Skip to main content

If Dogs Could Talk – Vilmos Csányi ****

Sometimes a truth is so close under our nose it’s difficult to spot. We are so used to dogs and their behaviour that we don’t really notice just how remarkable they are. Vilmos Csányi challenges us to think about the canine mind. Once you do, it’s obvious that dogs are quite remarkable.
This is an animal which, with human help, has become so modified from its natural form that it prefers the company of another species – humans – to its own. We are familiar with the concept of the dog as “man’s best friend”, but this book challenges us to think more about the mental processes required to enable a dog to do the remarkable things it does.
Remarkable, dogs? Surely all they do is mess on the pavement and bark a lot? Hardly. Csányi, a confessed dog lover, shows us with a combination of personal anecdote and the outcome of a wide range of experiments just how flexible the dog’s mind can be, giving it capabilities that no animals other than humans – not even the other primates in some cases – are capable of. This isn’t so much about the impressive ability of dogs to follow commands, but rather the way they can communicate with humans, appear to have a model of the mind to make deductions, and generally share a surprising amount of our nature, when isolated from the heavy duty thinking we alone can do.
If you are a cat lover and don’t particularly like dogs, by now you might be cringing a bit. There isn’t going to be a lot of solace for you here. You can argue as much as you like about what good pets cats make, but they simply aren’t capable of most of the actions and thoughts that make dogs unique. If there’s any doubt, ask a cat to fetch your slippers, see how excited it gets at just the mention of walkies, or ask a cat “where?” when it shows the intention of doing something and see how much intelligent response you get. The fact is, cats may be loveable, but by comparison they are practically brainless, and lack the unique cross-species bond of the dog.
If it weren’t for a few practical irritations, this would be a solid, five star, best of breed book. Firstly it’s a translation, and there’s a slightly unnatural feel about the language, especially when Csányi is being humorous. Translated jokes always creak. Then there’s a large section that seems to forget dogs altogether, talking about apes and people. I think this is supposed to be so we can relate the dog’s mind to a better understanding of the human, but it’s too far off track and loses the whole impetus of the book. Oh, and throughout the word “ethology” is used (on practically every page) as if it’s a word we’re all familiar with. Sorry, never heard of it. I don’t even know if it’s pronounced ee-thology (as in ethos) or eth-ology (as in ethnic). Even the OED isn’t awfully helpful, as it could be the portrayal of character by mimic gestures, the science of character formation, or the branch of Natural History that deals with the actions and habits of animals. With this topic, it could be any of these that was meant, though I suspect it was the third. At the very least the word should have been explained – better still, it should have been avoided. (One last moan – the chapter on “how to be a dog owner” at the end seems weak and out of place.)
Never mind that, though. What’s certainly true is you won’t look at dogs the same way again. This is a truly fascinating book on the unnatural canine minds behind a unique inter-species relationship. Good boy, Vilmos! Good boy!

Paperback:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Peter Spitz
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Phenomena - Camille Juzeau and the Shelf Studio ****

I am always a bit suspicious of books that are highly illustrated or claim to cover 'almost everything' - and in one sense this is clearly hyperbole. But I enjoyed Phenomena far more than I thought I would. The idea is to cover 125 topics with infographics. On the internet these tend to be long pages with lots of numbers and supposedly interesting factoids. Thankfully, here the term is used in a more eclectic fashion. Each topic gets a large (circa A4) page (a few get two) with a couple of paragraphs of text and a chunky graphic. Sometimes these do consist of many small parts - for example 'the limits of the human body' features nine graphs - three on sporting achievements, three on biometrics (e.g. height by date of birth) and three rather random items (GNP per person, agricultural yields of various crops and consumption of coal). Others have a single illustration, such as a map of the sewers of Paris. (Because, why wouldn't you want to see that?) Just those two s...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Meteorite Hunters - Joshua Howgego *****

This is an extremely engaging read on a subject that everyone is aware of, but few of us know much detail about. Usually, if I'm honest, geology tends to be one of the least entertaining scientific subjects but here (I suppose, given that geo- refers to the Earth it ought to be astrology... but that might be a touch misleading). Here, though, there is plenty of opportunity to capture our interest. The first part of the book takes us both to see meteorites and to hear stories of meteorite hunters, whose exploits vary from erudite science trips to something more like an Indiana Jones outing. Joshua Howgego takes us back to the earliest observations and discoveries of meteorites and the initial doubt that they could have extraterrestrial sources, through to explorations of deserts and the Antarctic - both locations where it tends to be easier to find them. I, certainly, had no idea about the use of camera networks to track incoming meteors, which not only try to estimate where they wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Against the Odds - John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin ****

The number of women working in STEM subjects has expanded dramatically, but as John and Mary Gribbin make clear, in the history of science this is a very recent occurrence. Here, they bring us the stories of 12 women, from Eunice Newton Foote, born in 1819, to Vera Rubin, born in 1928 - effectively covering nearly 200 years in that Rubin died as recently as 2016. There are some names that will already be familiar from popular science histories (and deservedly so). You will find, for instance, Dorothy Hodgkin and Rosalind Franklin represented. But there are plenty like Foote that few will have come across, including Inge Lehmann, Chien-Sung Wu and Lucy Slater. While arguably Foote is there primarily to demonstrate the difficulties she faced (her discovery of an aspect of greenhouse gas behaviour was independently bettered within weeks), the rest have all made significant discoveries or developments against the odds and often missed out the recognition the deserved. The most prominent ob...
Post a Comment
Read more