https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PepZPSbvj6A It occurred to researchers that dogs trained in the “Do-As-I-Do” obedience method presented the opportunity to test whether or not a dog is endowed with episodic memory. From Wikipedia: Episodic memory is the memory of autobiographical events (times, places, associated emotions, and other contextual who, what, when, where, why knowledge) that can be […]

      https://aeon.co/ideas/the-mind-isn-t-locked-in-the-brain-but-extends-far-beyond-it?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=d3f294acf8-Daily_Newsletter_7_July_20167_7_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-d3f294acf8-69057377   Currently, all theories of behavior— save one — treat the mind of the dog as a self-contained faculty of intelligence. It’s the easiest way for the human intellect to conceptualize the phenomenon of intelligence given that the intellect is primarily fixated on material causation. As this article puts it, historically […]

  A child learns to crawl, stand, toddle, walk and run without stopping to wonder how they are capable of manipulating their arms and legs in order to move about. They do it because they can do it. It just happens. Apparently all a child has to do is want to crawl, stand, toddle, walk […]

One reason NDT is hard to propagate is that it requires seeing the evidence through an unfamiliar lens, what I call an immediate-moment manner of analysis. Some mistakenly think the shift required is metaphysical, others think it’s mechanical. Some say my interpretations are too simplistic, and then at another juncture they say it’s too complicated. (I […]

I’m honored that my immediate-moment manner of analysis has found a receptive audience in the tracking community. For sure this community is well practiced in studying the most minute fluctuations in the natural order. I can’t think of a more profound or fascinating way to engage with nature. Below Willem Larsen offers a very helpful […]

“Most people, including many scientists, believe that emotions are distinct, locatable entities inside us — but they’re not.” Lisa Feldman Barrett   Professor of Psychology Northeastern University http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/opinion/sunday/what-emotions-are-and-arent.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0 If you have been following NDT theory then you are not among the “most people” referenced above. My study of dogs through the lens of the immediate-moment […]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/19/science/fruit-flies-are-shown-to-enter-a-fearlike-state.html?ref=science   “Despite these observations, it was not possible to conclude the flies were experiencing fear, Dr. Anderson said.” “We can only know that by verbal report,” he said. “So we can’t scientifically study feelings in any creature but a human.” Or, we could simply observe behavior without injecting human thoughts into the minds of […]

Contextual Analysis versus an Immediate-Moment Analysis of the Play Bow The problem with the current consensus in behaviorism is that while the experts make very reasoned cases for a number of possible explanations for the various acts dogs perform during play, such as rolling over, bowing, grabbing and chasing, they haven’t been able to find […]

Two items in the news from science are of special interest. One is about Biocentrism: http://higherperspective.com/2015/01/consciousness-death.html#26xY0kV3xLRWVu6Z.01 From Wikipedia: “Biocentric universe (from Greek: βίος, bios, “life”; and κέντρον, kentron, “center”) — also known as biocentrism — is a concept proposed in 2007 by American doctor of medicine Robert Lanza, a scientist in the fields of regenerative medicine and biology,[1][2][3] which sees biology as the central […]

I offer the following as an exercise in critical thinking. The New York Times article below illustrates the pretzel knot that modern behavioral analysis is locked in. The problem arises from trying to understand animal behavior as states of intention rather than as states of attraction. This leads to the false dichotomy that if behavior isn’t […]

PBS this week featured two excellent shows on animals. One was a Nature episode about the Turkey man, Joe Hutto, who grafted himself into a flock of wild turkeys and learned their ways. In this new documentary he makes contact with mule deer simply by being among them for two years. http://www.wgbh.org/programs/Nature-26/episodes/Touching-the-Wild-51073 {It seems to […]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131203161715.htm For my entire career NDT has been swimming against the tide of consensus that held that the nature of the domesticated dog is due to its contact with man and to such a degree that dogs were considered to have become an adjunct of human culture. Theorists initially believed that it was pointless to […]