Perhaps grudgingly so. “Eh, alright then.”
I worked (and lived) at a laboratory where we studied dolphins. We had our rituals for end-of-feeding time.
The fish were fed from opaque buckets that were hung above the dolphins (in easy reach of the humans). (Hmmm… I wonder if anybody ever thought of using transparent buckets?) We had two dolphins who were fed by two trainers on opposite sides of the tank. The trainers had to carefully coordinate the feeding when the fish were almost gone, so that they would be all out of fish at the same time. If one trainer ran out of fish and stopped feeding the dolphin, that dolphin would go to the other side of the tank and harass the dolphin there.
At the end of feeding, both trainers simultaneously took their buckets down and placed them out of sight of the dolphins. The dolphins, as far as we knew, had no clue ahead of time that this was about to happen. (I wonder about that. The trainers called out to each other as their fish ran low. I can’t imagine the dolphins not figuring that out fairly quickly.) Anyway, when we took the buckets down, the dolphins always got visibly pissed, and would bite you if you tried to pet them just then. So we took the buckets down and turned our backs and walked away.
One day, we tried a new protocol that we hoped would work better. It actually worked FAR better than we had expected. When the trainers got down to their last five fish, they would take them all out of the bucket and lay them out on the edge of the tank where the dolphins could see them. They could have just grabbed them, but they didn’t.
Maybe you’ve read stories that dolphins like to work with people just for the attention, whether they get fed or not. That’s what happened. As soon as the trainer gave the dolphin the LAST fish, the dolphin would hand it back to the trainer. The trainer could continue working with the dolphin for a while longer, repeatedly giving the dolphin the same fish, and the dolphin repeatedly giving it back. Both dolphins did this. Eventually the fish got so beat up that it began to fall apart.
One of the associate directors brought his medium-size dog every day. We always had a bowl of kibbles sitting out. The dog ate whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. This usually amounted to small amounts throughout the day. He seemed like a healthy dog (aside from being epileptic) and never got overweight.
That film of the wolf feeding at the German zoo is great. It also shows what’s going on in terms of the question in the OP. The wolves take all the goodies that the keeper is bringing out of the bucket and tossing to them, but they don’t eat them just yet, except for the smaller things. They carry the rabbits and chickens and rump roasts a little ways away, drop them, and then return to the keeper. You never know if there’s something even yummier in the bucket and you don’t want to miss out! Once they really see that the bucket’s empty, they return to the food they carried away and start eating it.
My dogs will eat any food put in front of them, except their kibble, which they eat only when hungry. I’ve read that this is because we never eat the kibble, so they assume it isn’t the best food. The rest of the stuff is all food we will also eat, and so must be really good.
I seem to remember a study that showed this was true.
Plus, dogs can’t look up.
Is that some sort of joke?
This is how you attack a crawfish boil.
Didn’t you ever give treats to a dog on a regular basis? He won’t leave you alone until you theatrically show him your empty palms and say “All gone…”
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