The Dog Article + The Meatball Recipe
Follow-up to Newsletter on September 15, 2019
If you had trouble with the links...
Greetings, everyone!
In the newsletter I sent this morning, I included a link to a Wall Street Journal article about dogs and a New York Times recipe for meatballs. Well, my mom told me she clicked on the links and couldn't see the articles (she was prompted to subscribe to the news sites). So in case that happened to you, I'm including both the article and the recipe below!
What Does It Feel Like to Be a Dog?
By
Alexandra Horowitz
The Wall Street Journal
Aug. 22, 2019 11:13 am ET
I see emotion in dogs all the time. At my Dog Cognition Lab, many of the studies we create are unintentional emotional provocations: I see dogs feeling surprise when a hidden person appears from behind a door, or disgust when they sniff a very strong smell. When I watch dogs in the “wild”—out in parks, among people and other dogs—I see regular displays of fear, apprehension, joy, interest and affection. My own dogs, subject to my near-continuous gaze, appear to be great furry balls of sentiment and expression: anticipation of going for a walk, disappointment at being left at home, pride in hoisting an improbably large stick out of a river.
Still, one of the questions I am most often asked is whether dogs feel bored, get angry or—most important of all—love their human companions. Essentially, people want to know whether science has demonstrated that dogs feel emotions comparable to our own.
As a scientist, I don’t yet see a way to definitively test an animal’s subjective experience. But dogs certainly seem to be showing us emotion when we look at them. Affection is clear in a relaxed, panting face, a loosely wagging tail and a desire to be near you. Dogs show what we call a “secure-base effect” in relation to the people who care for them, like the classic “attachment” that children feel toward parents. They play more when around their owners; they wait at the door when you’re gone; they stick by you when you return.
Researchers have developed a catalog of facial expressions associated with different emotions in dogs. Two muscles around the eye are particularly good at expressing concern, sadness or attention. The eyebrow on the left side of the face is more active when dogs see their owners, presumably because it corresponds to the right side of the brain, which controls emotional expression. And your pup’s tail-wags at your return become more intense the longer you’ve been gone. Some creative researchers have used infrared thermography to look at changes in dogs’ ear temperature in different contexts: It drops when dogs are alone and anxious and goes up when their owner returns.
Yet the recent history of science also reveals the inconsistency in how we think about animals’ experience. For the last century, Western science has usually refused to attribute emotions to nonhuman animals. This denial emerged from caution. Emotions are subjective experiences; sometimes they are opaque even to ourselves, so that we have to try to “get in touch” with them.
When observing dogs scientifically, I hesitate to use emotional terms to describe their behavior. With other humans, we assume that when we see them experiencing an emotion, we have an idea of what that emotion “feels like” to them. But we cannot assume that a dog’s experience of what seems to be, say, curiosity or delight is precisely like ours. Though there are myriad similarities among mammals, different species—and individuals within a species—have very different lived experiences. My own guess is that, were our minds transplanted into a dog’s body, we wouldn’t recognize the flood of feelings as being just like our own.
We frequently presume that we know what dogs are feeling based on a false analogy with human expressions. We see a dog whose lips turn up at the edges and assume they are smiling and happy, but that “smile” is just a feature of their anatomy. We read their guilty-looking expressions as shame at having done something wrong, but my lab’s research has shown that the expression is better understood as appeasement, an attempt to deflect human anger. Without definitive evidence of an animal’s subjective experience, researchers say, how can we be sure that it feels fear or pain at all?
At the same time, however, much medical and psychiatric research operates on the premise that dogs have emotions akin to our own. To prove the efficacy of an antianxiety drug for humans, for instance, the drug first has to be tested on an animal model. Should someone argue that a dog can’t be depressed or benefit from anti-depression medication, I’ll walk them back in time to the 1960s, when psychologist Martin Seligman developed the idea of “learned helplessness.” In his study, dogs who were repeatedly shocked, without chance of escape, became sufficiently resigned to their fate that even when they were given a way out, they sat passive and unmoving. They had learned to feel helpless—they suffered from what we might call severe depression.
In fact, a century of research in brain science and psychology has confirmed that animals have emotions.
Look at it adaptively: Emotions exist in animals because they are useful, allowing one to escape a predator out of fear or to avoid a toxic food out of disgust.
Look at it neurologically: Discrete areas of the human brain that are active when we feel, sigh, yearn and despair—such as the amygdala—are also found in dogs’ brains.
Look at it chemically: The levels of oxytocin, the peptide hormone implicated in bonding between human parents and children, also rises in dogs after they interact with their owners.
Look at it behaviorally: Though we are not always great at naming which behavior indicates what emotion, the wide array of different behaviors and postures of dogs plainly tell us that they are having emotional experiences. Their ears, eyes, mouths, tails and bodies change in reaction to external events and internal states, as expressive of emotion as a human face.
Look at it logically: The idea that dogs don’t have emotions defies reason, defies the continuity of animal and human nature, defies the basic principles of Darwin. Human emotions didn’t evolve mysteriously and fully formed from the brains of unfeeling automatons.
So why is the question of animal emotions still posed? We are too often trapped on the far reaches of the pendulum’s swing: We either assume dogs are just like us or entirely unlike us. As wrongheaded as it is to presume dogs to be unfeeling, it is no more correct to presumptively grant them a humanlike emotional life. Nor must it be somewhere in between: For all we know, dogs’ emotional experience is far more elaborate than ours.
Does your dog love you? Don’t look to science to tell you. But if you watch carefully and acknowledge the complexity behind their behavior, you’ll go as far inside the dog’s mind as a scientist can.
—Dr. Horowitz runs the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College. This essay is adapted from her new book, “Our Dogs, Ourselves: The Story of a Singular Bond,” which will be published by Scribner on Sept. 3.
The Meatball Recipe...
Korean Barbecue-Style Meatballs
KAY CHUN
YIELD 4 servings
TIME 20 minutes
These meatballs, inspired by traditional Korean barbecue, bring the savory-sweet flavors of caramelized meat without the need for a grill. As the meatballs bake, the soy sauce marries the garlic and scallions to create a glaze.
This meatball mixture can be made ahead and left to marinate in the fridge for 3 hours or even overnight. Use ground beef that is 85 percent lean meat, 15 percent fat, or 80 percent lean and 20 percent fat for juicier meatballs.
The Ritz crackers here make for a more tender meatball, but feel free to substitute plain dry bread crumbs. The meatballs are tasty on their own, but for a simple dipping sauce, combine 2 tablespoons soy sauce and 1 tablespoon distilled white vinegar.
Serve over steamed rice with kimchi, or as a sandwich with mayonnaise or marinara sauce.
Ingredients:
½ cup chopped scallions
2 tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
½ cup finely crushed Ritz crackers (12 crackers)
1 pound ground beef (round or chuck)
Preparation:
Heat oven to 425 degrees. In a large bowl, combine all of the ingredients and use your hands to gently mix.
Shape the meat into 12 golf-ball-size rounds (about 2 inches in diameter), and arrange on a greased rimmed baking sheet.
Bake until golden and cooked through, about 15 minutes. Serve warm.
Tips
Leftover meatballs freeze well and can be reheated in the oven at 375 degrees until warmed through (about 20 minutes).
To make the Ritz crumbs, place the crackers in a resealable plastic bag and lightly crush them with the back of a wooden spoon or measuring cup.
Thank you!
Thank you, as always, for reading! Let me know if you have any questions. Just reply to this email!