Here at my review of the documentary Mine, I ask this question: “Do dogs think?”

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Here at The Daily Dish, there is something like an answer to the question about dogs and their cognitive abilities:

[Animal specialist Andrei] Neuronov says there are some 500 strays that live in [Moscow’s] metro stations, especially during the colder months, but only about 20 have learned how to ride the trains. This happened gradually, first as a way to broaden their territory. Later, it became a way of life. “Why should they go by foot if they can move around by public transport?” he asks.

“They orient themselves in a number of ways,” Neuronov adds. “They figure out where they are by smell, by recognising the name of the station from the recorded announcer’s voice and by time intervals. If, for example, you come every Monday and feed a dog, that dog will know when it’s Monday and the hour to expect you, based on their sense of time intervals from their ­biological clocks.”

Dogs have thoughts, that can not be contested; but does this strange train business reflect the true nature of a dog or dogginess? Or is it one of the many byproducts of human pollution? Mind, however, is a fundamental feature of the universe—I give my reason for this here:

Pansemioticism? Yes. Pantheism? Yes. Pansychism? This is below all. Why? Mind is a reflection, and what is first and below all in the universe is symmetry.

I will explain more about this feature in the near future.

Photo by SuperFantastic / Flickr.

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...

13 replies on “Dogs on the Subway”

  2. Animal researchers have determined that an untrained dog posses the cognitive abilities comparable to that of a 3 year old child. Highly trained dogs, such as seeing eye dogs have the cognitive powers of a 9-10 year old. The rest of them lie in between.

  9. If you were talking about wolves, you could call what humans do to them “pollution.” But dogs are nothing more than wolves polluted by humans — or improved by humans, or influenced by humans or manipulated by humans. Whatever you want to call it.

    Take away the human element from a dog and you have a wolf. So whatever the true nature of the dog is, it is inseparable from their role as human companions.

  10. The “domestication” of this species presents a fascinating paradox. There has never been a confirmed case of a wild wolf attacking a human (only livestock) and it has even been reported that wolves stood by passively while humans killed their pups. And yet there are innumerable documented cases of domesticated dogs (and dog-wolf hybrids) attacking and killing humans.

    Of course, wolves do attack and kill each other during disputes over dominance. It would seem that through the very act of “taming” the canine, and welcoming them into the social hierarchy, humans exposed themselves as vulnerable members of the “pack.”

  11. @10: How are coyote-wolf hybrids classified? They’re certainly not dogs or hail from anything domesticated. They do, however, eat folk singers.

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