Show of hands. How many out there are able to herd scattered sheep into a cluster and coax them into a corral? Okay.
Now, how many of you can lead a blind person down Manhattan’s 42nd Street in the middle of rush hour without running into another person? Oh, by the way, you’re two feet tall. Okay.
Here’s the big one: How many can smell cancer or “feel” that your most trusted loved one is about to have a seizure?
Our canine companions can do amazing things, some of which we humans cannot. So, it’s tempting to think that they can also process complex emotions like we can.
Dogs “feel” many of the basic emotions we do including joy, fear, sadness and anger. They mope as we prepare to leave home and do handsprings when we return. They may cringe in the presence of the unknown or lean forward, bear teeth and growl at a perceived threat.
Some of us are convinced that dogs are also capable of complex feelings like guilt or remorse. But their brain anatomy doesn’t support that conjecture.
For one thing, dog brains are much smaller than human brains. This includes the prefrontal cortex, a key area that processes stimulation received from the environment. In humans, visual and auditory messages are received in an area of the brain called the thalamus. From there, information is transmitted to the prefrontal cortex for analysis. Finally, the analyzed information courses to the amygdala where we decide to fight, flee or just chill.
A dog’s prefrontal cortex is not only smaller than a human’s, it has far fewer “folds,” meaning that the analytic pathways are not as developed. We may think our fur baby feels “guilty” because he or she hangs their head and slinks along the floor when we come home to a poop-seeded house. In reality, they may fear a scolding because they’ve come to associate poops in the house with our negative reactions, a conditioned response.
One couple who’d adopted a second dog was convinced that their established dog had reverted to soiling the house because he wore the “guilty” look when the couple came home to find poop on the floor. Nanny cams revealed that it was actually the not-quite-housebroken newcomer doing the pooping. The established dog retained the negative reactions to his broken habit through conditioning.
Because we are so bonded to our furry friends, many of us want to ascribe human characteristics to them. Believing that they have the capacity for reflective thought may seem endearing, but can be a dangerous thing; companion animals has been surrendered to a shelter because their owner believed they were vengeful.
We humans may have the more “evolved brain” — but there’s plenty of evidence that we don’t always do the right thing. Despite suffering abuse and/or neglect at the hands of humans, the vast majority of rescued dogs with their “simple” brains are able to adapt to new homes and build lifelong love and trust.
Given my choice of brains to be reincarnated with, I’m not totally sure which one I’d choose.