Reviewed by: Ellizabeth Marshall Thomas

The Hidden Life of Dogs

New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1993. xxi, 148 pp. $18.95.

Robert W. Mitchell
Eastern Kentucky University

At the turn of the century, some North American naturalists and adventurers--most notably Ernest Thompson Seton, William J. Long, and Jack London--viewed animals as profoundly psychological and humanlike in their behavior (Lutts, 1990). Animal "marriage" and animal knowledge were topics these authors wrote informatively about, using anecdotes and metaphors from human culture to spice up and render immediately accessible accounts of animal behavior. There were, of course, several scientists, naturalists and adventurers (particularly John Burroughs) who opposed such humanizing, and eventually their anti-anthropomorphism held sway in science (at least until recently). But the popular audience has maintained an interest not only in animal behavior but in its anthropomorphic and psychological interpretation. Thomas' book fulfills that interest, and remains firmly in the tradition of anthropomorphic anecdotalism--the idea that one can observe one instance of behavior, and understand what animals think and know based on it. Although Thomas begins by denying that the subject of dog consciousness is anthropomorphic (p. vii), she then states that a book on dogs must be anthropomorphic (p. xv).

Like Seton's, Thomas' observations of dog and wolf behavior are believable and engaging; one envies her experiences of observing so many dogs out and about. Her interpretations, however, are frequently off-putting because of overinterpretation. She makes explicit comparisons between dogs and humans, much as Darwin (1871) did, providing instances of dog imitation, pretense, and morality. Typically, however, the evidence is wholly inadequate. In the case of imitation of human turn-taking in licking ice cream, the licking dog might have responded the same way to ice cream before observing the human pattern; in the case of the imitation of eating while lying down, the model for the action is not known, but merely asserted. Given that the dog attacked by Bingo for purportedly moral reasons did not seem to have done anything immoral, it is unclear how Bingo could have been exhibiting morality. The description of one dog's pretense of hunting, however, is intriguing and believable--dogs re-enact their own actions playfully, as anyone knows who has been bested by a dog's skill at feinting and keepaway (Mitchell & Thompson, 1993). But dogs do not seem to pretend in the way that some apes and dolphins (and most humans) can, by re-enacting behaviors of someone else (Mitchell, 1994). Some human analogies work, however, as when wolf groups are compared to some human families in their lack of dominance displays (pp. 37-38). Thus, the problem is not with using analogies between humans and animals, but with their inaccurate use.

The various psychological interpretations presented throughout the book may be interesting and suggestive, but many verge on a hazily anthropomorphic assumption, proposed even when evidence is scant, that dogs and wolves always "know" and "think" about their own and others' behaviors. One dog (dressed and cologned by his or her owner) which immediately showed submissive behavior upon other dogs' predatory approach is depicted as exhibiting "quick thinking" (p. 70) where thinking seems irrelevant, and dogs which enact patterns of behavior similar to those of wolves are said to "remember" the wolves' patterns (p. 37) where no memory seems required. Two wolves (p. 42) are described as having "told the others where a surprising and untoward thing had occurred" (that is, where a group of humans first appeared). The word "told" suggests information passed on verbally, but Thomas does not argue that wolves have a language comparable to speech; rather, she maintains that the "telling" is done mysteriously. But if wolves communicate nonverbally the feeling that something is wrong, and the only new things on the horizon are human beings, it does not take mysterious communications for other wolves to feel that the humans are to be avoided. The account of one postpartum female killing the offspring of a less dominant female is believable in that similar infanticide is sometimes found in group-living carnivores (Packer & Pusey, 1984), but the ideas that the killing of a second litter by a dominant female pack member is an "unavoidable" and necessary part of "dog rules," that the female whose pups were killed "knew" that according to "dog rules" her own pups did not have the "right to live," and that her knowledge "explained her detachment from the pups" and her willingness to let the other female kill them (pp. 83, 88) seem unlikely and hard to evaluate empirically. It certainly was not in the female's genetic self-interest to have allowed her pups to be killed, especially when there was plenty of food available for all pups. Although Thomas relates the infanticide to that by human hunter-gatherers, she specifies that a human mother might kill her own newborn when she has another infant already, because both may die due to lack of food. The inaptness of the analogy leads Thomas to posit a different analogy, that "Like parts of the body, they [dogs] function together on behalf of the whole" (p. 90). But this analogy suggests group selection is at work, which biologists have repeatedly and believably argued is rarely if ever operative. Scientists studying animal behavior will have a difficult time accepting many of Thomas' interpretations of dog consciousness, largely because the author seems remarkably naive about the scientific study of animal psychology. A simple case of classical conditioning of the dog Inookshook is described as a mysterious feat of learning (p. 137): "She even learned that insulin made her feel better.... Somehow she managed to associate the injection with the comfort that resulted much later." Thomas claims that if she watches two dogs for one hour, she has two hours of observation, but the number of hours counted should probably be divided by the number of animals observed simultaneously--it is simply too difficult to observe two or more animals carefully. Many researchers of animal behavior (e.g., Smuts, 1985; Strum, 1987) do, however, share Thomas' experience of "enter[ing] into the consciousness of a nonhuman creature" (p. 120), an experience managed by an observer (Quiatt, in press) based on attending to what an animal does and taking on its concerns (Shapiro, in press). Of course dogs have consciousness, feelings and intelligence; too bad the assumptions Thomas makes in interpreting them are not typically compelling.

References

Darwin, C. (1871/1896). The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex . New York: Appleton.

Lutts, R. H. (1990). The nature fakers: Wildlife, science and sentiment . Golden, CA: Fulcrum Publishing.

Mitchell, R. W., & Thompson, N. S. (1993). Familiarity and the rarity of deception: Two theories and their relevance to play between dogs ( Canis familiaris ) and humans ( Homo sapiens ). Journal of Comparative Psychology, 107 , 291-300.

Mitchell, R. W. (1994). The evolution of primate cognition: Simulation, self-knowledge, and knowledge of other minds. In D. Quiatt & J. Itani (Eds.), Hominid culture in primate perspective (pp. 177-232). Boulder: University of Colorado.

Packer, C., & Pusey, A. E. (1984). Infanticide in carnivores. In G. Hausfater & S. Blaffer Hrdy (Eds.), Infanticide: Comparative and evolutionary perspectives (pp. 31-42). Hawthorne, NY: Aldine.

Quiatt, D. (in press). Silent partners? Observations on some systematic relations among observer perspective, theory, and behavior. In R. W. Mitchell, N. S. Thompson, & H. L. Miles (Eds.), Anthropomorphism, anecdotes and animals . Albany: SUNY Press.

Shapiro, K. J. (in press). A phenomenological approach to the study of nonhuman animals. In R. W. Mitchell, N. S. Thompson, & H. L. Miles (Eds.), Anthropomorphism, anecdotes and animals . Albany: SUNY Press.

Smuts, B. B. (1985). Sex and friendship in baboons . Hawthorne, NY: Aldine.

Strum, S. C. (1987). Almost human . New York: Random House.

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