougal, perhaps, since she could tell the difference between small and far away). After a couple of years she figured out that they weren't real, though, and lost interest.

The other one still likes to watch the television whenever anything with a bit of movement is shown, and complains when we switch it off.

Back in the 1980s (?) whan the Muppet Show was on the telly, we had a cat with a fixation on Miss Piggy. Totally uninterested in anything else on the box, but as soon as Piggy appeared he would try to grab her off the screen.

 

[Blu]

Both our cats watch TV occassionaly. They only seem to bother when it's a programme that has birds or small furry animals running around on it. Doesn't seem to matter if the volume is on or off from what we've found and they lose interest if it's not something they would naturally be chasing in the wild.

Seems that they are able to recognise what they see on the TV. As for dogs... well, I ain't got one to try it with.

Blu

 

[parrotslave]

Shiner becomes hypnotized by what I call "Hamstervision". In pet stores, when he gets too hyper, I take him over to the small mammals section where he stares, fascinated, at the hamsters, mice, and rats. I don't know how long he would stay there without moving if I didn't finally drag him away, but it's a great way to get him to calm down.

("Calm down" doesn't adequately describe it. He goes from being a "monkey on a rope" [our dog trainer's description] to a statue within seconds of spotting the hamsters.)

Interestingly, he is not interested in birds, lizards, hermit crabs, or tarantulas. I can understand the slower-moving animals, but why not birds?

I had a standard poodle who did the same thing with my sister's hamster. The dog would spend hours just laying beside the habitrail staring at the hamster.

My parrots watch PBS kids programming daily. They know the characters, have learned about sharing and saying "please" and "thank you" and have even learned to identify some letters from it. My conure likes Mr. Rogers more than me, he will fly from my shoulder to his cage to watch the show when he hears the theme music.

 

[tuc0]

We had quite an intelligent Dachshund who responded only to animal sounds on TV, never to images. I think her eyesight wasn't too good... she also used to mistake poeple she saw on the street for someone she knew (before she had the chance to sniff at them).
I love animals

 

[JPK]

Good afternoon.
About one year ago, I adobted a stray cat that was hanging around where I work. He was probably about three years old at that time and was always an outdoor cat. He made the transistion to a strictly indoor cat wonderfully. The first time he saw/heard to the TV is scared him quite a bit. He ran from the room and was very reluctant to return. After a few days he not only got used to it, but became fasinated by it. His favorite show is Cosomos. No kidding. The moment I put the DVD in, and the theme music plays, he comes running into the room and starts watching it. I suspect it's the combination of neat graphics and Carl's soothing mannerisms. I've shown this to many of my friends. A coworker gave me a video tape designed for cats to watch. The Cat Sitter or something. It's just video of mice, birds, butterflies and stuff. He will watch that for a few minutes but not with the intensity that he watches Cosmos. I also have all of the TAM DVD's and he also likes to watch Randi. I can't quite figure that out. Sometimes I will use a portable DVD player to play the DVDs hooked up to my regular tv but I will leave the portable on the floor with the screen on. My cat will lay down in front of it and watch it non-stop. My friends have taken pictures of him doing that.
JPK

 

[aggle-rithm]

Good afternoon.
About one year ago, I adobted a stray cat that was hanging around where I work. He was probably about three years old at that time and was always an outdoor cat. He made the transistion to a strictly indoor cat wonderfully. The first time he saw/heard to the TV is scared him quite a bit. He ran from the room and was very reluctant to return. After a few days he not only got used to it, but became fasinated by it. His favorite show is Cosomos. No kidding. The moment I put the DVD in, and the theme music plays, he comes running into the room and starts watching it. I suspect it's the combination of neat graphics and Carl's soothing mannerisms. I've shown this to many of my friends. A coworker gave me a video tape designed for cats to watch. The Cat Sitter or something. It's just video of mice, birds, butterflies and stuff. He will watch that for a few minutes but not with the intensity that he watches Cosmos. I also have all of the TAM DVD's and he also likes to watch Randi. I can't quite figure that out. Sometimes I will use a portable DVD player to play the DVDs hooked up to my regular tv but I will leave the portable on the floor with the screen on. My cat will lay down in front of it and watch it non-stop. My friends have taken pictures of him doing that.
JPK

[derail]
Speaking of evil, atheistic humanism/naturalism, this type of behavior is a perfect example of what creationists insist does not exist: A neutral mutation. I strongly suspect the reason that some dogs and cats react to TV, but most don't, is differences in neural wiring. Such differences could only come about through mutation, but...talk about a useless mutation! What possible survival advantage does the ability to watch television give an animal? And what crazy owner would say, "Hey, this dog watches TV, let's STUD him!"

There's probably all sorts of mutations like that, happening all the time, but no one notices because the right environment has to exist.

[/derail]

 

[kerikiwi]

I am astonished at the number of people here who provide TV sets in their dog's kennels. My dogs are real dogs and do not have TV in their kennels.

 

[Curnir]

My parents' Cairn Terrier whines, barks or growls at the screen, when there is a dog, wolf, bear, lion or tiger on.

We've tried it with the sound muted and with still pictures. And the reaction is the same.

If we tell him to look at the screen when there isn't any of the mentioned animals on. He'll look at the screen with rapt attention, only to look away after a few seconds, and go back to rest (or look at us with a trademark sullen terrier face).