http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/47373/title/Mice-Display-Human-Like-Sense-of-Body-Awareness/ This research provides further verification of the phenomenon of emotional projection, by which I mean the projection of a feeling of the body’s physical center-of-gravity (p-cog), into an object so that the object feels to the subject as if it is an extension of its own body. This internal/external emotional connection is facilitated by […]

Dr. Marc Bekoff in a recent article ….. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201607/dogs-display-dominance-deniers-offer-no-credible-debate ……  claims that if one doesn’t believe in dominance as an organizing principle in canine social life then they are therefore “deniers.” (BTW Lee Charles Kelley offers some excellent rebuttals in the comment section. I wonder if they will be addressed.) Meanwhile in the article Bekoff […]

I have been expecting that “How Dogs Work” would spur a great debate throughout Dogdom. Yet the only discussion I’ve found is a review posted by Dr. Bekoff on his Psychology Today blog. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201511/how-and-why-dogs-play-revisited-who-s-confused Beckoff challenges Coppinger and Feinstein’s thesis that play, specifically the play bow, represents a state of conflict, i.e. an emergent behavior […]

A lot of things  dogs do are really funny. But this can obscure that a fundamental truth is being revealed. So first enjoy a good laugh in the video below that’s been making the rounds, and then try to answer: Why do dogs do this? It’s no laughing matter. Below I will add my interpretation. […]

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 […]