Wonderdog: The Science of Dogs and Their Unique Friendship with Humans

Summary

Almost everywhere that there are humans, there are dogs. But what do dogs know and understand of the world? Do their emotions feel like our own? Do they love like we do? What do they think of us?

Since our alliance first began, our relationship with dogs has evolved considerably. In order to gauge where our relationship with dogs goes from here, author and zoologist Jules Howard takes a look at the historical paths we have trod together and at the many scientists before him who turned their analytic eye on their own four-legged companions.

Charles Darwin and his contemporaries toyed with dog sign language and made special puzzle boxes and elaborate sniff tests using old socks. Later, the same questions drove Pavlov and Pasteur to unspeakable cruelty in their search for knowledge. Since then, leagues of psychologists and animal behaviorists have built upon the study of dogs, and their much-improved methods have fetched increasingly important results.

With the help of veterinarians, ethologists, neurologists, historians, and his own dogs, Howard here reveals the study of dogs to be key in the advancement of compassion in scientific research—and crucial to making life on Earth better for all species.