On May 21st at 15:15, Professor Wynne will deliver a lecture titled ‘What Makes a Dog Special? Current Status of the Debate over Unique Cognitive Adaptations in Dogs to Human Environments.’
For thousands of years, people have known that dogs possess something truly extraordinary, yet scientists still struggle to define the essence of our relationship with them. By the end of the last century, scientific literature began to claim that dogs have forms of social cognition similar to humans, unseen in any other non-human species.
Professor Clive Wynne will critically examine these reports, demonstrating that there is nothing in dog behavior that would surprise Pavlov or Skinner. However, dogs do possess an extraordinary, and perhaps unique, ability to form strong, interspecies emotional bonds. It is this emotional capacity, not any exceptional form of intelligence, that has ensured their great success in the modern world.
