The Fish Whisperer.

[Uncle Joe]

[Old Crow]

1. *Such* a sweet dog.

He's like a doggie paramedic for the fish.

[dangin]

2. Umm

That's a burying behavior. The dog is saving a snack for later.

[Old Crow]

3. LOL... if true, this thread is now hilarious. :) (EOM)

[Peace Patriot]

5. No, I don't think so. The dog studies the FACE of the fish...

...on whom he/she is splashing water, just as a human would do in a rescue, looking for signs of life. The dog stops, looks intently at the fish's face--even tries to lift the fish head a bit--then continues splashing water. Also, the dog does NOT dig and splatter the surrounding sand or dirt onto the fish. It very carefully acts to get WATER onto the fish, checks the effectiveness of this action, then does it some more.

You're joking, right? I suppose, in the absence of context and narration, we cannot be absolutely certain what the dog is doing (or intending to do). For instance, it could have been trained to perform this action--using its snout to shovel water onto fish (or other recumbent objects or animals)--and is responding to commands, i.e., not really exhibiting an altruistic behavior of rescue toward a very different species. I'll give you that--we can't be absolutely certain. But, from what we can see and know--especially the dog LOOKING at the fish's face, trying to lift the fish's head, then splashing more water onto it--the evidence points to intent to rescue--and it seems merely flippant and joking to assume otherwise.

[Old Crow]

6. Having watched this clip more times than I care to admit...

... I think you're right. The reason I say that is the smaller fish on the right is still moving; at one point, it opens its mouth and gills, gasping. So I suspect that prior to this video's start, all of these fish were moving as they slowly succumbed. I think the dog has been watching the fish move and understands that they are in distress. This fits in with your observation that he seems to be checking on the fish at a couple points in the video.

If the fish had been dead several hours, I might be more inclined to think that this was simply burying behavior. But since it appears that the dog has been watching the fish move and struggle, I'm more inclined to think he's trying to help them in some way.

[Uncle Joe]

7. That was my take on it as well, Old Crow. n/t

[dangin]

8. I'm producing a documentary on dog behavior

The trained behaviorist I'm working with pointed this footage out to me months ago.

1. Dogs don't understand breathing, they certainly don't understand fish respiration.

2. The dog is burying the fish.

3. Please don't anthropomorphize. It almost always makes us wrong.

[Uncle Joe]

9. How do you know that

Dogs don't understand distress or that the fish weren't making sounds in their attempts to breathe that only a dog can hear?

[dangin]

10. Hi uncle joe.

Explain to me how dogs evolved to help fish?

Dogs are products of human guided evolution because, since the species, pecking at our trash piles, 30,000 years ago, started demonstrating value to our fore bearers, we've been meddling with their "sexual selection". None of that made them able to help fish.

That is an extremely common behavior among dogs. Extremely!!!!

It's not a mystery.

[Uncle Joe]

11. Hi dangin.

That was only one dog, not representative of the entire species... at this time.

There are extraordinary cases of behavior within species that don't translate for one reason or another to full blown evolution of that species, if that were the case lions might stop eating antelopes.

It is extremely common for a lion to eat antelopes and yet here is one willing to suffer hunger pains to protect baby antelopes.

The problem with letting "extremely common behavior" to be your sole guide, is in blinding one to the exceptions to the rule; which of course precede most all of evolution, depending on whether that exception turns out to be beneficial to the survival of said species or not.

I don't see a logical connection to dogs evolving to help fish. but evolution is in continuous flux and who knows what the Earth will be like 65 million years from now.

[Peace Patriot]

12. Nope, the dog is NOT digging. It is flipping WATER onto the fish.

If the dog was intending to bury the fish, why isn't the dog digging at the sand or mud and spraying THAT onto the fish? Instead, it very carefully flips ONLY the water onto the fish.

I know some people have a hard time understanding that all of our altruistic behaviors EVOLVED from those of animals. Animals came first. And we evolved from animals. We OFTEN see evidence of altruism in animals--elephants mourning their dead, dolphins rescuing human swimmers, dogs and even cats (recent video) courageously defending human children, surprising friendships between animals of very different species, and so on. There is no reason whatever why a dog could not perceive another critter in distress--without necessarily intellectualizing about respiration systems--and act to relieve distress--just as, say, a dolphin will save a drowning human without--as far as we can tell--understanding human respiration. The dog, for instance, may have perceived that there was LESS distress when it splattered the water on the fish.

Granted, I would like to know more. There is no narration. Does the dog live by the sea (or river)? Is the dog being commanded? Are the dog's owners fisherfolk? What is the dog owners' purpose at the scene? Do the dog's owners want to fish to live? Why are the fish stranded? Does the dog like to eat fish? We have no context. Still, the evidence is pretty strong that the dog is trying to help the fish. I don't understand your problem with this--and I have to say that if you're going into your video project with such a narrow, rigid notion about dog behavior, your chances of the video being creative and interesting are nullified at the start. Why not keep an open mind? Why not question the "behaviorist"? Is he God?

[dangin]

13. Altruism?

You really need this dog to be "helping" don't you?

This is too silly to go on with. YouTube that dog, see that same dog doing the same behavior with other food.https://m.

Then read the huff post article about this, and read the hundreds of dog owners who recognize the behavior in the comments.

And please, stay away from science. You're hurting it and it's crying now.

[Uncle Joe]

14. Well that explains that, but has your animal behaviorist friend figured out

why this bear saves the bird from drowning?

Admittedly the bear is well fed and there are lots of carrots laying about, but why would he/she pull the bird out of the water unless the bear was sensing distress from another species or in other words having "altruistic" motives?

[dangin]

17. Is it possible?

Perhaps the bear has learned to "save" nearly dead animals, because they are "fresh". When you get carrion as part of your diet, wounded is tasty.

[Uncle Joe]

18. And the starving lioness in the above video adopting baby antelopes?

She was going hungry and rebelling against her natural instinct of self-preservation because of the loss of her cubs.

She transferred the intrinsic value of her cubs on to the baby antelopes.

As for the bear, if it had lived all its life in a zoo, I'm supposing it would never be fed wounded animals.

Furthermore, you might also be projecting your human sense of taste on to the bear with your assumption.

Having said that I am curious as to how the bird ended up in the water in the first place.

As I noted above, this bear looked well fed and had plenty to eat, so if there is a crude form of Maslow's Hierarchy of needs for animals, perhaps he reached bear self-actualization?

Below you had posted that we should discount isolated cases of extraordinary animal behavior but that's precisely how evolution works. The deviation from the norm that proves productive for that species.

[dangin]

19. Evolution...

Is meaningless in an individual. Evolution occurs within a population, not an individual. Evolutionarily speaking, that dog's one and only priority is eating that fish, or saving the smellier version of that fish for later when it might be hungry.

Hey look, resource caching makes me marginally more successful as an individual. As a species, the more of us that succeed, because we engage in resource caching, creates a behavior in our species.

As dogs, it is hilarious to us, that a "higher" order of life can misunderstand us so much.

[Uncle Joe]

21. You never answered my question regarding the lioness.

Why did she do it?

Evolution is taught or passed on through DNA.

If an individual is successful within its own species or having an inherent advantage over competing species, those traits are more likely to be replicated.

Thus Cro-Magnon's strong social, agricultural abilities either eliminated or severely diluted Neanderthal's more reclusive, clan based hunter/gatherer behavior, but it can most definitely start with one in changing or altering the group.

[dangin]

22. Umm

You're going to have to ask the question again.

Evolution DOES NOT happen within an individual. It happens over generations to a population.

Just making sure you are talking about the real thing. Evolution is a genetic shift within a population, after one species, breaks into two groups, that can no longer interbreed, they have become separate species. That is evolution.

It does no occur within an individual. Do you understand that?

[Uncle Joe]

23. The question was "why did she do it?"

Regarding Evolution, do you understand this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution

Evolution is the change in the inherited characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.[1]

(snip)

Charles Darwin was the first to formulate a scientific argument for the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. Evolution by natural selection is a process inferred from three facts about populations: 1) more offspring are produced than can possibly survive, 2) traits vary among individuals, leading to different rates of survival and reproduction, and 3) trait differences are heritable.[4] Thus, when members of a population die they are replaced by the progeny of parents better adapted to survive and reproduce in the environment in which natural selection takes place. This process creates and preserves traits that are seemingly fitted for the functional roles they perform.[5] Natural selection is the only known cause of adaptation, but not the only known cause of evolution. Other, nonadaptive causes of evolution include mutation and genetic drift.[6]

[dangin]

24. No

To us that is a question. But even if we knew the answer, it sheds no light on the behavior. It would be one, single data point.

Now if we have a vast amount of other data describing the same behavior, and it indicates "resource caching" and we can also explain why that is an evolutionarily successful behavior, we have our answer.

[Uncle Joe]

25. Logic dictates "knowing the answer" would shed light on the behavior even if

it were never replicated.

The lioness was obviously not "resource caching" her ribs were showing and even the narrators stated that she couldn't hunt or eat while exhibiting this behavior.

[dangin]

26. Logic dictates

That one documented instance is not data. Bring the right toys or stop playing.

[Old Crow]

15. You do know that's NOT the same dog as the one in the first video, right? (EOM)

[dangin]

16. Two things.

Same breed, that is an even more common behavior in Shibas.

And to Joe. Post individual videos of captive animals doing odd behaviors all day. That is not predictive of that animal doing it again, nor is it predictive of other animals of that species repeating that behavior, and it is absolutely, monumentally not predictive of anything done by another species. It has no scientific value whatsoever.

This behavior is called resource caching. It is predictive because so many canines and related species engage in it. It is not trained, it is naturally occurring.

Find me a veterinarian or a "science based" canine trainer who says this is anything other than resource caching. If we check with 100, 99 will say it is resource caching. That is scientific consensus.

[dangin]

20. Also

And I am not 100% on this, but I believe that most mammal infants emit "baby breath". AKA puppy breath. Things come out of infant's throat that affect us chemically.

I could be wrong, but I think there is science behind that. Why cross species nurturing occurs among mammals.

[Baitball Blogger]

4. When I was younger I would spend summers at my Aunt's farm and our closest

friends were the dogs on the farm. There was one in particular, a German Shepard called Betchavel that distinguished himself the day we unwisely stood by the river bank to watch the edges swell up from the heavy rains that had fallen above on them mountains. The river's edge expanded at a slow, but steady rate and Betchavel had noticed that it was coming towards us. So he used his nose, just like the dog in the video, to try to build the sand up to try and stop it from reaching us.