I’m not going to argue whether dogs sense jealousy or not, but wanting something that you don’t have is not jealousy. Jealousy (actually, envy, but let’s not be overly pedantic about it) is felt toward someone for having something that you want. It is not directed toward the thing desired, it is directed toward the person that has the thing desired. Wanting something you don’t have is, well, “want.”
ETA: Right now I’d really like a cheeseburger. I don’t have a cheeseburger. Therefore, I am going to go to the store and get myself a cheeseburger. Am I feeling jealousy or envy because I’m doing that? If I jump in front of others in line at Wendy’s to get my cheeseburger am I expressing envy or jealousy? No, I’m just being a dick.
Now, if the dog showed definite aggression toward the dog receiving affection then I would consider that a possible expression of envy.
ETA: Likewise, if I hated somebody simply because he had a burger and I didn’t, that would be burger envy (quite possibly the worst kind of envy).
Jealousy is aimed at a person, not the attention that the dog wants. If an animal wants something, they try and get it and the human emotion of being jealous of someone else having it just isn’t involved. If nothing else, it’s never really been proven that dogs are capable of complex emotions. And in my experience with multiple dogs (at all times) for over 40 years, I’ve never seen them do anything that couldn’t be explained by instinct, experience or training.
Are you saying in all that time with dogs, you’ve never had one appear to you looking all ‘guilty’ and with its tail between its legs, before you’ve even seen what it has done, which it apparently has guessed you are going to be upset about, and likely to scold it for? If dogs are supposed to ‘live in the moment’, what is all that about?
The “trick” of asking a dog for its paw is easy to teach because it is based on instinct or natural behavior, like the trick of getting a dog to play dead / lie on its back.
Anyone know what behavior it is based on or what social significance it has to the dog? That would be very important in interpreting this experiment. (Of course maybe there is no significance, maybe the natural basis is that dogs simply like to raise a paw sometimes.)
I think for terms of the experiment you have to define what exactly jelousy is.
We can see just from this thread it means different things.
Even in humans, I equate jealousy with a negative. For instance, sometimes I will see something someone has, and I would like it. I don’t feel jealousy though. I wish that person no ill will, I guess the term I’d use is “I’d sure fancy that.”
To me jealousy means wanting something at the expense of denying it to the person who has it. While if I “fancy” something (isn’t there a better word for that…LOL) I want it but with no ill will directed toward anyone
English doesn’t have the proper word for the emotion that Russian has. Actually, maybe it does, but they’re all colloquial. In the experiment, the dogs are miffed they didn’t get the treat like the others, and don’t want to talk to you anymore.
I’ve never seen that look because I don’t teach them to give it to me by punishing them for something that happened in the past. If, for example, you have a dog loose in the house while you go out and until the dog gets trained it rips up newspapers, and then you yell at it when you get home, it is going to learn to adopt a “guilty” expression in anticipation of you coming home. Not because of the ripped up papers but because that is what you have been doing each time you come home. What we percieve as “guilty” is the body language dogs use to try to get back in a superior’s good graces. If you are always in a bad mood for no (to the dog) good reason when you get home, the dog is going to learn to meet you at the door looking “guilty”.
I was just going to say the opposite. My brother and my sister each had labs that were obtained around the time they got married. They each had their first child after a few years of the dog being the “baby”. I think that in both cases, the dogs ranged from indifferent to protective of the new baby.
What breed was your dad’s dog, Buran?
At the risk of turning this into a poll, can I ask for other peoples experiences and what breed?
I once saw an episode of (I think) Scientific American that showed some experiments with chimps that seemed to show they were self aware, and that they understood that others were like them. (Haven’t been able to find a link. The episode had Alan Alda in it.)
They had an experiment similar to the dog experiment. The chimps were taught a game where they would each find a pebble, and give it to the trainer. As a reward, they received a slice of cucumber. They seemed very happy to do this until some chimps started getting strawberries (which they prefer to cucumber) instead. The chimps who had happily received cucumber before would show their disapproval by flinging their cucumber slices against the wall.
I realize it is dangerous to try to assign human emotions to animals, but they seemed very clearly upset at receiving different rewards.
I’m all for being scientific - but, having owned pets, I’d have to say that if dogs and cats don’t have emotions like envy, they are awfully good at acting exactly as if they did.
My previous cat was famous for her envy. She was very attached to me, almost dog-like - would follow me around the house begging for attention, sat on me (and no-one else), etc. Whenever I was affectionate towards my wife, the cat would give my wife definite dirty looks - ears folded back and tail twitching. I was by no means the only person to notice this.
There may be another explaination, but it certainly looked to me like jealousy - the cat simply hated a person getting affection/attention it wanted for itself.
[My present cat in contrast could not care less - indeed, it is somewhat fortunate that we only had our child after our previous cat passed away. If I had a baby with the previous cat around, I’d seriously worry that the cat could harm him - the present cat, OTOH, is very good with the child and tolerates abuse from him it would take from no adult - the cat is evidently intelligent enough to know the difference and act accordingly, or its instincts mimic intelligence in this respect. My sister in law had to get rid of a cat who showed aggression towards her baby].