Answer My Searches

My friend has a dog who will pee on the carpet whenever people don’t pay attention to her. But normally she knows how to ask how to go outside. So I got to wondering if dogs can have an emotion like spite or revenge.

I searched around and everyone says absolutely not. Dogs do not have complex emotions like that and also probably don’t have the planning capacity do carry out a revenge act.

Here are some of the web sites I found that try to explain this. Generally they say that the dog may just be getting scared or lonely and thus confused.

• Spite Isn’t A Dog Thing – Separation Anxiety Is
• Do Dogs Think?

However I still have my doubts. Dogs obviously descended from wolves which had to live in small packs and I’d think that the concept of revenge might be useful for social animals to have evolved. It would encourage cooperation by punishing those who don’t cooperate. You know a “You didn’t help us hunt, so you can’t have my bison” type of deal.

[tags]spite, pee, dogs, emotions, dog emotions, anxiety, wolves, evolution[/tags]

Update: Slashdot and this place say that it will be delayed until “fall”, 2006.

April 15th, 2006 says this GameSpy page.

Seems like a silly tidbit of info to post here, but search answers were not 100% forthcoming for me.

Wikipedia tells us:

These birds feed mainly on plant material. When feeding in water, they submerge their heads and necks to reach aquatic plants, sometimes tipping forward like a dabbling duck. Flocks of these birds often feed on leftover cultivated grains in fields, especially during migration or in winter. They also eat some insects, molluscs and crustaceans.

Why I was curious:
I always see 30-50 of these birds in a field on my way to work every day and they seem to just be pecking in the grass. I can’t fathom what there is for them to eat there. I’d say insects but they appear to be continually eating and there can’t be that many insects. So my best guess so far is that they’re just eating grass. Perhaps I’ll never know.

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[tags]canada goose,geese,eating grass[/tags]