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Kim Brophey's avatar

As an applied ethologist, I’m additionally very interested in the KINDS of questions in the survey. I participated at the time and reviewed the questions two days ago. Frankly it’s logical to me that even without the NOISE you describe, that we would not expect to observe much difference between breeds in the behaviors asked about in the study, because the vast majority (literally almost all) off the questions aren’t targeting behaviors that had selective pressure on them. Dogs are different because of the selective pressure humans have put on their behaviors historically for functions- so questions that get at THOSE distinctions are what I would expect to demonstrate the variations in answers. The questions they did ask about breed/clade specific motor patterns (especially relative to modifications to the predatory sequence) DID demonstrate variation. But that was brushed over in the conclusions. Since there was no selective pressure on behaviors like paw crossing, circling before pooping, licking a bowl after a meal, or being scared of strangers (no one ever bred dogs to display these behaviors deliberately) - why would we expect to observe variation? Had the questions targeted the meaningful differences we know about between genetic groups of dogs, I think we would have seen much greater trends in the data even with the noise you mention. Can’t wait for your full piece!

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Stephen Kitching's avatar

Informative as always Stuart! As an aside your (very sweet looking) dog is almost identical to my pal Tommy’s dog, which I believe is a cockapoo as well.

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