“Oreos were my best friend as a kid,” he says brian hair. Once Hare wanted to hone his baseball pitching skills, his Labrador eagerly took on fielding duties. If he decided to explore the nearby forest, Oreo was always happy to take him. But there was one place where the boy and the dog always parted ways. “Oreo has never set foot in our house. Not once,” Hare says.
Nowadays, the front door is not closed for most dogs in high-income countries, and many dogs spend their days relaxing on the couch or watching TV. You would think they would be in dog heaven. But Hare, an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, believes development has kept them in a doghouse. For thousands of years, he says, we have relied on dogs to protect our property and protect our families at night. Now, we have different expectations. Not only do you want your indoor dog to be friendly to strangers and rest quietly throughout the night, but also to be toilet trained, avoid chasing other animals, and avoid getting dirty paws on upholstery. You also need to do so. “This is an evolutionary mismatch,” Hare says.
Fortunately, this problem is solvable. Many recent studies have shown that selective breeding and careful training can help dogs adapt to indoor life. Meanwhile, Hare and his team “Puppy Kindergarten” Their lab delves into necessary behaviors and sheds new light on the milestones of cognitive development in dogs. Even better, researchers have devised a technique…
Source: www.newscientist.com
