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Season 6 Episode 33: Vaping Vapouizes, Feline Language, and Canine Training with Jennifer Holland

• Jason Zackowski • Season 6 • Episode 33

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Ever wondered how the world of pet cognition parallels that of human language learning? Join us as we explore this fascinating topic with insights from researchers in Tokyo and Azabu University, who have uncovered groundbreaking evidence that cats can associate words with images, similar to infants learning language. This discovery challenges our perception of feline intelligence and opens new dimensions in our communication with our feline companions. We'll also draw intriguing comparisons with canine cognition, highlighting the different ways cats and dogs engage with language and their surroundings.

Our special guest, New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Holland, takes us through the world of canine intelligence with her latest book, "Dog Smart." Listen to captivating stories about dogs' extraordinary olfactory abilities and the concept of "intelligent disobedience," where seeing-eye dogs make safety-driven decisions by disobeying commands. From the adaptable street dogs to the problem-solving prowess of Border Collies, we celebrate the multifaceted intelligence of dogs and their irreplaceable role in our lives.

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Speaker 1:

Hello science enthusiasts. My name is Jason Zukoski. I'm a high school chemistry teacher and a science communicator, but I'm also the dog dad of Bunsen and Beaker, the science dogs on social media. If you love science and you love pets, you've come to the right place. Put on your lab coat, put on your safety glasses and hold on to your tail. This is the Science Podcast. Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Science Podcast. We hope you're happy and healthy out there. This is episode 33 of season 6.

Speaker 1:

Halloween has once again come and gone. We hope you got more six. Halloween has once again come and gone. We hope you got more uh treats than you got tricks and maybe traded some of your candies or or stole some candies from some kids in your household or maybe took the candies they don't want to eat. Um, I was lucky. I loved tootsie rolls, so I got all the tootsie rolls from my kids because they hated them. I'm a little weird that way, liking Tootsie Rolls. And you'll notice, adam's section is gone. Weirdly enough, adam was called away to jury duty and he had to go, and he's currently sequestered overnight as part of the jury to give verdict on a case and, of course, he can't tell us what it's about. So that's the odd reason why there's no family section. Adam is sequestered for a criminal case because he had to go for jury duty. He's doing a civic duty. We're very proud of him, all right.

Speaker 1:

Well, what's on the show this week In science news? Chris and I break down a study that had some good news about vaping with teens and tweens. About vaping with teens and tweens. And in pet science we have a wholesome study about how quickly cats seem to be learning language as compared to human babies. Our guest in Ask an Expert is New York Times bestselling author, jennifer Holland, who will be talking with us about her new book Dog Smart. All right, what do you call a sheep that vapes? Well, bad influence, okay, all right, that pun went up in smoke, hi-oh. All right, on with the show, because there's no time like science time. This week in science news, chris and I are going to be talking about vaping and maybe some good news coming out of some studies in the States. Chris, is vaping a problem at your school?

Speaker 2:

I know it has been a problem in the past. I believe the rates of vaping have been going down. A study or we survey the kids and it does show the real. The results have shown that there has been a decrease in risky behavior, and risky behavior Vaping is one of those behaviors. So we have evidence that our vaping is going down.

Speaker 1:

I seem to remember, like years ago, four or five years ago, vaping was everywhere, like all the kids were vaping not all the kids, but more kids were vaping and there were. There was no rules. Like we were caught off guard as teachers because all of a sudden it just exploded over the summer. September rolls around and like kids were vaping walking down the hallway and in the cafeteria and in bathrooms. We were playing catch up to this mass addiction that took over teens and tweens across North America.

Speaker 2:

And the little devices looked like USB sticks. Yeah, it's. What is a vape. Is that a USB stick or is that a vape?

Speaker 1:

Luckily kids don't carry USB sticks anymore, so it's a lot easier to identify them. Usb sticks have gone the way of the dodo.

Speaker 2:

Okay, I might still have a USB stick.

Speaker 1:

Now, before we get to what the study says, let's just go over some of the risks of vaping. Being fully transparent, when you compare vaping to cigarette smoke or smoking cigarettes, vaping isn't as bad, but there are risks. The first one is, like a lot of vaping juices, those e-cigarettes contain nicotine, which is super addictive and during adolescence, nicotine exposure can harm brain development, affecting the areas in the brain for attention, learning, mood and impulse control Kind of things you need at school.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, success in school, a brain that is alert and working.

Speaker 1:

Vaping can also lead to lung irritation and coughing and some kind of like disease called popcorn lung, which was sensationalized. It was all over social media when the first couple of cases of it happened.

Speaker 2:

Now, I thought the popcorn lung was also associated with microwave popcorn. Is that accurate?

Speaker 1:

I guess if you swallow a kernel of popcorn and stand too close to it.

Speaker 2:

No, I think it had something to do with the fumes coming out of the bag and people were breathing in the popcorn fumes.

Speaker 1:

I've never heard of that before.

Speaker 2:

Oh, maybe I'm passing along something that is not quite true, so, listeners, please check that.

Speaker 1:

Please don't take a deep breath of popcorn vapor coming out of your freshly cooked popcorn.

Speaker 2:

Out of the microwave, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Maybe fact check that. And then, lastly, nicotine can raise blood pressure and spike your adrenaline. Not necessarily good things when you need to be focused in school, and for teens and tweens not necessarily right away. But prolonged exposure to that vape juice and the chemicals in the vapor can dry your mouth, leading to irritation and tooth decay.

Speaker 2:

But the good news is, when we first started talking, jason, we noted that we have seen a lower case vaping, but also the lowest tobacco use in 25 years has been seen in teens and tweens. In 2024, only 8% of US middle and high school students which translates to around 2.25 million teens and tweens reported using any tobacco products in the last 30 days. That did make it the lowest rate in 25 years and that's a significant decline from 2019, when 23% which translates to over 6 million students reported current tobacco use, and e-cigarette usage accounted for about 20% of that rate.

Speaker 1:

That's a huge amount of kids who were using e-cigarettes of the 23. So, like only 3% of the kids were using classic tobacco products.

Speaker 2:

E-cigarettes do lead among the tobacco products. However, they remain the most widely used tobacco product, with 6% of middle and high school students currently using them and, for the first time, nicotine pouches ranked as the second most popular choice, with nearly 2% of students using them. Now, have you heard anything about the nicotine pouches?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and first off, when some kids were talking about them, I thought they were saying patches like nicotine patches you would put on your shoulder or wherever to give you that hit of nicotine when you're trying to quit smoking. No, these are. These pouches are like the little rectangles the size of a chiclet gum. You don't chew them, but you just place them in between the gum and the lip and then you absorb nicotine that way without having to smoke or swallow. So some of the kids were saying that for folks that want their nicotine buzz, they don't have to go out in the cold, they don't have to smell like smoke. And for the kids that chew tobacco, they're not like spitting out the chew juice that a lot of kids when I was in high school they were addicted to chewing tobacco and the thing to keep in mind is that they're not necessarily FDA approved in the States, so you got to watch out for that.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, I wasn't too familiar with what these nicotine pouches were, but I do know what chew is and I do know that it was popular again with some of the students in my high school, and other products such as traditional cigarettes, cigars and smokeless tobacco followed in popularity among students. Can you imagine students sitting around shooting the breeze and smoking?

Speaker 1:

cigars. I can't imagine that's a very popular method of getting your nicotine. Aren't cigars expensive, I don't even know where you would get a cigar. We went to Cubaa. Right, okay, but this is an american study. Like good luck getting cuban cigars.

Speaker 2:

For some 12 year old, it'd be a good way to run out of your locker, I guess actually actually um, but when we went to cuba, you and I didn't participate in smoking the cigars, but your family members did, and they all went into what was a dimly lit room. Looked like mad men out of the marketing show with leather chairs and whiskey, but they were all adults yeah, and and they were many of them regretted it.

Speaker 1:

They said it was awful. Yeah, I don't know, I don't. I'm not a smoker, so if you are, I apologize, but I don't get the the whole cigar thing. They smell terrible. Anyways, there are some differences between middle and high school students. So while we're talking about teens and tweens, high school students report higher rates of use about 10% of tobacco products compared to about 5.4% among middle school students, and that's why the average is a bit lower. 8% of high school students use e-cigarettes. That's still down 10% from just 2023. So the rates of vaping is falling and that's contributing to the overall decline in the use of tobacco products. I have to ask, chris like way back when you were in high school, way more kids smoked.

Speaker 2:

Like way more oh yeah, the smoker's pit was packed with kids who were smoking. And then it's like how did you get those cigarettes? Because I don't know if they had restrictions, like I'm sure there were, but I think so stores might have just sold the cigarettes, I'm not sure and then how? Did they have money? Because cigarettes were expensive they still are.

Speaker 1:

They still are. Yeah, the kids they can't. As soon as somebody turns 18, if you want to make a quick buck, you, you run cigarettes for the younger kids. I'm sure that's what happened when I went to high school and I'm sure it's the same way today.

Speaker 2:

We don't condone that activity.

Speaker 1:

No, we don't condone it, but that's what happened. Okay, and also chewing tobacco that was really popular with the guys in my high school. I went to the rural school, I think cowboys, cowboys and farmers and things like that and it's where probably half of the boys in my class chewed tobacco at least half and they'd pull their lip open and stuff the tobacco in there and then they'd spit it into a pop can like that the chew juice, they called it. It was just disgusting. I was like, oh my God, I'm so sorry you guys are addicted to this stuff, but it's nasty. Again, I apologize if you chew tobacco.

Speaker 2:

I'm really glad to be aware of this study because of the impact of nicotine on adolescent development, and if there is a decline in tobacco and tobacco products use in our youth, I think that's a win, because adolescence is a period when exposure to nicotine can be particularly harmful to brain development, which impacts learning, memory and attention at school. And by recognizing these developmental risks, tobacco control programs aim to reduce teen exposure to nicotine and tobacco products, so hopefully they don't get started in the first place.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and that's a broader, interesting societal shift that's happening with the younger alphas, the Gen alphas and the Zoomers, the Gen Zs is not only are they generally smoking less than previous generations, they're also consuming way less alcohol, so much so that the economies of consuming alcohol are looking at the younger generations coming up and being very worried. So I hope they don't pull the same kind of fast one that the companies did because they were losing shares of tobacco smoking and they made vaping cool and stuck nicotine in there to get all these kids addicted to it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, cause we were winning the war on tobacco.

Speaker 1:

Oh, huge, yeah. And then, all of a sudden, 2019 rolled around in two out of what was it? 27% of kids, like two out of 10 kids were vaping. It's probably even higher than that of kids like two out of 10 kids were vaping. It's probably even higher than that. Yeah, anyways, good news. That's science news for this week. This week, in pet science, chris and I are going to look at a fun study that seems to show cats have human babies beat at learning language. Cats can understand what we tell them, chris.

Speaker 2:

No, they can I know, because I have had cats growing up like Poco. She was not your favorite, no, and maybe that was not the best introduction for you with cats, because she only bit you once, but that was enough for you to be turned off cats for a very long time. But now we have Ginger and you just love her.

Speaker 1:

She's so cool. I love that cat. She's neat. Yeah, she is neat and she doesn't listen to me, though, very well.

Speaker 2:

She's listening to what we talk about.

Speaker 1:

Oh, that's true, but I guess she knows her name and she comes when we call and we've taught her to sit, so she's with all the shenanigans when it's time to take a photo and it's time to work. We call it KDOT guys, we're going to work, and that means take videos and pictures for social medias. The dogs get excited, and now Bernoulli knows what's up and he's oh my God, this is the best. He loves to work. And Ginger now wants to work At least she did already. So we were taking photos of them in their halloween costumes. Just the dogs. Ginger felt out, left out, and she came and like, slunk into the room and sat closer and closer, trying to get in on the photo to get a treat yeah, like I think I cut video of it um super cute and eventually bernoulli couldn't control his mauling and went over to say hello with his teeth.

Speaker 2:

But she's okay, anyways, licking leads to biting, which leads to mauling. Recent research suggests that cats may naturally pick up basic human language simply by listening to us speak, much like human babies. So the study was published in Scientific Reports, and it found that cats can associate images with specific words even faster than babies do, implying that cats may indeed be listening to what we say.

Speaker 1:

That's wild, but I guess the cats have lived with humans for a long time, like 10,000 years give or take. I've done countless threads on social media, and previous studies have mentioned this, that cats have been with humans for a long time Now. We didn't domesticate them per se, meaning that we didn't go and breed them from the start, though there are some breeding programs in human history of certain breeds of cat, but cats domesticated themselves. The tamest of the cats started to move closer to humans and they saw us as easy marks for food and shelter and moved in, and those cats just became tamer over time and now that's the house cats that we have today. So I guess it makes sense that because they lived us. I guess it makes sense because they lived with us for so long their brains are changed gave them lots of time to develop associations to what we do in response as to what we say.

Speaker 2:

In 2019, tokyo-based researchers showed that cats recognize their names by responding in certain ways. They move their heads and ears in specific ways, which is super cute, and I challenge you to try talking to your cat to see what their heads move and their ears move. Ginger definitely does. She trills and she looks in her ears. So further research in 2022 demonstrated that cats could match images of their human and feline family members to corresponding names.

Speaker 1:

But let's talk about the new study. This comes from the Azubu University and they were determining if cats are hardwired to understand human language. So they got 31 adult pet cats and they were shown. This is hard to believe, but they were shown animated images on the laptop screen while their caregiver said made-up words. And some of the words are like highlighted in the study. One of them is cura new and the other one is paramo. So, like their caregiver, caregivers would just say nonsense. When certain images popped up, each cat was shown two nine second clips which had different cartoons and words, and they were observed till they lost interest, which makes sense. And they determined a loss of interest when there was a 50% drop in eye contact, signaling the cat was bored. And yeah, we work with Ginger for social media and you don't get 27 takes like we do with the dogs. You get what you get.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, because she gets bored quite easily, and then she just won't do it. Nope, not going to do it.

Speaker 1:

Not going to do it. She's done, that's it.

Speaker 2:

She's done. But these cats were given a short break and after their short break they were shown the images again, but some images were paired with the wrong word, so the quote unquote wrong word. Interestingly, the cats displayed visible confusion. They spent 33% more time watching the screen during the mismatch trials, which was a sign that they had learned to associate the original word with each image.

Speaker 1:

And this is how they test babies with language acquisition. I've actually spoke to a scientist that did this early in her career. That's Dr. I've actually spoke to a scientist that did this early in her career. That's Dr Amritha Mollikarjun. The name might sound familiar because on a podcast episode we talked about how she trained dogs to sniff out COVID and now is working on wasting disease in deer. But yeah, that's how they train infants. Very similarly, that's not how they train.

Speaker 2:

That's how they test infants exactly this way for language acquisition going back to cats, most cats in the studies learned each word image association after just two nine second exposures, whereas most of the 14 month old babies typically so. This implies that cats pay attention to and try to understand our words more often or more than we might realize.

Speaker 1:

And what about comparing them to babies?

Speaker 2:

There's limitations for sure in comparing cats and babies. The studies were conducted differently with cats versus babies, so the cats heard three-syllable words in highly exaggerated speech from their own caregiver, whereas babies heard one syllable words from an unfamiliar voice with varied intonations. So it makes sense that there isn't a connection between a random disembodied voice versus your caregiver who's talking in a sing song voice.

Speaker 1:

Ah. So cats maybe had an advantage in learning Gotcha and when we compare this to dogs, know way more words than cats. Like an average of 89 words. I wonder how many our dogs know? Probably 89. But we train dogs very differently than cats for language acquisition. Dogs love to fetch things and they're treated with a reward-based structure like sit, treat, sit, treat, sit, treat, sit, stand, treat, stand, treat, go get the thing. And as dogs get better they're rewarded with toys or praise, whereas cats just seem to learn the language by watching the cartoons. They are not necessarily rewarded the way a dog is for learning new words.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and they typically avoid fetch or any of those silly games that we play with dogs.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, too much work. Why get the toy? Why get the toy? I'm a hunter. If I go get the toy, that's the end of the toy, that the game is over. I don't bring it back to you. I'm a hunter, all right, really fun study. Interestingly, cats maybe learn language faster than our human babies. So what does that mean? I don't know what that means for us, chris.

Speaker 2:

The mere fact that cats can form these associations is fascinating and meaningful for understanding feline cognition. Super cool.

Speaker 1:

I guess we got to watch what we say around Ginger, though we normally just call her a good cat.

Speaker 2:

She's a good girl.

Speaker 1:

That's Pet Science for this week. Hello everybody, here's some ways you can keep the Science Podcast free. Number one in our show notes sign up to be a member of our Paw Pack Plus community. It's an amazing community of folks who love pets and folks who love science. We have tons of bonus Bunsen and Beaker content there and we have live streams every Sunday with our community. It's tons of fun. Also, think about checking out our merch store.

Speaker 1:

We've got the Bunsen Stuffy, the Beaker Stuffy and now the Ginger Stuffy. That's right, ginger the science cat has a little replica. It's adorable. It's so soft, with the giant fluffy tail, safety glasses and a lab coat. And number three if you're listening to the podcast on any place that rates podcasts, give us a great rating and tell your family and friends to listen too. Okay, on with the show. Back to the interviews. It's time for Ask an Expert on the Science Podcast and we are so lucky to have New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Holland of the new book Dog Smart Life Changing Lessons in Canine Intelligence. Jennifer, how are you doing?

Speaker 3:

I'm doing great, Jason. Thanks for inviting me on.

Speaker 1:

Oh, very exciting. I can't wait to chat with you about the book. But first off, where are you in the world? Where are you calling into the show from?

Speaker 3:

I am currently in suburban Maryland on a beautiful evening. We've gotten a nice cool breeze finally coming through. It's been chilly in the morning and it's very pleasant, so lovely place to be.

Speaker 1:

Is Maryland one of the smallest states. Am I getting that right?

Speaker 3:

It is one of the. It is very small. It is indeed, but we're right near next to DC, and I spent a lot of time in central Virginia as well, so we're going to try state area of sorts, which is nice.

Speaker 1:

So my question, before we get to your book, is this is not your first kick at the can at writing some stuff. What got you into writing? Were you bit by the bookworm bug or something when you were young?

Speaker 3:

I think I probably came out of the womb with a book in my hand. I'm a reader and even also a writer right from when I first learned how to do my letters on that. Remember that brown paper with the little dotted line in the middle. I used to learn how to do my letters on that. Remember that brown paper with the little dotted line in the middle. I used to learn how to do script.

Speaker 3:

I don't think kids even learn that anymore. But yeah, I always loved writing. I would write. I wrote a lot of short stories as a kid and poetry, and my grandmother was very encouraging and she even told me at one point when I was a kid that she hoped someday I would write for National Geographic that was the magazine that she named, and that's where I ended up. For more than a decade and then for another decade, I was freelancing for that magazine, so I've written for them for a very long time.

Speaker 1:

When you were young, did they have those book clubs at library where you read so many books and you fill up a progress bar to get prizes?

Speaker 3:

Yes, I do remember something like that and we used to get to order books and how exciting it was when the box came to class and you got to go get your books from that teacher.

Speaker 1:

Good times In Canada it's called Scholastic Book Fair. Oh yeah. I don't know if that's similar in the States.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

But my wife and I our kids are old now, like they're, they're adults and our nieces and nephews when we go visit them in school, sometimes there was a book fair and my wife and I, just we were just like it was the coolest thing ever. There's like a book. Kids were looking at the different books and I brought back really good memories.

Speaker 3:

Um, I was an avid reader when I was young yeah, yeah, I definitely was and animals was. It was always my passion as well. So the hope was to bring those two things together at some point in life, and I've been really fortunate to do exactly that.

Speaker 1:

Cool, cool. So before we talk about your, before we talk about DogSmart you dropped the name people would be familiar with National Geographic Could we talk about your time with National Geographic?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, we can. It shaped me in a place and sit in a blind and watch birds or climb a tree to see the landscape, or get in a rickety helicopter to get across some interesting part of the world that you would never otherwise get to go to. And it was a remarkable time. As I said, I was on staff for more than 10 years and just had the time of my life. I was diving with sharks and I was out checking out the coral reefs and climbing trees and chasing monkeys around and just all that fun stuff and learning about the wild and conservation and animal behavior. And it was really it just touched, it pushed all my buttons, so it was a fantastic time to be there.

Speaker 1:

So, to paraphrase, it was like you went and did a thing and then you wrote about your experience. Is that kind of it?

Speaker 3:

There was a lot of that Do the thing and then write about the thing. And just what could be better than writing that way, actually experiencing it first?

Speaker 1:

Did you ever have any sketchy missions? You're like oh, I'm in real danger here with the wildlife or the situation that you're in.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, oh sure, I'm not afraid of animal most animals, I'm probably more naive than anything. I let myself just feel like I'm really safe. It's going to be fine. I've had a couple of times in the midst of sharks where I questioned my sanity a little bit, but I also had incredible encounters even with tiger sharks where there was really, I felt, no danger, where I really did not feel that anything, that they were interested in anything, except for just being curious. And I think that's often the case. You hear all the horror stories but what you don't hear is all the times that it goes just fine and I had mostly just fine experiences.

Speaker 1:

I interviewed a shark researcher who did some work with National Geographic, melissa Marquez, and like she, her big claim to fame years ago was like she dives with sharks and she got bit by, I think, a salt freshwater or saltwater crocodile or something, and like she definitely could have lost her leg. It was this whole thing. But the point was is like she was not afraid of the sharks at all.

Speaker 1:

It was tiger sharks yeah, and it was something else that was way worse to be worried about was like some saltwater crocodile. Yeah, I could be mixing up if it was an alligator crocodile. I'm not a biologist.

Speaker 3:

That's okay. That's okay. Yeah, there you just you don't really know, and the circumstances obviously matter very much and you do put yourself at some risk if you're out in the wild, but but I've always found it to be worth it.

Speaker 1:

And another book you wrote is called unlikely friendships. That came before the dog smart. Is that correct, yeah?

Speaker 3:

yeah, that was a great fun. I really started collecting a lot of stories about the odd animal pairings and this was, I think, the first round of before anybody had written anything about that and I started collecting those stories and investigating them a little bit to find out what. Why is this chicken and this lizard hanging out together? Is there a story here? Is this just silly for a picture or for a video? It was really fun. It's a very photo-driven book, so it was very popular and I ended up doing a series. There were four books in the series related to that concept. Just because everyone loves to see animals together hitting it off. It's just such a lovely positive vibe that you get from that we have two animals.

Speaker 1:

I don't know if they're hitting it off, if maybe just one is hitting on the other one. Right now, our puppy bernoulli is enamored with our cat ginger lovely and he mauls her like by he. He thinks she's a little puppy yes, yes, a gentle mauling. Excuse me, and yeah, we have a board which is like the days he goes without mauling Ginger. The highest he's got is two. It's a big thing on the internet.

Speaker 3:

Oh my gosh.

Speaker 3:

It's not as exotic as a chicken and a lizard, but animal parrots are very cute. Sometimes the animals that are closest to home are the best, which is really why I ended up doing Dog Smart, just because I absolutely adore dogs and I wanted to do a deeper dive into what they're capable of and what we know about how they think and learn and and just spend time with really smart dogs, working dogs and the amazing people who train them and take care of them, and so, yeah, that's how DogSmart came to be.

Speaker 1:

And I know I don't want to have you give away everything in the book but in general terms, is that what the book's about? The different types of ways dogs are smart, depending on their application, breed and companionship?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, in a way, the way I came at it was to think we think of intelligence in dogs generally as a dog that responds to our commands, that learns things quickly.

Speaker 3:

And it's very much through has completely different. We certainly overlap in many ways as mammals, but dogs have very different sensory experience from us, different emotional experience, and why not think about the natural tools that they have, that they apply to their lives, whether focused on us or not. And how do you think about that as intelligence? So their olfactory intelligence, for example, their communicative intelligence, their amazing ways of communicating, their kind of language of sorts, their own emotional intelligence, things like that. And more broadly, their adaptive intelligence, so how they've adapted so remarkably well to the human world and fit into our lives so beautifully and have thrived incredibly as a result.

Speaker 1:

It gets me in the heart because I love dogs probably as much as you do. I haven't written a book about them in this matter, but yeah, it just gets me in the heart because the point you make is the way they experience the world is vastly different than how we probably experience the world.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yet they are our closest companions in the animal kingdom, bar none Right. It's not even close. Like cats are a close second, you could argue, like horses perhaps.

Speaker 3:

There's no horse on the end of your bed. I don't know. Probably there's lots of reasons it turned out to be dogs. Probably there's lots of reasons it turned out to be dogs. It could have been something else, but dogs just fit all the. They just made it. They did all the right things and had all the right traits and we really fell in love with them.

Speaker 1:

I'm just I'm looking at the cover of your book and the golden retriever on the cover is just looks strikingly like our golden beaker. Oh, I just love that so much.

Speaker 3:

They're sweet. They are sweet face dogs. Can't not love them.

Speaker 1:

In your book you meant factory. In the book you talk about nose intelligence. I was wondering if you could give us a little bit about that and what what the book touches on.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I always knew the dog nose was impressive, but I didn't until I really started to research it.

Speaker 3:

I wasn't fully tuned in to just how amazingly sensitive it is and how much it clearly affects everything they do.

Speaker 3:

It's really their main tool.

Speaker 3:

I think they use their noses more the way we use our eyes generally, where it's the first thing they're going to rely on, and I was trying to imagine what would.

Speaker 3:

For comparison, I think those numbers are about right, but it just gives you the sense of how vastly different just that aspect of their olfaction is different from us, and so they're. They have this onslaught of information and they're constantly using it to to assess the situation and to make decisions, and I just I became really enamored of this whole idea of detection dogs and how they're able to really smell pretty much anything. I don't think there's anything that we've found so far that they can't detect, no matter how low the dose is out there, and that's why they're just so incredible as service dogs in that way, and we just keep adding to the list of things that they do for us as nose dogs, as detection dogs, from search and rescue to police dogs, to dogs searching out ancient remains, to dogs, sniffing diseases and just a very long list of the things that they're capable of finding with their nose.

Speaker 1:

It's absolutely wild and we cover the science of that on the science podcast every week. There's some types of cancer where a dog is as accurate or more accurate than an entire team of like medical professionals.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, we're worried about AI. We should be worried about dogs, not AI Taking our jobs.

Speaker 1:

One of my favorite stories was the US government has DARPA right. That's like your arm of military research, I believe, and a general. He allocated like $5 million, like a crazy amount of money, to make a scent-detecting machine that was better than a dog, and after a year they didn't even come close and they've blown through all their money and they're like this is stupid, why don't we just use dogs.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, they really, and some of the scientists that I talked to and met with, you know, said we don't really even have a machine that's sensitive enough to tell how sensitive a dog's nose is. We can't even really fully test it because we aren't there yet, and that's just. That's incredible to think about that. But they're just, they're that sophisticated in terms of their olfaction.

Speaker 1:

I think in the last five to 10 years. There's a rankings of animals right on intelligence scales. Dogs aren't in the top.

Speaker 1:

Unfortunately you got the monkeys and the dolphins and the ravens, corvids I think. But then that's based on, like human type intelligence and people are arguing that, like dogs have that an intelligence that's so alien to how we would think of the world that it's really hard to rank animals. Think of the world that it's really hard to rank animals because, like a dog has an intelligence to sniff COVID out of sweat, which I don't know how many other animals would even be able to do that, let alone be able to tell another organism about it.

Speaker 3:

Exactly, and I think that's what's so important. And even the rankings, where you where they rank the breeds.

Speaker 1:

I think it's that was going to be my next question.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah. Clearly the dogs at the top of those lists are very intelligent dogs. I would never say that a Border Collie isn't a super smart dog. They're smart in certain ways. In addition, not all Border Collies are going to fall into any particular category too. We're a little bit too. We generalize a bit much with a breed. But while they're going to have these tendencies and they're certainly very capable, you give another kind of dog an opportunity that it hasn't had before and sometimes they surprise you and they have some incredible intelligence that you didn't really account for previously. So I think we don't give them enough credit for this broader range of intelligences that dogs have.

Speaker 1:

And again, that intelligence is based on problem solving, right. Isn't that why border collies are number one? Like they can independently solve problems better than any other dog, they can memorize more information, names or terms or than other dog breeds. I believe Am I on the right track.

Speaker 3:

Yes, I think that is part of it. And also, border Collies are just so attentive and they're bred, they so want to do well, they want to work, they want to get it right and they're so in tune with their person. Again, I'm overgeneralizing for the breed, but just when you watch, for example, a shepherd, a dog working sheep and that was something I spent some time doing you just see a certain again, a certain kind of intelligence that just has to do with that attention and that desire to get it right. And part of that focus, of course, is on their person, is on the shepherdess in the case that I went to, and just that sort of remarkable ability to pay attention to her, to pay attention to the sheep, to follow the commands, to run off at a distance and still be in tune with what the person is asking them to do. And they really do excel in that particular type of intelligence, no doubt.

Speaker 1:

I read somewhere that one border collie herding sheep is worth a hundred humans.

Speaker 1:

I'm sure that's true collie herding sheep is worth a hundred humans. I'm sure that's true because a sheep got I. Here's a little funny story for you. I worked a part-time job in university at a farm museum and we have big days that where they bring in. It's called heritage days and it's like a fun day where they have old timey tractors but they have sheep dog demos. So they bring in a bunch of sheep and they show the border collies herd them. The week before that we have farm animals on site and a sheep got out yeah and all of our tricks didn't work.

Speaker 1:

Normally you just give them like food and they come back. Like that it ran away. It took 15 of us to track the sheep. It was awful, and then, like a week later, this one border collie was moving 50 sheep through little tiny gates and putting them in a pen.

Speaker 3:

I was like oh man yeah, they just know what they're doing they're intense, they are focused.

Speaker 1:

I like I love how you said that they are focused on their job. Yeah, yeah, very much. I don't know if you did research on this, but I'd be curious to pick your brain. But, like, problem solving maybe isn't the only type of intelligence. There's also emotional intelligence that some dogs have when you think of, like therapy dogs or service dogs.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, there, I did do some work in the book with emotional intelligence and spent time with various types of service dogs of that sort and also went to a nursing home with people that bring their dogs in and just observed how the dogs managed in this circumstance with kind of a little bit unpredictable people and some people that wanted to be physical with the dog and some that were uncomfortable, and it was fascinating to watch the dog decide okay, this person not really into it, not going to keep pressuring this person to pet me. That person over there clearly is interested. Okay, this person not really into it, not going to keep pressuring this person to pet me. That person over there clearly is interested. And just, you could almost see the wheels turning as they make choices about who to get close to and who to leave alone.

Speaker 3:

They really they do have a real special sense, I think, for people. Obviously they've evolved alongside us and so part of that is right there in the genetics they're born to in some ways to pay attention to us and to look to us for help and, I think, for love too. You could argue over the term love, but even if you think of it as chemicals, it's still, you see a change in the dogs and in us. When we have interactions and love is a wonderful thing with dogs, it's the best actions and love is a wonderful thing.

Speaker 1:

With dogs it's the best. That's sweet. A dog researcher I interviewed said something really profound to me and it's something that I've kept in my brain. When I asked him like do dogs love us? And she said we know dogs have the same emotions that we have when we think of fear and anger and frustration, so why not love their mammals too?

Speaker 3:

Exactly, exactly, and they're so social. They really have that same need to be social that we have, and you see it, certainly, with a parent and its babies. You see that same exact kind of parental love and that kind of interaction. So it does seem odd that we wouldn't believe that there's more going on there. We like to think of ourselves as special, but we keep proving ourselves wrong by finding another animal that can do the thing that we thought we were the only ones.

Speaker 1:

Take away our thumbs and we're nothing.

Speaker 3:

That's right, we're thumbless and not so smart.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I don't know what kind of right we would have taken a different turn way back when if we didn't have a posable thumbs to grab stuff For sure, for sure. During your research into this book, was there anything that really shocked you? I love asking authors this like you're like going along and you're like whoa.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, a few things I would say. Some of it had to do with just that power of the olfaction which we've talked about. I also was. I never really realized how many dogs there are on earth. First of all, and more importantly, how many of them are street dogs or not the dogs that we think of as pets. And it makes a lot of sense because you travel the world and you see these unhomed dogs everywhere. But I just had never really it hadn't occurred to me how many of those dogs it's something like 85 percent of the 900 million dogs on earth something like that are not homed.

Speaker 3:

And and how remarkable, how adaptive. It just shows again that incredible adaptive intelligence that these dogs are. Clearly, maybe on an individual level they're not thriving because it's a tough life, but as a species wow, they're doing incredibly well, whether they are on the end of a leash with us or living at the edge of our society, like an early dog would have when they were just starting to become domesticated. So that was just eye-opening to me on some level, this picture of the street dog and how important a part of dogdom that role is that they play, and just how that came to be and how it has stuck around. It's obviously working for them on some level.

Speaker 1:

It's also wild that you can have like a street dog and a human takes it in and all of a sudden it's like the bestest dog you ever could have. Yeah, it's just scratching a living together out there, yes, and then now it's got a house and it's no different than a dog. That obviously maybe there's some trauma with some dogs.

Speaker 3:

I'm over general, but yeah, some of them definitely take to that easier life. Yeah, exactly, they take to it but it's just wild.

Speaker 1:

They just become like a house dog and they're like okay, yeah, let's, let's go do I'll walk on a leash now, yeah yeah, it's pretty good.

Speaker 3:

It's a trade off, but I can do. I can handle this for freedom for food and a nice comfortable bed and all that. But it is interesting because there are a lot of cases, too, of the opposite, where people do bring home dogs from the streets and they just don't ever really become comfortable with that lifestyle. That's just not what they're used to and not what they're adapted for.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I was overgeneralizing a little bit.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's okay, I am too for. Yeah, I was overgeneralizing a little bit.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's okay, I am too. Before we wrap up this section about your book, is there anything else you'd like to touch on?

Speaker 3:

I would love to just mention that there's a really cool concept called intelligent disobedience that I write about in the book and I just love talking about it because it was another kind of surprise for me.

Speaker 3:

It was just something I hadn't thought about and I learned about it through spending time with seeing eye dogs and trainers and realizing that of course, there are times when a dog that is leading a person, they are very well trained to respond to the commands of that person, but they also have to know when it's okay to say no and to reject that command, and how interesting that is to have to make that choice.

Speaker 3:

The dog knows something that the person doesn't know and has to say nope, I'm not. I know your command is important and that I'm supposed to respond to it, but in this case I know that there's a car coming or I see a branch hanging down and we're not going to go that way and no matter how hard you're leading me that way, I'm going to stop, and so that was just a cool concept to me and I think it applies in a lot of cases with working dogs and in one particular case, I think, just very beginning to use dogs with Alzheimer's patients, dementia patients and I was thinking, boy, what an interesting experience that must be, because it's so unpredictable for the dog to be in that household and with that person, and how the dog has to make the right choices for that person's safety. And just that's remarkable to me, that they can do that.

Speaker 3:

That is some pretty high level executive functioning right, yes, exactly, I would say so pretty high level executive functioning right.

Speaker 1:

Yes, exactly, I would say so. You're supposed to go that way, but if you go that way, your person gets hurt and you're like wow, that I've never thought of that before.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I hadn't really either, and it's just one of those things that I think we take for granted a little bit.

Speaker 1:

Can I ask a follow-up question? Is that, or maybe you don't know, is that trained in those dogs or is that innate in those dogs?

Speaker 3:

It's a great question. They do train them to do it. I think it depends on the context, the dogs also. There's some self-preservation involved, I'm sure. So dogs are going to instinctively not walk it and hopefully not hurt themselves. But especially with the seeing-eye dogs, they do teach them to realize when a situation is dire or when it's okay to stop, and they'll practice like they'll go to the edge of the train tracks and they'll give the dog a signal to move forward, but at the same time they're pulling him back and then giving him the reward. So it's this push and pull thing and the dog has to figure out what the heck that means, which I'm sure is not obvious in the beginning. But they will train them to disobey in particular situations.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that is wild. Ah, I'm my. My brain is just spinning about that yeah, I'm wondering if our dogs have ever disobeyed a. They have actually, like bunsen has disobeyed a command because things weren't safe. Yeah, like there's been, I'm sure, since. Like a while ago, when our golden retriever was a puppy, she was attacked by a coyote and bunsen saved her life and I'm wondering now in the past where bunsen refused to go to certain areas if he knew it was unsafe.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, and it does give you a pause maybe, when your dog is refusing to do something, to just at least, before you start yelling at him, think about what's the context here. Is there a reason? Maybe there's something going on here that I'm not paying attention to.

Speaker 3:

That is neat and communicating. I think learning to read your dog better is an important theme in the book as well, and just the better we can really understand their body language very well and pay attention to that, the better our relationship will be with them and the more we can stay out of bad situations where a dog is uncomfortable or maybe wants to bite or something like that, because we're not always very good at reading them. I think is probably true to say yeah, that's part of dog training.

Speaker 1:

Is reading your dog.

Speaker 3:

We've gotten better at that the more dogs we've had to train. Yeah, it takes a while to understand.

Speaker 1:

Before we move on to our standard questions Jennifer, where can people find Dog Smart?

Speaker 3:

Life-Changing Lessons in Canine Intelligence find Dog Smart, life Changing Lessons and Canine Intelligence. It is on disneybookscom, it is on all the online, so Amazon and BNN has it and you can also find it on my website, which is jenniferhollandwritercom. I should have a couple of links, I think on the main page, to the new book. Some of the brick and mortar stores have it and sometimes you have to ask them to order it, and I greatly appreciate when people do that, because I'd like to have it everywhere is my preference.

Speaker 1:

Awesome, we'll have in. If you're wondering, folks, we'll have a link in our show notes to a couple places you could pick up the book. So I think if people are listening and they're like my dog's kind of smart and you're curious about canine intelligence, this dog is right up your alley. It's got everything all about that the different types of intelligence and thanks for sharing a little bit about your book, jennifer.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it's great to talk about it. I appreciate you asking.

Speaker 1:

As we wrap up, there's some standard questions we ask all our guests to share or answer. One is if you wouldn't mind sharing a pet story from your life.

Speaker 3:

Oh yeah, boy, there's so many. But here's a pretty funny one. We used to have a Shiba Inu named Ty and my husband used to breed snakes, which is a whole other story. But we had all of these tanks with these snakes in them and every once in a while my husband would stay up late feeding the snakes and he might leave a tank open just to crack, not on purpose, and we had a couple of times when snakes a snake escaped oh.

Speaker 2:

God.

Speaker 3:

This dog. I'm telling you she had a snake bark. She would find the snake and she had a very particular bark that always was associated with a found snake, and even times that we didn't know a snake had gotten out, we would hear her and I'd say, oh my gosh, that's a snake bark. And sure enough, here was the snake, hiding under the you know whatever, behind the door, and had escaped, and she had found it. She never hurt the snakes, she just let us know exactly where the snake was. Yeah, just a bizarre thing, but no doubt about it, she had a particular sound for those animals.

Speaker 1:

I bizarre thing, but no doubt about it, she had a particular sound for those animals. I guarantee you that if I found a snake behind a door, I would have a particular sound as well.

Speaker 3:

I'm sure you're not the only one. These were non-venomous snakes. I should point that out just for the record.

Speaker 1:

My son had an albino ball python and it grew to an enormous size.

Speaker 3:

They do.

Speaker 1:

And it was terrifying. I'm glad he loved that pet. My wife loved that pet, but that pet. Every night I went to bed. It's like it's going to break out and kill one of us.

Speaker 3:

This is the night.

Speaker 1:

We did not have a dog with a snake bark either.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's what everyone needs, apparently.

Speaker 1:

That's cute. Chiba Inus are neat little dogs.

Speaker 3:

They are. They're very funny.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for sharing your pet story. As we wrap, I was wondering if you could share a super fact with us. It's something that you know that when you tell people, it blows their mind a bit.

Speaker 3:

From this particular research and book. I would say that my mind was blown when I was spending time with a scientist who was actually trying to quantify how sensitive a dog's nose is, and he told me that they know that a dog can find something that in the concentration in the trillions and probably the quadrillions, concentration in the trillions and probably the quadrillions and I didn't even know quadrillions I think it's 15 zeros after the one. So that was the only way I could even try to imagine what that looks like and that just to me, that's a powerful fact right there and I don't even know what to do with that. It was just made my jaw drop that they are so incredibly sensitive. It was just made my jaw drop that they are so incredibly sensitive.

Speaker 1:

Does it not just that's a great fact, that's wild. But if you think about this for too long, does it just fill your brain with wonder how a dog goes through a day? Yeah, like with all of these things that are invisible to us, in smell, just like bam bam bam. What is that like for a dog?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and I asked a scientist about that because I thought how do they navigate? That? That's just madness. And think about our vision. If you think about it, we're constantly bombarded, right, there's stuff everywhere. We're looking at things. There's colors, there's activity, and we are able to sort through it. Our brains figure it out. We can zoom in on something. We can ignore other things.

Speaker 1:

And.

Speaker 3:

I think that's how the dog's nose does it the same idea it's able to pick through the noise, ignore the noise and pick out what's germane, what's important, and ignore the rest. So I think that's probably a decent way to explain it. But yes, I definitely had that same thought exactly as you did. That's a great way to explain it, but, yes, I definitely had that same thought exactly as you did.

Speaker 1:

That's a great way to explain it. I think if suddenly we got the power to smell like a dog, it would be a bit much. We'd have to stay in bed for a couple of days.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, completely overwhelming.

Speaker 1:

It's like the first 10 minutes in Disneyland when I got there. I was like what is going on this is too much yeah exactly. Anyways, Jennifer, thanks for being our guest today and talking a little bit about your book. Are you yourself on social media anywhere?

Speaker 3:

I'm pretty terrible with social media, but I have started trying to use Instagram. Book author Holland is my handle, but yeah, I'm just I'm not sure why I rejected other than my personal facebook page. I've been pretty bad. I'm not very good at tiktok, I'm just an old lady can't learn new tricks, but but yeah, you can always find me on my website and you can contact me through my website as well perfect, so we will have links to your social media handle and instagram ever folks.

Speaker 1:

the website link will be there and also a link to where you could snag DogSmart life-changing lessons in canine intelligence. Once again, jennifer, thank you for being our guest today. This was such a fun conversation about something that I love. This is my jam talking about dogs and how smart they are.

Speaker 3:

Thank you, it was great fun.

Speaker 1:

That's it for this week's show. As I mentioned, no family section this week because Adam is sequestered for jury duty of all things, so hopefully we'll be back with family section next week. At the end here we'd like to give a big shout out and thanks to everybody who supported us, either by rating the podcast, listening to the podcast, being a subscriber on Instagram or Twitter, and also our top dogs, which are our top supporters on the Paw Pack, our paid community, and we give those folks a shout out at the end of the show. So take it away, chris.

Speaker 2:

Bianca Hyde, mary Ryder, tracy Domingue, susan Wagner, andrew Lin, helen Chin, tracy Halberg, amy C, jennifer Smathers, laura Stephenson, holly Birch, brenda Clark, anne Uchida, peggy McKeel, terry Adams, debbie Anderson, sandy Brimer, tracy Leinbaugh For science, empathy Mason and Luke Liz Button, kathy Zerker and Ben Rathart.

Speaker 1:

For science, empathy and cuteness.