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Price: $17.99 - $9.99
(as of Feb 26, 2025 23:57:27 UTC – Details)
An “entertaining and informative” look at the evolutionary biology that explains canine behavior, with photos included (Lynette Hart, author of The Perfect Puppy).
What actually drives dogs to do the things they do? What’s going on in their fur-covered heads as they look at us with their big, expressive eyes? Biologist Raymond Coppinger and cognitive scientist Mark Feinstein know something about these questions, and this is their guide to understanding your dog and its behavior.
Approaching dogs as a biological species rather than just as pets, Coppinger and Feinstein distill decades of research and field experiments to explain in simple terms the evolutionary foundations underlying dog behaviors. They examine the central importance of the shape of dogs: how their physical body (including the genes and the brain) affects behavior, how shape interacts with the environment as animals grow, and how all of this has developed over time. Shape, they tell us, is what makes a champion sled dog or a Border collie that can successfully herd sheep. Other chapters explore such mysteries as why dogs play; whether dogs have minds, and if so what kinds of things they might know; why dogs bark; how dogs feed and forage; and the influence of the early relationship between mother and pup. Going far beyond the cozy lap dog, Coppinger and Feinstein are equally fascinated by what we can learn from the adaptations of dogs, wolves, coyotes, jackals, dingoes, and even pumas in the wild, as well as the behavior of working animals like guarding and herding dogs.
Isn’t it time we knew more about who Fido and Trixie really are? How Dogs Work provides some keys to unlocking the origins of many of our dogs’ most common, most puzzling, and most endearing behaviors.
ASIN : B014RWV2PS
Publisher : The University of Chicago Press; Illustrated edition (October 22, 2015)
Publication date : October 22, 2015
Language : English
File size : 18.9 MB
Text-to-Speech : Enabled
Screen Reader : Supported
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Not Enabled
Word Wise : Enabled
Print length : 264 pages
Customers say
Customers find the book engaging and interesting. They appreciate its scientific perspective and synthesis of latest research. However, opinions differ on whether it provides useful information for dog enthusiasts and trainers.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Lynn R. –
Excellent Book for the Scientific Mind
This is a wonderful book that offers an intellectual – though not sentimental – discussion on ethological motivation to dog behavior. This book is not for the casual dog owner, though. This book is for those who value, comprehend, and enjoy scientific perspectives. This book will not offer you the squishy, lovey-dovey fluff of why your dog loves you. This book will give you the scientific approach to dog behavior. As the authors write, science values the most simple, objective answers to problems. Their claim that dogs run as machines do might be hard for some folks to fathom as “simple” because it’s seemingly a novel idea. But actually calling them machines is reductionistic in a good way, I think. Dog behavior has been morphed into narratives with no true data to support those narratives. This book eliminates the need for narrative and creative speculation of dog behavior. And simplifies it to what is actually visible.
Kevin Behan –
A Must Read
Itâs rare to find a dog book that has something new to say, thereâs a lot of regurgitation going on in dogdom, however this book is chock full of novel thinking and synthesizing of the latest research. I’ve noticed a certain narcissism, so to speak, in the nature of the critical reviews, as in: âDoes this mean my dog doesnât love me?â I use the term narcissism because there is an inherent compulsion in the human mind to read humanity into the makeup in animals so as to uplift them, as in: were a dog to think like me then it is able to love me. Whereas Coppinger offers a refreshing counterpoint. Like his earlier book on dogs he asks the kind of questions that reveal the sheer architecture of the canine mind while remaining candid about where the limits of his understanding lie. Thus this book offers a perfect platform for further discussion. If I understand his argument correctly, heâs saying that the mind of the dog is shaped by the shape of the body parts and how these interact with each other and with the environment. Over time, as this overall shape of the organism and all its interacting parts develop so that the shape of their movement develops in kind (and without genetic pre-coding), it ultimately manifests in many complex, collectivized expressions that historically have been anthropomorphized and attributed to human like intellectual capacities and which thereby obscures the emergent, self-organizing nature of the phenomenon. (As a companion piece to this book, and to follow the thermodynamic argumentâ-i.e. how things move over time so as to persistâto its logical extension, I would also recommend âDesign In Natureâ by Adrian Bejan.) In âWorkâ the authors make the latest science not only approachable but engaging. So no matter where one may come down on the question of consciousness and the nature of love, the truth is that in nature love-does-work and this book is about how in the case of dogs, the work that they love to do gets done.
DogCatcher –
Increasing speed on audio book means book is read in very short time.
I love to read but this audio book is a great idea. You can put it on faster speed and take notes (I need this for a course I teach). The reader in this case is plodding but the material is well worth just livening him up with speed.
Arthur N. Mayers –
Scholarly, not much zip, gave away
Picked it up because I saw the author slip streaming trucks on 495 in his little Honda. Some interesting insights about dogs, instinct or training? Got him tenure. Bottom line, dogs train us because they are smarter and we need them more than our mates. Not me though.
j a haverstick –
A hatchet job, or Why A Begging Dog is Unconscious
When I brought this in from the mail, I looked at my Yorkiepoo and said, âI hope this isnât a hatchet jobâ. In the event, under the heading âmanâs best friendâ, the authors note innumerable dog bites and other injuries every year. And they debunk the Dog Waits by Grave story by arguing the dog actually was there because the cemetery crew fed him for years. Three quarters of the worldâs billion dogs donât even live with people, though they do live on the periphery of our species as food scavengers. One way they are tied to us is that they donât provide their own food.* Then we learn that whatever the genetics, dogs are not tame wolves. Males donât care for pups, donât live in a hierarchy and donât mate. You get the picture: not a book for sentimentalists.I read Konrad Lorentz almost hot off the press and have had and loved and studied dogs all my life. Many folks my age remember the great swings in animal behavior theory. In college I read behaviorist texts not as philosophical oddities but as science. Now, there is a new book every month describing the emotional lives and attitudes of elephants, dolphins, apesâ¦and, of course, dogs. Although the authors hedge their language, on a scale of one to ten from behaviorist to anthropomorphist, the authors are at a 2. The donât categorically deny animal consciousness but they certainly minimize it. The book is true to the title. Not a general book on dog psychology (except by extension), it focuses on what we can learn about dogs by considering some working breeds. First there is a consideration of the characteristics of sled dogs. Interesting. A major point being made is that a dog – any animal- is not just a brain, but a whole body and body shape. I was strongly reminded in this discussion of something I read long ago in a book by Watson or Skinner: we think as much with our stomachs as with our brains. I think this is a good point, dogs, people, bats âbehaveâ as an organism. So far, so good.Next the authors go into detail on some specifics on some breeds: hunters, shepherds and flock guarders. They describe the specific behaviors of, say, a pointer, a collie, and others as a sequence of events: eye contact/ stalk /chase/bite/consume (Iâm simplifying). They show how in specific breeds some items in the sequence have been modified or eliminated.. Iâm with all this yet very skeptical of the direction they are going. . Since in a herder, if you interrupt the sequence it is not taken up in the next but one step, does the animal ever have a goal in mind or was it âconsciousâ at all? Not likely, according to the professors. Whoa, as the authors tell us, humans also have stereotyped behavior. Eating with our hands is their example. But letâs try sex. Because human sexual behavior is stereotyped does that mean itâs not conscious!!Indeed, we repeat this theme couple more times: nursing behavior; orientation,locomotion,attachment, forefoot-tread, suck. We are given the context, shown things that can screw up the sequence and how the behavior is modified as the animal matures. On the side, we learn that geese fly in wedges not because they are âtryingâ in a social context to do the most efficient thing but because they are innately – the authors prefer to say âintrinsicallyâ – set up to go for the least air resistance. Cooperative hunting, group herding behavior and rat pups huddling for warmth in a corner, the authors explain should not be thought of as the animals having any intentions but can be explained by computer models showing such behavior has the optimal outcome.I was trying to be tolerant, but by this time was losing patience! I would bet a dollar that a computer model could project a likely strategy for a football team on some particular play. I would bet another dollar that something like that is what weâre likely to see the players do. Are the players automatons? The authors finally consider âplayâ. I agree with the book that the concept of play is one of the most fertile for anthropomorphism, but the analysis of it here does nothing to suggest that dogs (or other creatures) are not conscious, have goals or are enjoying themselves.These guys need to step across the quad to the philosophy department. As I said, Iâve been interested in ethology all my life. Also Iâve had twenty or so dogs. And I studied and taught philosophy of mind. This book may have some good info for dog fanciers and trainers, but it is very weak as a discourse on animal consciousness, the subject which is the main agenda. The authors view the issue too simplistically. Itâs not anthropomorphism or behaviorism. Anybody who thinks my dog doesnât have intentions, why else is she shoving her squeaky in my hand?, or canât read the intentions of the cat sneaking up on her food (âother mindâ theoryâ¦much overdone the last 15 years) is putting theory above common sense.The sensorium of other animals is quite different from our own. Itâs pretty hard to imagine the conscious field of a dog or elephant. The interests and defaults are not ours. But as has been often remarked, the reduction of behavior to a program (yes, environmentally modified, as the authors admit) works just as well on our spouses, co-workers and every human on the planet as well as on dogs and dolphins (and bees, donât get me startedâ¦Iâm a beekeeper). I would not recommend this book to the reader who is interested in animal mind and consciousness. Itâs not sophisticated enough and the authors have not examined their prejudices.* The report that all dogs, tame or not, depend on humans for food answered a question I had had for a long time: Why are dogs such inverterate beggars? After all, cats, parakeets and hamsters don’t beg like dogs (speaking generally). The authors have shown me that the answer is that scavenging from humans is part of the “intrinsic” equipment of these animals. As a general refutation of their theory of dog consciousness, however, it also implies that your dog is only dimly aware of her begging. If that’s false, so is their analysis of the mental life of dogs. QED
Steven M. Barnes –
its a good read if you are into how the actual animal …
its a good read if you are into how the actual animal works and not really into the pretty fluffy things, this is for the person who want to know about the mechanism that is a dog.
Pajiv VP –
El contenido del libro por supuesto es maravilloso, al libro le doy 5 estrellas. Pero debo hacer notar que mi libro llegó con la contraportada dañada. Llamada de atención para Amazon.
Fukutome Sophie –
Easy and fun to read, yet carefully argued and didactically structured. I greatly enjoyed the truly scientific approach, with its healthy skepticism, and search for explanations that can be tested. I appreciated the cautionary remarks regarding experiments in general and how much the results might depend on the experimental conditions : a challenge both for the experimenter and the reader of the scientific results.
Amazon Customer –
Definitely interesting but not valid in many areas viewing dogs only as working, information processing machines with no sentience.
Gaia –
IN realtà mi sembra un rimaneggiamento dei lavori precedenti con qualche aggiunta, vista l’attesa mi aspettavo un pò di più
John –
This is by far and away the most readable of many good books on dog behaviour and includes much in the way of up to date evidence, hypothesis and speculation. I’m tempted to compare it to John Bradshaw’s “In Defence of Dogs” but I feel the complement each other and provide a dialectic which, on reading both, made me ponder – no bad thing in itself!