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Maybe I’ll learn by osmosis
A recent article on MSNBC posited that perhaps female dogs are more intelligent than male dogs. Or at least, that’s what the sensationalist headline might lead readers to think. What’s really going on is that a study from the University of Vienna may have found evidence that male and female dogs think in slightly different ways.
The study, led by cognitive biologist Corsin Muller, tested domesticated dogs for their comprehension of “object permanence.” Object permanence is a physical law stating that when an object disappears from view, that doesn’t mean that it’s ceased to exist or changed in any way. Human infants grasp this once they’ve aged about a year.
To test canines for their understanding of this concept Muller and his team gathered 25 male dogs and 25 female dogs of a variety of breeds, including various mixed and pure breeds. The researchers bounced a large blue ball and a small blue ball on a string in front of a wooden board. They then hid the ball behind the board.
The tests followed this pattern: the large ball danced in front of the board, disappeared, and reemerged. Next the small ball did the same. Then the large ball made another appearance, only to disappear and be replaced by the small ball. Finally the small ball came again then was swapped for the large one.
Muller tested to see if the dogs noticed the difference by measuring how much attention they gave the reemerged ball. Both canines and children are supposed to give more attention to an unexpected or supposedly impossible event.
Initially it seemed the dogs didn’t pay any attention to the change. When pouring over the results, however, Muller and his team noticed that once the dogs’ reactions were broken down by gender, a pattern developed. The male dogs hadn’t reacted, but the female dogs studied the changed balls for around 30 seconds, whereas they only watched the unchanged balls for about 10 seconds.
There are a few explanations for this difference. Perhaps it’s a product of evolution; the difference in male and female dogs’ roles in the wild might have given female canines a greater understanding of spatial reasoning or even just a stronger attention to detail. After all, mothers must pay close attention to any changes in their surroundings that might indicate a threat to their young.
However, Muller thinks his results are the product of biology, of how different sex hormones work in the brain. The sex-specific differences between male and female dogs seem too limited to be a product of evolution, he claims. He also says that future studies would likely balance what he calls the “intelligence scale,” presumably indicating that male and female dogs are of differing but equal intelligence.
Strangely, this whole study puts a focus on an issue that, with humans anyway, is very close to me: gender roles, and whether or not such “different but equal” intelligence is a part of that. One of the things I’ve always wanted to know is whether or not many of our supposed gender differences are actually there from birth, or if they’re a cultivated result of centuries of patriarchy.
Studying inborn vs. bred gender differences is difficult and complicated, but what’s easier is to explore whether there are actual differences in the way men and women think. Something akin to this study conducted with the dogs works. The main goal wasn’t to research differences between male and female dogs; that was a pattern the participants noticed along the way.
Of course, much more research is needed on the topic: one test does not a universal law make.
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