Adapting to Deafness (and Blind-deafness)
Deaf dogs can learn to hear with "other modalities" and the Blind also to see, for Living with Humans
Dogs adapt to sensory losses A Review of Literature; January 2011, revised July 2011, Jan 2012
Summary
Research data, observations and analyses available to us in 2011 indicated that most genetically deaf dogs (who can’t hear exactly as humans do) learn to detect and understand acoustic frequencies (sound) ranging from infra-sonic (too low to be heard by most humans) through ultra-sonic that are too high pitched to be heard by ordinary humans.
Before they met humans, dogs developed ways to detect light and sound-vibrations [1] in their environments, understand and act on what they observed. Unless a dog was in a coma or dead, it could potentially use abilities (normally not used by humans) to detect vibrations for “useful hearing” (perhaps good enough to satisfy the American Kennel Club (AKC)), and some abilities to detect thermal light waves. Since the 1990s, research increasingly indicated that there was much ability of dogs to adapt to loss of their ordinary primary hearing and seeing biology bits by using what some scientists called "other modalities". Further, correlations of enhanced vision sharpness with deafness in some breeds were recognized and genetic markers were identified. Evolution aspects were mentioned.
Synesthesia as an automatic process, especially for blind and deaf, that in the brain cross links senses such as touch to hearing and hearing to sight was reported to exist for about five (5) percent of humans, and probably existed in dogs. [The experience is remarkable.]
Suggestions were proposed to maximize dogs' useful adaptation to loss of ordinary hearing and vision, for living with humans. Comment and examples about a deaf Border Collie were included for clarity. This text was intended to integrate and make readable for as many people as possible the research information that were publicly available.
Introduction
What can dogs do to survive if something goes wrong and they lose their versatile ordinary mechanisms of hearing, and eye-sight? When does each dog learn to rely heavily on ordinary (inner-ear) hearing and eyes (iris-cornea-retinas)? Public reports and our research suggest that dog survival was expedited by their “startle-reflex alerting” biology, so that a dog can focus its attention on adapting its many (at least 8) physics-biological ways of detecting light and vibrations (sound) and using the information.
For dogs, sight and hearing are ways to communicate, map their surroundings, navigate, understand events important to them and make decisions. Dr S. Coren’s 2004, book “How Dogs Think” (reference 1), reported “bits” from scientific research on hearing and seeing dogs that confirmed their ability to use perhaps as many as eight or nine varied mechanisms (modalities) to detect, analyze, and make routine deliberate use of the information about mechanical wave motion (hearing) and radiant energy (seeing) in their environments. As mentioned by S. Coren and by Dr Strain, dogs can use body elements adaptively to aid or partially replace sensing functions of their eyes and inner ear mechanisms; for example whiskers, to detect sound-vibrations carried by air, liquids, or solids. Mechanical pressure and density waves (sound) are always associated with local motion of the media.
The origin of dogs living in pack-groups permitted and might have occasionally benefitted from genes for a few genetically deaf dogs with enhanced sharper vision (but occasional blindness) and unusual coat coloration. Miklosi (reference 2, p.68): Pleistocene events included rapid changes in climate, and migration while wolves were hunting across Northern mixed terrain of tundra, forests and savanna. In recent years adaptive coloration traits (called “flashy” coats, often including white) attracted fashion oriented humans, and led to a rapid increase in the numbers of deaf and blind dogs in Western society. Adaptive abilities of modern deaf and blind dogs living with humans were probably importantly related, and were dealt with together in this discussion.
Discussion
I. How and Why dogs adapt to loss of conventional vision and hearing
For discussion, I assumed at first that a dog is bi-ear (both ears) deaf and totally blind for the colors and brightness that humans can usually see. The research discussed by S. Coren and others suggested that dogs are genetically usually able to adapt to reduced ordinary hearing and vision by using various kinds of “hearing (detection of mechanical vibrations)”, smell, and other ways to partly compensate. The level of success depends on the dog’s breed, its individual characteristics (every dog is unique), and the assistance provided by its humans.
1. Unconventional Detection and Navigation by “Invisible” (infrared) Light
a. Puppies at birth have an ability with elements of their noses to detect, interpret and act on information from red-color light that is NOT visible to humans, as mentioned by S. Coren, (2004,p 94.) Those colors invisible to humans are usually called “infra-red” or heat-radiation waves[2]. Adult dogs’ use has been observed. It might be used without being important in the lives of behavior of dogs.
b. “White or grey-corneas”: Genetic effects and old age can cause the part of the eye where light usually enters to become cloudy and block ordinary light from getting inside the eyes to the detectors of light. A possibility exists that a particular dog might be able to sense differences of light or darkness by infrared light (scientifically known to penetrate some materials that are entirely opaque-blocked for light that humans can see). The physics of the process would limit infrared-vision to fuzzy impressions of the surroundings.
2. Smells (olfactory) mapping and navigation
Anyone who walked a dog along a path new to the dog has probably seen the dog show special interest in the smells of certain posts and places along the path, and add samples of its own odors for other dogs to find. As described by A. Miklosi, S. Coren and others, dogs can use smells to understand and map their living spaces. Especially in darkness or blind, navigation by using a mental map of the relative locations and distances of objects could technically use sensing and remembering where (and on what) the smells were found.
A blind dog newcomer to a home can benefit from its humans labeling with faint “delicate” odors key features of its new home such as the front-door, back-door, furniture that is likely to remain fixed in place most of the time, and any easily moved furniture. Lemon-scented furniture polish, in the US, is likely to be a common aroma for heavy bits of furniture. Maybe a flower or grass perfume might be used to label a door that leads out to the preferred place for the dog to go potty? Typically, each person living in a home will naturally have a unique usual combination of smells that is a personal “signature.”
Our dogs with a “scent-shoulder-rub” place a trace of their own odors on the edge of furniture and along hallways. When we scrub it off, they soon put it back. Odor marking helped them navigate in darkness when their humans went to bed with all the lights turned off. We never heard them collide with anything at night when they moved about.
3. Auxiliary -Unconventional “Hearing-mapping and Navigation”
S. Coren indicated at least eight or nine processes, of which four were a kind of “touch”:
1) Detection of gross motions by solid-body contact, i.e. “velcroing”: In the community of deaf and blind dogs-people, the tendency is well known especially of newly adopted dogs to attempt to keep very close physical contact (velcroing) with their people. They can keep a paw or their chin on their person’s foot, or in contact with a person’s chair. With experience, a blind or deaf dog can “graduate” to lying across a doorway, or some other strategy to keep track of their people. Home walls and floors of wood were often used as “velcro” surfaces that the dogs relied on to vibrate (sound waves) in ways that indicated what their people were doing. Vibration of wooden structures because of high winds, and storms were sometimes upsetting to velcroed dogs, because the unusual vibrations were strange, might make clutter over and conceal customary vibrations, and might be frightening if the dogs could no longer keep track of their people. Concrete floors, common in single story homes, tend to be weak carriers of vibration. A dog living there might tend to mostly stay in contact with the walls and furniture, or their persons.
2) Detection by whiskers: These are explicitly sensitive to air-motion vibration forces and contact with surfaces. Whiskers have a considerable assembly of dedicated nerves that go direct to the brain. Whiskers of blind and deaf dogs ought to be protected from trimming, regardless of the breed; S. Coren, p.96-98.
3) Detection of air-motion forces on external ear parts: The external parts of dogs’ ears naturally vibrate in response to sound waves, acting as “antennas” and by their shapes are often amplifiers. Cropping or mutilating their ears reduces their ability to detect and analyze air-vibrations. [We have seen mother dogs grip puppys' ears while scold-growling.]
4) Detection by skin-surfaces of the pressure waves and motion of vibrations in air, water or solids: This is usually thought of as “touch” and is very sensitive on a dog’s parts where there is little or no body hair, S. Coren, p. 94.
5) Detection by drag-forces on body hair: Coren, p.94, movement of air across hairs creates forces on the hairs, bending them in the direction the sound wave moves and making them vibrate sidewise to the direction the sound wave moves. Short fine hairs resonate better with high pitch sounds. Length of the dog’s hair varies from place to place, (as well as from one breed to another), so effectiveness of this can be an important difference among individual dogs and breeds.
6) Detection of compression of body organ-nerves: As S. Coren, p. 94, pointed out, mammals have pressure detection nerves within their muscles and other parts of their body. Those nerves are also going to detect compression-extension vibrations (sound) that penetrate their bodies. So-called Thunder-shirts that compress the body work be reducing the sensitivity to low-pitch noises. Fireworks explosions and very sharp loud dog barks can activate such internal nerves [People who were close to such events have experienced such detection of sounds.]
7) Detection by body-cavity and respiratory channels: Slow pressure change-vibrations are detected by some dogs. Detection is a documented capability of rodents such as gerbils. Humans who experienced discomfort because of pressure changes during aircraft flights as the plane went up to cruise height, or while landing, experienced the process. Our dogs routinely detect and report to us about passing weather low pressure zones, and remote thunder storms.
8) Detection through dog-feet contacting solids (Vestibular acceleration detection and seismic detection, et al): The details of how dogs detect very slow vibrations of floors such as those of earthquakes and passing trucks and buses were poorly documented, but their existence was documented. (S. Coren p.95, 115-117)
9) “Imaging-by-sound: sonar”- some dogs learn to mentally create three-dimensional “images” of the size and locations of objects in rooms that they are in. Textures (sound absorption and reflection) of their surrounding surfaces can become understood by the dog’s brain as a rough equivalent of colors. For example, a ‘surface’ such as the sky that ordinarily accepted all sounds without any reflection would seem to be “black” (which is likewise the color seen by humans of pure black velvet and other very light-absorbing surfaces.) Similarly, a continuous source of sound might be understood as the equivalent of a continuous source of light. Just as with ordinary optical vision, “sight” based on sound waves might be confused by reflections from nearby surfaces, which interfere with exactly understanding what is being “seen” (S. Coren p. 281). The physics processes were understood scientifically as “time difference of arrival (TDOA)” and relative loudness, and widely used for radar and sonar.
4. Temperature Based Navigation: Detection of temperature - anyone who has seen dogs seek places indoors where direct sunlight through a window is available has seen dogs using detection of infrared, temperatures and temperature differences for navigation. Dogs with long hair on most of their bodies were observed to use their faces as their main “sensors” to locate the warmest places for lying down, or places to be avoided (overheating is uncomfortable for most dogs.) Research on the quality and possible dog-uses of thermal detection was sparse, S. Coren p. 94.
We observed that individuals of a litter of five puppies moved together and cuddled if their nest temperature dropped below 73 degrees F, and conversely they spread apart from each other when the temperature rose above 73 F. Because they were responding to a temperature (thermal) condition, they by temperature-heat-seeking located each other at least partly by comparing the temperature of the environment to the temperature of their siblings. When an adult dog learned to use “whole-body” detection of infrared and temperature differences for navigation, the dog probably often also appeared to have a learned mental “time of day” map of what their temperature expectations were in each locality.
II. Training for Adaptive Development of Useful hearing and Navigation
Reality-existence of adaptive improvements of hearing and navigation has been demonstrated and reported. Use of the information in training is however proceeding slowly, probably because most people were mistakenly cautioned by authorities such as Ms Becker (reference 3) to have no hope that their deaf (or blind) dog could in any way improve its useful hearing and navigation after being diagnosed. Recently discussions of adaptive training were posted in other places; see S. Coren, 2004, p.207. Experience of many people who adopted deaf, and blind, dogs can be summarized in five crucial recommendations:
1. Develop bonding and mutual trust because the startle-reflex is the Key to activating and expediting their adapting.
2. Use gradual consistent continuing mutual education - exposure and habituation to different kinds of vibration (sound) and electromagnetic (light- thermal) stimulation
3. Use of positive applause and rewards is vital
4. Provide physical exercise and mental learning, for lifetime
5. Consider teaching the dog to deliberately paw-gesture to humans to signal its needs and wants (see reference 6, Sean Senechal)
Cautions about Meeting Strangers: At the risk of over-simplifying, please urge that a blind and-or deaf dog should be on a short leash when meeting for the first time stranger dogs and children. A leash offers some protection against events escalating too quickly and severely, with noise and maybe damage. Until a blind and-or deaf dog has learned to reliably adapt to the use of its many ways of detecting - seeing and hearing - its environment, probably a long leash should be used when outdoors for the dog’s protection against ill-informed adults, children and other dogs. Our deaf dog, when outdoors and indoors, after nearly a full year of training, behaved with strangers the same as her hearing mother. Please do NOT ever leave a deaf or blind dog staked out in a yard so she can't defend herself if hostile stranger humans and dogs can get at her or him.
III. Social Interactions: Dog with Dog and Dog with Humans
Contrary to superstitions, myths, marketing and hoaxes, there is a basis for expecting that socialized and trained blind and-or deaf dogs will be able to get along peacefully with other socialized and trained dogs (and children.)
Other dogs and humans who were not acquainted with blind and-or deaf dogs can at first fail to politely react to partly unusual social signals of young blind dogs and-or deaf dogs. A blind or deaf dog usually does NOT need to learn from an adult dog or its humans to use customary dog-polite “non-aggression” signals – “I’m playing” signals such as play-bows, tail wagging, ears and tails position and so forth. Young and untrained or inexperienced dogs whether blind or deaf or not, when meeting other dogs may fail to respond with appropriate body gestures and verbal signals such as growls to actions of other dogs, and people. Blind dogs don't see the other dogs' body language BUT usually do fine with the other dogs' vocalized growls, whines and chirps - and smells and sniffing exchanges. Likewise deaf dogs might miss close-mouthed growls of other dogs BUT they do see the dental displays, raised lips, gaping jaws, wagging tails and get also the smells and sniffing. Mutual understanding after the first few seconds was rarely a problem unless the owner interfered.
Deaf dogs, according to Internet reports, instinctively usually get their use right of growls and barks, but when they get very excited they can lose track of their breeds customary voice sounds. Some deaf dogs were reported to “moo” like cows, occasionally yodel or “fingernails on blackboard” scream or use other sounds. Their unexpected unusual sounds could be surprising and confusing to other dogs and people. The tendency of blind dogs to use barks as "sonar" sometimes confuse people unaware of what the dog is doing.
IV. Mechanical Wave Motion (Sound) and Radiant Energy (Light)
Experience reported on the Internet, and earlier among owners of deaf and-or blind dogs indicated that many dogs learned over weeks to years ways to detect vibration sound and light, and make effective use of the information from those sources to survive and even closely match the behaviors of ordinary hearing and seeing dogs. A Miklosi, M. Bekoff, S. Coren and other scientists published discussions of procedures increasingly accepted for converting experiences into scientific findings and conclusions.
For various reasons a few incumbent “authorities” with conflicts of interest asserted that consistent physically and biologically feasible experiences observed and reported by many people who lacked academic credentials could not have possibly happened. At the same time, other researchers with little or no publicity were studying and reporting results of tests that accumulated substantial proof that many of the experience reports rested on a solid foundation of physics and biology.
Reports by Ms Becker, Dr Strain, Dr Coren and others indicated that hearing, seeing, blind and-or deaf dogs were often capable of learning to detect mechanical wave motion (sound) and light. Ms Becker in her milestone book for deaf dogs sadly (often incorrectly) warned that owners of deaf dogs might deceive themselves into believing that their dogs(s) had recovered some useful hearing. Ms Becker had a financial interest via her book sales in dogs remaining functionally deaf all their lives.
Dr Strain, as early as 2004 (ref. 7), commented in briefings that dogs are capable of learning to use alternative “sensorium modalities” [Which were described in more details in the mentioned book by S. Coren and G Strain's book, 2010.] However, for reasons unknown to us in the year 2010, Dr Strain narrowly (conceivably for the purposes of his informative briefing, and offering the services of his BAER testing organization and others), seemed to assert that only a dog’s detection of mechanical wave motions(sound) in air by using the dog’s inner ear and cochlear hairs (cilia) was really dog-“hearing.”
That strict excessively narrow "anthropomorphic: human-biased" definition, rather than a widely accepted physics-biological functional operational meaning of “hearing” such as used by Coren, 2004, wasn’t accepted by many researchers, such as other those who researched whales, dolphins and sharks. Those who administered BAER tests to certify the presence or genetic failure of inner-ear dog-hearing had an financial interest (potentially many millions of dollars) in the testing of dogs, euthanizing (killing) deaf dogs and disposing of the remains (cremation, burial, etc.)
From “hard science”– Physics: Sound is (consists of) mechanical waves where zones of particles are more crowded (higher pressure, density and temperature) than the average of the environment – and then less crowded. Similarly, light is radiated energy as wave-particles moving in the environment. Detection, transmission to a brain, analysis and use of information from sound-vibration is “hearing.” Similarly the detection, transmission to a brain, analysis and use of information from light-vibration is “seeing.” Technical details such as the wave lengths of sound (pitch) and light (color) are here less important than the scientific conclusions that fully conscious dogs have many biological mechanisms for detecting (etc) sound and light.
Two scientific flaws in some published discussions were:
1) Dogs senses and nerve systems were assumed to be those of ordinary humans, and that the mental abilities of dogs were also identical with those of humans except for being less powerful,
2) Dogs were assumed to be incapable of independent learning and action on their environments.
A series of books by S. Coren, and a book by A. Miklosi demonstrated that dogs have many abilities different from those of modern humans.
Less well reported were details that demonstrated that dogs from the moment of birth were capable of using many biological detection senses to understand and act upon their environment. S. Coren had a charming commentary on the exploratory and learning activities of puppies in the moments, hours and weeks following their birth. Dogs are born with a starter-kit of templates or patterns and an wide range of easily self-modified learning abilities plus biological kit to make mental and physical use of their individual learning. The Nobel Prize winner, K. Lorenz in an insight proposed that dogs have a social Lamarckian capacity for education and transmission of knowledge from one generation to another, if permitted by humans.
V. Learning from Deaf Dogs, Blind Old Dogs and Puppies
Recent research indicated that multiple dog (and probably human) biological abilities exist that can less accurately serve most of the needs of dogs that were otherwise served by the ordinary functioning of their sight and hearing. During the hours and weeks following birth, puppies were observed discovering that their sight provided better accuracy than their other ways for sensing electromagnetic wave-vibration radiation (light) and soon after discovered that their complex and delicate inner-ear cochlea were their most accurate mechanisms for detecting-sensing and exploiting mechanical-vibrations (sound) in their environments. But Strain, 2010, mentioned that within hours of their birth puppies were seen to respond to loud sounds, despite still lacking open-ear channels for ordinary hearing.
Because ordinary eye-vision and inner-ear hearing use more accurate mechanisms than their alternatives, both the puppies and the humans observing them tend to overlook their possession of other, additional, sensing mechanisms that when educated can serve nearly as well as ordinary sight and hearing in living with humans. Redundancy against disaster typically was important for survival of all sorts of mammals. Most mammals have many redundant organs – two ears, eyes, kidneys, lungs, et al. Redundant senses abilities would thus be unsurprising. Further, various animal species have somewhat different versions of the mechanisms that they use for hearing and seeing – with different qualities of sensitivity and accuracy. Research indicated that genetic mutations such as “blue eye” that improved vision sharpness often accompanied genetic mutations that reduced the mechanical wave-hearing ability of dogs.
A superstition exists among poorly informed people that “you can’t teach old dogs new tricks.” In fact, modern science has confirmed that old dogs can and will of themselves continue to learn, even into the advanced ages when a few get a kind of “old-timers” disease, sometimes in humans called dementia. S. Coren (P. 271-273) described his spaniel’s behavior while it was gradually losing its mental capacities. He speculated that his dog’s sense of smell was the last of its senses to deteriorate disastrously. Although it doesn’t happen to every old dog, his dog’s behavior deteriorated during the last months of its life, as it was possibly in chronic pain.
Originally, deaf dogs and-or blind dogs were comparatively rare excepting those deaf from advanced old age, injured in accidents, or while working e.g. gun-dogs. That dramatically changed with the official roughly year 1900 agreements such as that creating the AKC and Breed Clubs among financially rich people of the US and other countries. The agreements attempted to “lock-in” by in-breeding perhaps for over 100 dog-generations the physical conformation of selected types of dogs, without regard for the health, abilities or temperament and personalities of the breed-types. Thus breeding of deaf dogs and blind dogs became routine in the US in a search for ever more exotic and highly sellable dog-coats to please consumer wants for unusual, often “flashy” colors and patterns.
To reiterate: the linkage was of exotic coat colors often with white, deaf dogs, blind dogs and the finances of persons and organizations at the detriment of the well being of dogs and most of their private owners. Examination via the Internet disclosed that vicious superstitions about deaf dogs and blind dogs behaviors possibly arose in part from complaints of people unhappy with the behavior of their young untrained unsocialized or old dogs. Chronic pain and misery seemed often to be the main causes of difficult behavior of old dogs, who more or less tended to become deaf and [3]blind at nearly the same time.
"Superstitions" were sold by the Nobel Prize winner, K Lorenz in the 1950s that dogs were essentially kinds of birds and therefore at birth instantly fully equipped for a lifetime to deal with their environments, although perhaps mistaking an occasional man for their mother, and learning little as adults beyond the birth-kit of fixed rigid instinctive action patterns. As late as 2004, S. Coren (p. 145) slightly muddled the details of processes whereby puppies with astonishing speed in a few weeks proceed from total blindness and deafness to being thinking, learning, and problem solving sapient individuals.
Accurate understanding of how quickly and effectively puppies learn to use their infrared sense, nose, voice, eyes, hearing and other senses is vital to understanding the potential that all dogs may have to use their entire variety of senses if or when one or another sense deteriorates, is damaged by accidents or is genetically missing from birth. Direct observation of 15 puppies demonstrated several observable steps of their processes of discovering their own senses, analyzing what they could do with them, using the results of their experiences, and observing and learning from their sibling’s experiences and those of adult dogs and nearby humans.
Emergence of sense abilities and brain organization for their use: Very simplified for example, our puppies’ eyes began to open at nine days of age when their eyelids began to expose their eye pupils to the atmosphere. Individual puppies who had previously moved their heads back and forth horizontally when searching, began to detect and move their heads to “follow” at high elevations dramatic changes in the brightness of surfaces and the movement of bright surfaces: the surfaces were their mother and people peering in at them over the eight (8) inch high opaque black sides of their whelping box. Within three days the puppies in their visual actions distinguished their mother from humans.
At first all puppies lacked “depth –distance” perception. About one week later gradually the puppies individually began to learn how to do three-dimensional (3-D) seeing. 3-D vision was confirmed by placing each puppy alone on a plate of clear glass about one meter above the floor. Puppies that had learned to use 3-D vision abruptly became anxious when they saw that they were many body-heights above any solid opaque surface.
About age 14 days, the puppies within a span of three to four days became much less vocal than previously, excepting the deaf puppy. During the same few days, the hearing puppies began to react vigorously to ringing bells by going toward ringing bells about two feet away. The puppies quickly learned to use their senses to observe, react to changes in their environment and begin to understand their environment.
We saw that the deaf puppy was behaving very like the other puppies, but simple tests of individual puppies such as clashing pans together indicated, because of her erratic responses, that the white puppy might have partial hearing. A tendency existed that if any puppy was sleeping alone, it might be late to get to food supplies. By an age of eight weeks, her hearing limitation at human hearable frequencies was quite clear because of her less prompt reactions during the simple air-acoustic tests. The deaf puppy was somewhat more likely if it was sleeping alone when the rest of the puppies went to dinner, to discover that it was alone and late.
Neonate Social Learning: Because puppies who have siblings initially learn to “bite-gently” [they have needle sharp milk-teeth!] by reacting to screams of the victims to an excessive bite, the deaf puppy was slower to learn to play gently with nipping and biting. A second level of education for deaf puppies and slow learners was that the severely bitten puppies refused to play with a puppy that nipped another too hard. Occasionally the deaf puppy was “ostracized” from play with its siblings, when it played or nipped too rough. A third level of education rarely used by the puppies was a concerted joint “attack” on any puppy that persisted in making another puppy scream with pain. Once we saw three puppies run from the corners of the room to pile upon and nip a sibling that persisted in biting a victim (the scene resembled a soccer or lacrosse scrum!). Too, singleton puppies who grew up without siblings often were reported to have poor social bite-inhibition, soft-mouth, presumably because the singleton failed to learn the social lesson about soft-bite, and the associated “Golden Rule.” Ultimately, the human owners of deaf dogs were quite able to teach puppies "soft-mouth" if necessary. -- Thus deaf and ordinary puppies often had five (5) fold opportunities and lessons for learning proper dog-dog social behaviors such as "soft-bite." [However, investigation showed that singleton puppy-mill dogs were often prevented from all of the ways of learning proper behavior, deprived of training and socialization - thus possibly with poor behavior - - Bad behavior caused by human neglect and abuse, NOT caused by deafness or blindness.]
Internet reports described successful methods of humans to educate rescued deaf pups and confirm to the deaf puppies that a soft-mouth inhibited-bite was proper social behavior with humans and other dogs. [See perhaps the Training pages of <deafdogsforever.Weebly.com>.] Puppies, even those raised with siblings (brothers and-or sisters) raised with little or no contact with humans commonly at first misjudged the delicacy of human skin to nips, until they learned from the real or “pretend-screams” of their human friends, or they were taught by being ostracized to be careful.
Brain Adapting (reorganization): Experiments with other species (reference 9), reported in 2010, demonstrated that if an animal were deprived of a particular sense, a collateral sense could expand its use of the animal’s brain. Recent research seems to endorse what was formerly only so-called folk wisdom that asserted that among humans when one or another sense was damaged or lost, others automatically usually become more effective. In principle, the research ought to from physics and biology also apply in general to dogs. [See Synesthesia on Wikipedia, etc.]
Dog-senses (additional to ordinary human-like eye-seeing and inner-ear cochlea hearing) that were identified and briefly described by S. Coren, p.145, were developing and at work a week to two weeks after puppies’ births. That included the time when puppies discovered their senses for detecting short wavelengths (vision of humans) electromagnetic wave-radiation becoming operable at about age nine days, and subsequently their inner-ear cochlear mechanisms (and other modalities) and nerves began delivering signals about vibrations to their brains for analysis and use.
Adam Miklosi several years ago pointed out that not all behavioral capabilities were continuously observable by humans. He pointed out and numerous observations confirmed that many significant dog physical and mental abilities became easily observable only in the presence of or after critical events happen to the specific dog.
For example from our observations, mother dogs have a simple instinctive kit of behaviors for birth and raising of puppies, but most mothers become more proficient and display more varied and effective self initiated behaviors with experience. Similarly, certain behaviors become more prominent at puberty. Other behaviors become readily observed only if other animals and-or people are nearby to stimulate the behaviors and stimulate dog-specific elaboration, education, and learning.
As Adam Miklosi famously said (here paraphrased) in his 2007 book: “… There is probably no such thing as THE Dog …” which I understood meant that each is unique itself, with its humans, in its personal experience history and its education-learning. Thus only quite general findings or expectations about dogs can be conclusively declared in research findings. Applying the advice to understanding the ways blind and-or deaf dogs adapt to the loss or absence of a sense (or combination of senses): the exploitation by a specific dog of its abilities depends on at least its:
1) sense of a “need(s)”,
2) recognition of a possibility to meet the need(s),
3) encouragement and stimulation (such as modeling, training, or observing others),
4) time, space and resources to develop and use its ordinarily less important sensing abilities.
So, it ought Not be demanded or expected that every dog with its humans will be equally well able to exploit its inherent technical abilities to detect-sense and understand its environment’s mechanical vibrations (sound) and radiant electromagnetic light (visible and non-visible to humans.)
Natural Experiments: Over 8,000 people with deaf, blind and-or blind-deaf dogs in 2010 networked on the Internet. In general they describe behaviors of their adapted dogs who had learned during weeks to months and years to make their use of their natural sensing of sound vibration abilities nearly indistinguishable from the behaviors of ordinary hearing dogs (as Dr Strain had remarked as early as 2004). The deaf-dogs community probably had over 15,000 cumulative observation-years of deaf dogs living with humans: i.e. a great many “natural-experiment” behaviors of deaf dogs living with people. We mention here a few natural-experiments by our dogs, repeated by them several times, exploring the capabilities and limitations of our deaf dog.
Self-initiated sensing of mechanical vibrations (sound) by “velcroing”: At age 12 weeks, our deaf dog was repeatedly observed (independently by various people) experimenting by placing her forehead against cushions, the floor, and the walls. When she was on cushions or the floor, she took a standing relaxed position with her head tucked down with her nose between her front legs as though she intended to attempt a forward roll (somersault.) S. Coren’s discussions of dogs’ seismic vertical and shear wave vibration detection, in terms of Physics, roughly fit the position selected by the deaf juvenile. At that age she was already trained to respond to human gesture-sign commands, and aware that she was being treated differently than other dogs; locally a female adult Staffordshire Terrier and an adult male Border Collie.
Our hearing dog tested our deaf dog’s hearing: While our deaf dog, about age four years, was lying on our bed, her hearing mother placed herself about three feet directly axially behind her deaf daughter. Abruptly the mother issued a louder than120 decibels bark of very short duration (impulse) lacking obvious (to me) overtones, directed toward her daughter from precisely behind. The deaf dog flinched, (as I also did because the bark was painfully loud.) A second time the mother issued at her deaf daughter from behind an abrupt “impulse” bark that lacked any obvious over-tones. That time the deaf dog immediately looked around over her left shoulder exactly at her mother, indicating that she was able to easily locate her mother from the sound or she recalled exactly where her mother was standing (which was unlikely because her mother had been moving about for several minutes before barking). Then the deaf dog casually hopped down off the bed and the two dogs went out of the room side by side.
Several days later, the hearing dog repeated the test on the deaf dog in my presence, with similar results. Later that day I imitated the hearing dog’s bark behind the deaf dog, and obtained similar results each time. Comparison of our observation with independent observations made by another person confirmed that similar results were obtained with Aussie cattle dogs. Using a modified Beaufort scale concept, the loudness of the hearing dog’s bark was assessed by the fact that it was very painful to human ears, and caused sympathetic vibration of human relaxed muscles. The loudness of my imitation barks was sufficient to rattle the room’s windows noticeably. The hearing dog after the observed events never again repeated the test scenario, but continued to use her special bark whenever she emphatically demanded her deaf daughter’s attention.
Self-initiated cooperation of a deaf dog with a hearing dog: Adapted response to being deaf at about four and a half years age was indicated by repeated observations that the deaf dog when working with a hearing dog consistently went to the estimated impact point of a thrown ball beyond a semi-permeable hedge, whereas the hearing dogs always searched the hedge at the point where the ball had audibly hit the hedge’s branches and leaves. If neither dog promptly located the ball, they both continued to search using their noses to find the ball by its odor in the hedge. On the rare occasions when the ball bounced backward from the hedge, they finally found the ball after both dogs shifted to a visual and scent systematic scan of the area.
Relevant to a deaf dog’s ability to adapt by deliberate use of its vision ability, I observed at her age about two years she repeated experiments of covering one eye or the other while she watched me throw a ball for her to retrieve. As laws of physics suggest, the deaf dog was usually unable to precisely intercept a ball that she saw with only one eye while it was being thrown. Human three-dimensional vision works best when both eyes of the human observer can see the objects. Laws of physics are equally valid for deaf dogs and humans.
The deaf dogs that owners reported as exhibiting adaptation to sensing of vibration (hearing) in addition to reliance on inner-ear cochlea nerves were typically among the breeds reported by S. Coren, p. 196-197 to typically learn quickly compared to the average of nearly 200 breeds. Possibly the main difference in adaptation among breeds would be in their promptness of learning, perhaps some needing months rather than weeks for comparable results.
VI. Approach, observations and findings
As a kind of meta-study, I compared data of reports by authorities such as Adam Miklosi, S. Coren, and others[4]. I checked by hands-on study of our dogs, and comparisons of our data with NASA, DOD, and medical human research reports. Research about dogs and research about humans for the NASA space program demonstrated that animals have many auxiliary-redundant sensory physical and mental processes that can work together with the primary processes and that can “take-over work” if or when the primary processes don’t work well. Thus the other mechanisms can help to ensure personal survival and offer advantages to a group’s survival[5]. Reports of researchers, deaf dog owners and blind dog owners from many countries indicated that most domestic dogs with their people have far greater diversity of adaptive abilities than many people apparently thought possible 20 years ago. The combined data and findings indicated that most dogs have many ways to detect facts about their surroundings, analyze the facts and use them. This text was intended to integrate and make readable for as many people as possible the research information publicly available. [i]
Acronyms
AKC American Kennel Club
BC Border Collie
BAER Brain stem auditory evoked response
DOD Department of Defense (US)
NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration
References (recommended reading)
Footnotes
[1] Definitions
Sound Mechanical Pressure-Density waves (vibrations) in gas, liquid or solids
Hearing Detection and use of mechanical vibrations (sound)
Light Electromagnetic wave-particles
Seeing Detection and use of electromagnetic vibrations (light) and-or hearing of mechanical waves for mapping, etc.
Biological “sonar”: Dogs and bats can use short sharp sounds to triangulate the sources by “time difference of arrival” of sounds directly and after reflection, and the relative loudness (sound shadows) on opposite sides of their anatomy. Comparable methods were used by dolphins, submarines and radar imaging from satellites.
[2] Heat energy also can be transferred by bulk processes usually called convection and drafts. When thermal energy is transmitted as light the energy units can be called photons, and when transferred in solids or in bulk can be called phonons.
[3] See Dr J. Serpell [ref.8], regarding misinformation (lies?) told by people dumping unwanted dogs at shelters and rescues.
[4] “People who are very aware that they have more knowledge than the average person are often very unaware that they do not have one-tenth of the knowledge of all of the average persons put together. In this situation, for the intelligentsia to impose their notions on ordinary people is essentially to impose ignorance on knowledge.” -Thomas Sowell
[5] S. Coren, p 130, described modern wolves silently hunting deer by means of what might be called WSL (wolf sign language) – during which deafness of one or another of the wolves might have been of little handicap. Too, during the quite different activity of prey-herding by wolves, many wolves vocalizing was reported. Deaf wolves could participate: as domestic deaf dogs can cooperatively bark and growl with their hearing colleagues.
[i] Illustrative technical analogies: An alternative example of how dogs can shift their primary ways of hearing from their inner-ears and cilia, to other from birth present biological detectors and processes of analysis of vibrations – sounds for mapping, navigation and action. A simple analogy is the working of a television set connected at the same instant to cable, a rooftop antenna, and a set of "rabbit ears." If the cable failed, the TV set could begin to use the signals from the rooftop antenna, unless that antenna perhaps was blown away, when the TV then could use signals from the rabbit ears. As described by S. Coren, 2004, dogs were usually equipped with many ways to sense vibrations of sounds and certain types of light. Those ways potentially were coarser partial substitutes for the primary biological sense mechanisms of ordinary dogs.
Link go to TOP of page:
Summary
Research data, observations and analyses available to us in 2011 indicated that most genetically deaf dogs (who can’t hear exactly as humans do) learn to detect and understand acoustic frequencies (sound) ranging from infra-sonic (too low to be heard by most humans) through ultra-sonic that are too high pitched to be heard by ordinary humans.
Before they met humans, dogs developed ways to detect light and sound-vibrations [1] in their environments, understand and act on what they observed. Unless a dog was in a coma or dead, it could potentially use abilities (normally not used by humans) to detect vibrations for “useful hearing” (perhaps good enough to satisfy the American Kennel Club (AKC)), and some abilities to detect thermal light waves. Since the 1990s, research increasingly indicated that there was much ability of dogs to adapt to loss of their ordinary primary hearing and seeing biology bits by using what some scientists called "other modalities". Further, correlations of enhanced vision sharpness with deafness in some breeds were recognized and genetic markers were identified. Evolution aspects were mentioned.
Synesthesia as an automatic process, especially for blind and deaf, that in the brain cross links senses such as touch to hearing and hearing to sight was reported to exist for about five (5) percent of humans, and probably existed in dogs. [The experience is remarkable.]
Suggestions were proposed to maximize dogs' useful adaptation to loss of ordinary hearing and vision, for living with humans. Comment and examples about a deaf Border Collie were included for clarity. This text was intended to integrate and make readable for as many people as possible the research information that were publicly available.
Introduction
What can dogs do to survive if something goes wrong and they lose their versatile ordinary mechanisms of hearing, and eye-sight? When does each dog learn to rely heavily on ordinary (inner-ear) hearing and eyes (iris-cornea-retinas)? Public reports and our research suggest that dog survival was expedited by their “startle-reflex alerting” biology, so that a dog can focus its attention on adapting its many (at least 8) physics-biological ways of detecting light and vibrations (sound) and using the information.
For dogs, sight and hearing are ways to communicate, map their surroundings, navigate, understand events important to them and make decisions. Dr S. Coren’s 2004, book “How Dogs Think” (reference 1), reported “bits” from scientific research on hearing and seeing dogs that confirmed their ability to use perhaps as many as eight or nine varied mechanisms (modalities) to detect, analyze, and make routine deliberate use of the information about mechanical wave motion (hearing) and radiant energy (seeing) in their environments. As mentioned by S. Coren and by Dr Strain, dogs can use body elements adaptively to aid or partially replace sensing functions of their eyes and inner ear mechanisms; for example whiskers, to detect sound-vibrations carried by air, liquids, or solids. Mechanical pressure and density waves (sound) are always associated with local motion of the media.
The origin of dogs living in pack-groups permitted and might have occasionally benefitted from genes for a few genetically deaf dogs with enhanced sharper vision (but occasional blindness) and unusual coat coloration. Miklosi (reference 2, p.68): Pleistocene events included rapid changes in climate, and migration while wolves were hunting across Northern mixed terrain of tundra, forests and savanna. In recent years adaptive coloration traits (called “flashy” coats, often including white) attracted fashion oriented humans, and led to a rapid increase in the numbers of deaf and blind dogs in Western society. Adaptive abilities of modern deaf and blind dogs living with humans were probably importantly related, and were dealt with together in this discussion.
Discussion
I. How and Why dogs adapt to loss of conventional vision and hearing
For discussion, I assumed at first that a dog is bi-ear (both ears) deaf and totally blind for the colors and brightness that humans can usually see. The research discussed by S. Coren and others suggested that dogs are genetically usually able to adapt to reduced ordinary hearing and vision by using various kinds of “hearing (detection of mechanical vibrations)”, smell, and other ways to partly compensate. The level of success depends on the dog’s breed, its individual characteristics (every dog is unique), and the assistance provided by its humans.
1. Unconventional Detection and Navigation by “Invisible” (infrared) Light
a. Puppies at birth have an ability with elements of their noses to detect, interpret and act on information from red-color light that is NOT visible to humans, as mentioned by S. Coren, (2004,p 94.) Those colors invisible to humans are usually called “infra-red” or heat-radiation waves[2]. Adult dogs’ use has been observed. It might be used without being important in the lives of behavior of dogs.
b. “White or grey-corneas”: Genetic effects and old age can cause the part of the eye where light usually enters to become cloudy and block ordinary light from getting inside the eyes to the detectors of light. A possibility exists that a particular dog might be able to sense differences of light or darkness by infrared light (scientifically known to penetrate some materials that are entirely opaque-blocked for light that humans can see). The physics of the process would limit infrared-vision to fuzzy impressions of the surroundings.
2. Smells (olfactory) mapping and navigation
Anyone who walked a dog along a path new to the dog has probably seen the dog show special interest in the smells of certain posts and places along the path, and add samples of its own odors for other dogs to find. As described by A. Miklosi, S. Coren and others, dogs can use smells to understand and map their living spaces. Especially in darkness or blind, navigation by using a mental map of the relative locations and distances of objects could technically use sensing and remembering where (and on what) the smells were found.
A blind dog newcomer to a home can benefit from its humans labeling with faint “delicate” odors key features of its new home such as the front-door, back-door, furniture that is likely to remain fixed in place most of the time, and any easily moved furniture. Lemon-scented furniture polish, in the US, is likely to be a common aroma for heavy bits of furniture. Maybe a flower or grass perfume might be used to label a door that leads out to the preferred place for the dog to go potty? Typically, each person living in a home will naturally have a unique usual combination of smells that is a personal “signature.”
Our dogs with a “scent-shoulder-rub” place a trace of their own odors on the edge of furniture and along hallways. When we scrub it off, they soon put it back. Odor marking helped them navigate in darkness when their humans went to bed with all the lights turned off. We never heard them collide with anything at night when they moved about.
3. Auxiliary -Unconventional “Hearing-mapping and Navigation”
S. Coren indicated at least eight or nine processes, of which four were a kind of “touch”:
1) Detection of gross motions by solid-body contact, i.e. “velcroing”: In the community of deaf and blind dogs-people, the tendency is well known especially of newly adopted dogs to attempt to keep very close physical contact (velcroing) with their people. They can keep a paw or their chin on their person’s foot, or in contact with a person’s chair. With experience, a blind or deaf dog can “graduate” to lying across a doorway, or some other strategy to keep track of their people. Home walls and floors of wood were often used as “velcro” surfaces that the dogs relied on to vibrate (sound waves) in ways that indicated what their people were doing. Vibration of wooden structures because of high winds, and storms were sometimes upsetting to velcroed dogs, because the unusual vibrations were strange, might make clutter over and conceal customary vibrations, and might be frightening if the dogs could no longer keep track of their people. Concrete floors, common in single story homes, tend to be weak carriers of vibration. A dog living there might tend to mostly stay in contact with the walls and furniture, or their persons.
2) Detection by whiskers: These are explicitly sensitive to air-motion vibration forces and contact with surfaces. Whiskers have a considerable assembly of dedicated nerves that go direct to the brain. Whiskers of blind and deaf dogs ought to be protected from trimming, regardless of the breed; S. Coren, p.96-98.
3) Detection of air-motion forces on external ear parts: The external parts of dogs’ ears naturally vibrate in response to sound waves, acting as “antennas” and by their shapes are often amplifiers. Cropping or mutilating their ears reduces their ability to detect and analyze air-vibrations. [We have seen mother dogs grip puppys' ears while scold-growling.]
4) Detection by skin-surfaces of the pressure waves and motion of vibrations in air, water or solids: This is usually thought of as “touch” and is very sensitive on a dog’s parts where there is little or no body hair, S. Coren, p. 94.
5) Detection by drag-forces on body hair: Coren, p.94, movement of air across hairs creates forces on the hairs, bending them in the direction the sound wave moves and making them vibrate sidewise to the direction the sound wave moves. Short fine hairs resonate better with high pitch sounds. Length of the dog’s hair varies from place to place, (as well as from one breed to another), so effectiveness of this can be an important difference among individual dogs and breeds.
6) Detection of compression of body organ-nerves: As S. Coren, p. 94, pointed out, mammals have pressure detection nerves within their muscles and other parts of their body. Those nerves are also going to detect compression-extension vibrations (sound) that penetrate their bodies. So-called Thunder-shirts that compress the body work be reducing the sensitivity to low-pitch noises. Fireworks explosions and very sharp loud dog barks can activate such internal nerves [People who were close to such events have experienced such detection of sounds.]
7) Detection by body-cavity and respiratory channels: Slow pressure change-vibrations are detected by some dogs. Detection is a documented capability of rodents such as gerbils. Humans who experienced discomfort because of pressure changes during aircraft flights as the plane went up to cruise height, or while landing, experienced the process. Our dogs routinely detect and report to us about passing weather low pressure zones, and remote thunder storms.
8) Detection through dog-feet contacting solids (Vestibular acceleration detection and seismic detection, et al): The details of how dogs detect very slow vibrations of floors such as those of earthquakes and passing trucks and buses were poorly documented, but their existence was documented. (S. Coren p.95, 115-117)
9) “Imaging-by-sound: sonar”- some dogs learn to mentally create three-dimensional “images” of the size and locations of objects in rooms that they are in. Textures (sound absorption and reflection) of their surrounding surfaces can become understood by the dog’s brain as a rough equivalent of colors. For example, a ‘surface’ such as the sky that ordinarily accepted all sounds without any reflection would seem to be “black” (which is likewise the color seen by humans of pure black velvet and other very light-absorbing surfaces.) Similarly, a continuous source of sound might be understood as the equivalent of a continuous source of light. Just as with ordinary optical vision, “sight” based on sound waves might be confused by reflections from nearby surfaces, which interfere with exactly understanding what is being “seen” (S. Coren p. 281). The physics processes were understood scientifically as “time difference of arrival (TDOA)” and relative loudness, and widely used for radar and sonar.
4. Temperature Based Navigation: Detection of temperature - anyone who has seen dogs seek places indoors where direct sunlight through a window is available has seen dogs using detection of infrared, temperatures and temperature differences for navigation. Dogs with long hair on most of their bodies were observed to use their faces as their main “sensors” to locate the warmest places for lying down, or places to be avoided (overheating is uncomfortable for most dogs.) Research on the quality and possible dog-uses of thermal detection was sparse, S. Coren p. 94.
We observed that individuals of a litter of five puppies moved together and cuddled if their nest temperature dropped below 73 degrees F, and conversely they spread apart from each other when the temperature rose above 73 F. Because they were responding to a temperature (thermal) condition, they by temperature-heat-seeking located each other at least partly by comparing the temperature of the environment to the temperature of their siblings. When an adult dog learned to use “whole-body” detection of infrared and temperature differences for navigation, the dog probably often also appeared to have a learned mental “time of day” map of what their temperature expectations were in each locality.
II. Training for Adaptive Development of Useful hearing and Navigation
Reality-existence of adaptive improvements of hearing and navigation has been demonstrated and reported. Use of the information in training is however proceeding slowly, probably because most people were mistakenly cautioned by authorities such as Ms Becker (reference 3) to have no hope that their deaf (or blind) dog could in any way improve its useful hearing and navigation after being diagnosed. Recently discussions of adaptive training were posted in other places; see S. Coren, 2004, p.207. Experience of many people who adopted deaf, and blind, dogs can be summarized in five crucial recommendations:
1. Develop bonding and mutual trust because the startle-reflex is the Key to activating and expediting their adapting.
2. Use gradual consistent continuing mutual education - exposure and habituation to different kinds of vibration (sound) and electromagnetic (light- thermal) stimulation
3. Use of positive applause and rewards is vital
4. Provide physical exercise and mental learning, for lifetime
5. Consider teaching the dog to deliberately paw-gesture to humans to signal its needs and wants (see reference 6, Sean Senechal)
Cautions about Meeting Strangers: At the risk of over-simplifying, please urge that a blind and-or deaf dog should be on a short leash when meeting for the first time stranger dogs and children. A leash offers some protection against events escalating too quickly and severely, with noise and maybe damage. Until a blind and-or deaf dog has learned to reliably adapt to the use of its many ways of detecting - seeing and hearing - its environment, probably a long leash should be used when outdoors for the dog’s protection against ill-informed adults, children and other dogs. Our deaf dog, when outdoors and indoors, after nearly a full year of training, behaved with strangers the same as her hearing mother. Please do NOT ever leave a deaf or blind dog staked out in a yard so she can't defend herself if hostile stranger humans and dogs can get at her or him.
III. Social Interactions: Dog with Dog and Dog with Humans
Contrary to superstitions, myths, marketing and hoaxes, there is a basis for expecting that socialized and trained blind and-or deaf dogs will be able to get along peacefully with other socialized and trained dogs (and children.)
Other dogs and humans who were not acquainted with blind and-or deaf dogs can at first fail to politely react to partly unusual social signals of young blind dogs and-or deaf dogs. A blind or deaf dog usually does NOT need to learn from an adult dog or its humans to use customary dog-polite “non-aggression” signals – “I’m playing” signals such as play-bows, tail wagging, ears and tails position and so forth. Young and untrained or inexperienced dogs whether blind or deaf or not, when meeting other dogs may fail to respond with appropriate body gestures and verbal signals such as growls to actions of other dogs, and people. Blind dogs don't see the other dogs' body language BUT usually do fine with the other dogs' vocalized growls, whines and chirps - and smells and sniffing exchanges. Likewise deaf dogs might miss close-mouthed growls of other dogs BUT they do see the dental displays, raised lips, gaping jaws, wagging tails and get also the smells and sniffing. Mutual understanding after the first few seconds was rarely a problem unless the owner interfered.
Deaf dogs, according to Internet reports, instinctively usually get their use right of growls and barks, but when they get very excited they can lose track of their breeds customary voice sounds. Some deaf dogs were reported to “moo” like cows, occasionally yodel or “fingernails on blackboard” scream or use other sounds. Their unexpected unusual sounds could be surprising and confusing to other dogs and people. The tendency of blind dogs to use barks as "sonar" sometimes confuse people unaware of what the dog is doing.
IV. Mechanical Wave Motion (Sound) and Radiant Energy (Light)
Experience reported on the Internet, and earlier among owners of deaf and-or blind dogs indicated that many dogs learned over weeks to years ways to detect vibration sound and light, and make effective use of the information from those sources to survive and even closely match the behaviors of ordinary hearing and seeing dogs. A Miklosi, M. Bekoff, S. Coren and other scientists published discussions of procedures increasingly accepted for converting experiences into scientific findings and conclusions.
For various reasons a few incumbent “authorities” with conflicts of interest asserted that consistent physically and biologically feasible experiences observed and reported by many people who lacked academic credentials could not have possibly happened. At the same time, other researchers with little or no publicity were studying and reporting results of tests that accumulated substantial proof that many of the experience reports rested on a solid foundation of physics and biology.
Reports by Ms Becker, Dr Strain, Dr Coren and others indicated that hearing, seeing, blind and-or deaf dogs were often capable of learning to detect mechanical wave motion (sound) and light. Ms Becker in her milestone book for deaf dogs sadly (often incorrectly) warned that owners of deaf dogs might deceive themselves into believing that their dogs(s) had recovered some useful hearing. Ms Becker had a financial interest via her book sales in dogs remaining functionally deaf all their lives.
Dr Strain, as early as 2004 (ref. 7), commented in briefings that dogs are capable of learning to use alternative “sensorium modalities” [Which were described in more details in the mentioned book by S. Coren and G Strain's book, 2010.] However, for reasons unknown to us in the year 2010, Dr Strain narrowly (conceivably for the purposes of his informative briefing, and offering the services of his BAER testing organization and others), seemed to assert that only a dog’s detection of mechanical wave motions(sound) in air by using the dog’s inner ear and cochlear hairs (cilia) was really dog-“hearing.”
That strict excessively narrow "anthropomorphic: human-biased" definition, rather than a widely accepted physics-biological functional operational meaning of “hearing” such as used by Coren, 2004, wasn’t accepted by many researchers, such as other those who researched whales, dolphins and sharks. Those who administered BAER tests to certify the presence or genetic failure of inner-ear dog-hearing had an financial interest (potentially many millions of dollars) in the testing of dogs, euthanizing (killing) deaf dogs and disposing of the remains (cremation, burial, etc.)
From “hard science”– Physics: Sound is (consists of) mechanical waves where zones of particles are more crowded (higher pressure, density and temperature) than the average of the environment – and then less crowded. Similarly, light is radiated energy as wave-particles moving in the environment. Detection, transmission to a brain, analysis and use of information from sound-vibration is “hearing.” Similarly the detection, transmission to a brain, analysis and use of information from light-vibration is “seeing.” Technical details such as the wave lengths of sound (pitch) and light (color) are here less important than the scientific conclusions that fully conscious dogs have many biological mechanisms for detecting (etc) sound and light.
Two scientific flaws in some published discussions were:
1) Dogs senses and nerve systems were assumed to be those of ordinary humans, and that the mental abilities of dogs were also identical with those of humans except for being less powerful,
2) Dogs were assumed to be incapable of independent learning and action on their environments.
A series of books by S. Coren, and a book by A. Miklosi demonstrated that dogs have many abilities different from those of modern humans.
Less well reported were details that demonstrated that dogs from the moment of birth were capable of using many biological detection senses to understand and act upon their environment. S. Coren had a charming commentary on the exploratory and learning activities of puppies in the moments, hours and weeks following their birth. Dogs are born with a starter-kit of templates or patterns and an wide range of easily self-modified learning abilities plus biological kit to make mental and physical use of their individual learning. The Nobel Prize winner, K. Lorenz in an insight proposed that dogs have a social Lamarckian capacity for education and transmission of knowledge from one generation to another, if permitted by humans.
V. Learning from Deaf Dogs, Blind Old Dogs and Puppies
Recent research indicated that multiple dog (and probably human) biological abilities exist that can less accurately serve most of the needs of dogs that were otherwise served by the ordinary functioning of their sight and hearing. During the hours and weeks following birth, puppies were observed discovering that their sight provided better accuracy than their other ways for sensing electromagnetic wave-vibration radiation (light) and soon after discovered that their complex and delicate inner-ear cochlea were their most accurate mechanisms for detecting-sensing and exploiting mechanical-vibrations (sound) in their environments. But Strain, 2010, mentioned that within hours of their birth puppies were seen to respond to loud sounds, despite still lacking open-ear channels for ordinary hearing.
Because ordinary eye-vision and inner-ear hearing use more accurate mechanisms than their alternatives, both the puppies and the humans observing them tend to overlook their possession of other, additional, sensing mechanisms that when educated can serve nearly as well as ordinary sight and hearing in living with humans. Redundancy against disaster typically was important for survival of all sorts of mammals. Most mammals have many redundant organs – two ears, eyes, kidneys, lungs, et al. Redundant senses abilities would thus be unsurprising. Further, various animal species have somewhat different versions of the mechanisms that they use for hearing and seeing – with different qualities of sensitivity and accuracy. Research indicated that genetic mutations such as “blue eye” that improved vision sharpness often accompanied genetic mutations that reduced the mechanical wave-hearing ability of dogs.
A superstition exists among poorly informed people that “you can’t teach old dogs new tricks.” In fact, modern science has confirmed that old dogs can and will of themselves continue to learn, even into the advanced ages when a few get a kind of “old-timers” disease, sometimes in humans called dementia. S. Coren (P. 271-273) described his spaniel’s behavior while it was gradually losing its mental capacities. He speculated that his dog’s sense of smell was the last of its senses to deteriorate disastrously. Although it doesn’t happen to every old dog, his dog’s behavior deteriorated during the last months of its life, as it was possibly in chronic pain.
Originally, deaf dogs and-or blind dogs were comparatively rare excepting those deaf from advanced old age, injured in accidents, or while working e.g. gun-dogs. That dramatically changed with the official roughly year 1900 agreements such as that creating the AKC and Breed Clubs among financially rich people of the US and other countries. The agreements attempted to “lock-in” by in-breeding perhaps for over 100 dog-generations the physical conformation of selected types of dogs, without regard for the health, abilities or temperament and personalities of the breed-types. Thus breeding of deaf dogs and blind dogs became routine in the US in a search for ever more exotic and highly sellable dog-coats to please consumer wants for unusual, often “flashy” colors and patterns.
To reiterate: the linkage was of exotic coat colors often with white, deaf dogs, blind dogs and the finances of persons and organizations at the detriment of the well being of dogs and most of their private owners. Examination via the Internet disclosed that vicious superstitions about deaf dogs and blind dogs behaviors possibly arose in part from complaints of people unhappy with the behavior of their young untrained unsocialized or old dogs. Chronic pain and misery seemed often to be the main causes of difficult behavior of old dogs, who more or less tended to become deaf and [3]blind at nearly the same time.
"Superstitions" were sold by the Nobel Prize winner, K Lorenz in the 1950s that dogs were essentially kinds of birds and therefore at birth instantly fully equipped for a lifetime to deal with their environments, although perhaps mistaking an occasional man for their mother, and learning little as adults beyond the birth-kit of fixed rigid instinctive action patterns. As late as 2004, S. Coren (p. 145) slightly muddled the details of processes whereby puppies with astonishing speed in a few weeks proceed from total blindness and deafness to being thinking, learning, and problem solving sapient individuals.
Accurate understanding of how quickly and effectively puppies learn to use their infrared sense, nose, voice, eyes, hearing and other senses is vital to understanding the potential that all dogs may have to use their entire variety of senses if or when one or another sense deteriorates, is damaged by accidents or is genetically missing from birth. Direct observation of 15 puppies demonstrated several observable steps of their processes of discovering their own senses, analyzing what they could do with them, using the results of their experiences, and observing and learning from their sibling’s experiences and those of adult dogs and nearby humans.
Emergence of sense abilities and brain organization for their use: Very simplified for example, our puppies’ eyes began to open at nine days of age when their eyelids began to expose their eye pupils to the atmosphere. Individual puppies who had previously moved their heads back and forth horizontally when searching, began to detect and move their heads to “follow” at high elevations dramatic changes in the brightness of surfaces and the movement of bright surfaces: the surfaces were their mother and people peering in at them over the eight (8) inch high opaque black sides of their whelping box. Within three days the puppies in their visual actions distinguished their mother from humans.
At first all puppies lacked “depth –distance” perception. About one week later gradually the puppies individually began to learn how to do three-dimensional (3-D) seeing. 3-D vision was confirmed by placing each puppy alone on a plate of clear glass about one meter above the floor. Puppies that had learned to use 3-D vision abruptly became anxious when they saw that they were many body-heights above any solid opaque surface.
About age 14 days, the puppies within a span of three to four days became much less vocal than previously, excepting the deaf puppy. During the same few days, the hearing puppies began to react vigorously to ringing bells by going toward ringing bells about two feet away. The puppies quickly learned to use their senses to observe, react to changes in their environment and begin to understand their environment.
We saw that the deaf puppy was behaving very like the other puppies, but simple tests of individual puppies such as clashing pans together indicated, because of her erratic responses, that the white puppy might have partial hearing. A tendency existed that if any puppy was sleeping alone, it might be late to get to food supplies. By an age of eight weeks, her hearing limitation at human hearable frequencies was quite clear because of her less prompt reactions during the simple air-acoustic tests. The deaf puppy was somewhat more likely if it was sleeping alone when the rest of the puppies went to dinner, to discover that it was alone and late.
Neonate Social Learning: Because puppies who have siblings initially learn to “bite-gently” [they have needle sharp milk-teeth!] by reacting to screams of the victims to an excessive bite, the deaf puppy was slower to learn to play gently with nipping and biting. A second level of education for deaf puppies and slow learners was that the severely bitten puppies refused to play with a puppy that nipped another too hard. Occasionally the deaf puppy was “ostracized” from play with its siblings, when it played or nipped too rough. A third level of education rarely used by the puppies was a concerted joint “attack” on any puppy that persisted in making another puppy scream with pain. Once we saw three puppies run from the corners of the room to pile upon and nip a sibling that persisted in biting a victim (the scene resembled a soccer or lacrosse scrum!). Too, singleton puppies who grew up without siblings often were reported to have poor social bite-inhibition, soft-mouth, presumably because the singleton failed to learn the social lesson about soft-bite, and the associated “Golden Rule.” Ultimately, the human owners of deaf dogs were quite able to teach puppies "soft-mouth" if necessary. -- Thus deaf and ordinary puppies often had five (5) fold opportunities and lessons for learning proper dog-dog social behaviors such as "soft-bite." [However, investigation showed that singleton puppy-mill dogs were often prevented from all of the ways of learning proper behavior, deprived of training and socialization - thus possibly with poor behavior - - Bad behavior caused by human neglect and abuse, NOT caused by deafness or blindness.]
Internet reports described successful methods of humans to educate rescued deaf pups and confirm to the deaf puppies that a soft-mouth inhibited-bite was proper social behavior with humans and other dogs. [See perhaps the Training pages of <deafdogsforever.Weebly.com>.] Puppies, even those raised with siblings (brothers and-or sisters) raised with little or no contact with humans commonly at first misjudged the delicacy of human skin to nips, until they learned from the real or “pretend-screams” of their human friends, or they were taught by being ostracized to be careful.
Brain Adapting (reorganization): Experiments with other species (reference 9), reported in 2010, demonstrated that if an animal were deprived of a particular sense, a collateral sense could expand its use of the animal’s brain. Recent research seems to endorse what was formerly only so-called folk wisdom that asserted that among humans when one or another sense was damaged or lost, others automatically usually become more effective. In principle, the research ought to from physics and biology also apply in general to dogs. [See Synesthesia on Wikipedia, etc.]
Dog-senses (additional to ordinary human-like eye-seeing and inner-ear cochlea hearing) that were identified and briefly described by S. Coren, p.145, were developing and at work a week to two weeks after puppies’ births. That included the time when puppies discovered their senses for detecting short wavelengths (vision of humans) electromagnetic wave-radiation becoming operable at about age nine days, and subsequently their inner-ear cochlear mechanisms (and other modalities) and nerves began delivering signals about vibrations to their brains for analysis and use.
Adam Miklosi several years ago pointed out that not all behavioral capabilities were continuously observable by humans. He pointed out and numerous observations confirmed that many significant dog physical and mental abilities became easily observable only in the presence of or after critical events happen to the specific dog.
For example from our observations, mother dogs have a simple instinctive kit of behaviors for birth and raising of puppies, but most mothers become more proficient and display more varied and effective self initiated behaviors with experience. Similarly, certain behaviors become more prominent at puberty. Other behaviors become readily observed only if other animals and-or people are nearby to stimulate the behaviors and stimulate dog-specific elaboration, education, and learning.
As Adam Miklosi famously said (here paraphrased) in his 2007 book: “… There is probably no such thing as THE Dog …” which I understood meant that each is unique itself, with its humans, in its personal experience history and its education-learning. Thus only quite general findings or expectations about dogs can be conclusively declared in research findings. Applying the advice to understanding the ways blind and-or deaf dogs adapt to the loss or absence of a sense (or combination of senses): the exploitation by a specific dog of its abilities depends on at least its:
1) sense of a “need(s)”,
2) recognition of a possibility to meet the need(s),
3) encouragement and stimulation (such as modeling, training, or observing others),
4) time, space and resources to develop and use its ordinarily less important sensing abilities.
So, it ought Not be demanded or expected that every dog with its humans will be equally well able to exploit its inherent technical abilities to detect-sense and understand its environment’s mechanical vibrations (sound) and radiant electromagnetic light (visible and non-visible to humans.)
Natural Experiments: Over 8,000 people with deaf, blind and-or blind-deaf dogs in 2010 networked on the Internet. In general they describe behaviors of their adapted dogs who had learned during weeks to months and years to make their use of their natural sensing of sound vibration abilities nearly indistinguishable from the behaviors of ordinary hearing dogs (as Dr Strain had remarked as early as 2004). The deaf-dogs community probably had over 15,000 cumulative observation-years of deaf dogs living with humans: i.e. a great many “natural-experiment” behaviors of deaf dogs living with people. We mention here a few natural-experiments by our dogs, repeated by them several times, exploring the capabilities and limitations of our deaf dog.
Self-initiated sensing of mechanical vibrations (sound) by “velcroing”: At age 12 weeks, our deaf dog was repeatedly observed (independently by various people) experimenting by placing her forehead against cushions, the floor, and the walls. When she was on cushions or the floor, she took a standing relaxed position with her head tucked down with her nose between her front legs as though she intended to attempt a forward roll (somersault.) S. Coren’s discussions of dogs’ seismic vertical and shear wave vibration detection, in terms of Physics, roughly fit the position selected by the deaf juvenile. At that age she was already trained to respond to human gesture-sign commands, and aware that she was being treated differently than other dogs; locally a female adult Staffordshire Terrier and an adult male Border Collie.
Our hearing dog tested our deaf dog’s hearing: While our deaf dog, about age four years, was lying on our bed, her hearing mother placed herself about three feet directly axially behind her deaf daughter. Abruptly the mother issued a louder than120 decibels bark of very short duration (impulse) lacking obvious (to me) overtones, directed toward her daughter from precisely behind. The deaf dog flinched, (as I also did because the bark was painfully loud.) A second time the mother issued at her deaf daughter from behind an abrupt “impulse” bark that lacked any obvious over-tones. That time the deaf dog immediately looked around over her left shoulder exactly at her mother, indicating that she was able to easily locate her mother from the sound or she recalled exactly where her mother was standing (which was unlikely because her mother had been moving about for several minutes before barking). Then the deaf dog casually hopped down off the bed and the two dogs went out of the room side by side.
Several days later, the hearing dog repeated the test on the deaf dog in my presence, with similar results. Later that day I imitated the hearing dog’s bark behind the deaf dog, and obtained similar results each time. Comparison of our observation with independent observations made by another person confirmed that similar results were obtained with Aussie cattle dogs. Using a modified Beaufort scale concept, the loudness of the hearing dog’s bark was assessed by the fact that it was very painful to human ears, and caused sympathetic vibration of human relaxed muscles. The loudness of my imitation barks was sufficient to rattle the room’s windows noticeably. The hearing dog after the observed events never again repeated the test scenario, but continued to use her special bark whenever she emphatically demanded her deaf daughter’s attention.
Self-initiated cooperation of a deaf dog with a hearing dog: Adapted response to being deaf at about four and a half years age was indicated by repeated observations that the deaf dog when working with a hearing dog consistently went to the estimated impact point of a thrown ball beyond a semi-permeable hedge, whereas the hearing dogs always searched the hedge at the point where the ball had audibly hit the hedge’s branches and leaves. If neither dog promptly located the ball, they both continued to search using their noses to find the ball by its odor in the hedge. On the rare occasions when the ball bounced backward from the hedge, they finally found the ball after both dogs shifted to a visual and scent systematic scan of the area.
Relevant to a deaf dog’s ability to adapt by deliberate use of its vision ability, I observed at her age about two years she repeated experiments of covering one eye or the other while she watched me throw a ball for her to retrieve. As laws of physics suggest, the deaf dog was usually unable to precisely intercept a ball that she saw with only one eye while it was being thrown. Human three-dimensional vision works best when both eyes of the human observer can see the objects. Laws of physics are equally valid for deaf dogs and humans.
The deaf dogs that owners reported as exhibiting adaptation to sensing of vibration (hearing) in addition to reliance on inner-ear cochlea nerves were typically among the breeds reported by S. Coren, p. 196-197 to typically learn quickly compared to the average of nearly 200 breeds. Possibly the main difference in adaptation among breeds would be in their promptness of learning, perhaps some needing months rather than weeks for comparable results.
VI. Approach, observations and findings
As a kind of meta-study, I compared data of reports by authorities such as Adam Miklosi, S. Coren, and others[4]. I checked by hands-on study of our dogs, and comparisons of our data with NASA, DOD, and medical human research reports. Research about dogs and research about humans for the NASA space program demonstrated that animals have many auxiliary-redundant sensory physical and mental processes that can work together with the primary processes and that can “take-over work” if or when the primary processes don’t work well. Thus the other mechanisms can help to ensure personal survival and offer advantages to a group’s survival[5]. Reports of researchers, deaf dog owners and blind dog owners from many countries indicated that most domestic dogs with their people have far greater diversity of adaptive abilities than many people apparently thought possible 20 years ago. The combined data and findings indicated that most dogs have many ways to detect facts about their surroundings, analyze the facts and use them. This text was intended to integrate and make readable for as many people as possible the research information publicly available. [i]
Acronyms
AKC American Kennel Club
BC Border Collie
BAER Brain stem auditory evoked response
DOD Department of Defense (US)
NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration
References (recommended reading)
- Coren, S; How Dogs Think, 2004, Free Press publ.
- Miklosi, A; Dog Behaviour; Evolution, and cognition, 2007, Oxford University Press
- Becker, S; Living with a Deaf Dog, 1997, Susan Cope Becker publ.
- Bekoff, M; Emotional Lives of Animals, 2007, The New World Library publ.
- Semyonova, A; The 100 Silliest Things People say about Dogs, 2009, Hasting Press
- Senechal, Sean; Dogs Can Sign, Too: A Breakthrough Method for Teaching Your Dog to Communicate , 2009
- Strain; Presentation to Australian Cattle Dog Club, 2004
- Serpell, J, et al; “Evaluation of behavior assessment questionnaire for use in the characterization of behavior problems of dogs relinquished to Animals shelters”, J Am Vet Med Assc, 2005:227:1755.
- Lomber, Stephen; Meredith, M Alex & Kral, Andrej; “Cross-modal plasticity in specific auditory cortices underlies visual compensations in the deaf”, 2010, Nature Neuroscience <www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v13/n11/pdf/nn.2653.pdf
- Diamond, J; Guns, Germs and Steel, 1997, Norton & Company LTD publ; Research approach for history-science
Footnotes
[1] Definitions
Sound Mechanical Pressure-Density waves (vibrations) in gas, liquid or solids
Hearing Detection and use of mechanical vibrations (sound)
Light Electromagnetic wave-particles
Seeing Detection and use of electromagnetic vibrations (light) and-or hearing of mechanical waves for mapping, etc.
Biological “sonar”: Dogs and bats can use short sharp sounds to triangulate the sources by “time difference of arrival” of sounds directly and after reflection, and the relative loudness (sound shadows) on opposite sides of their anatomy. Comparable methods were used by dolphins, submarines and radar imaging from satellites.
[2] Heat energy also can be transferred by bulk processes usually called convection and drafts. When thermal energy is transmitted as light the energy units can be called photons, and when transferred in solids or in bulk can be called phonons.
[3] See Dr J. Serpell [ref.8], regarding misinformation (lies?) told by people dumping unwanted dogs at shelters and rescues.
[4] “People who are very aware that they have more knowledge than the average person are often very unaware that they do not have one-tenth of the knowledge of all of the average persons put together. In this situation, for the intelligentsia to impose their notions on ordinary people is essentially to impose ignorance on knowledge.” -Thomas Sowell
[5] S. Coren, p 130, described modern wolves silently hunting deer by means of what might be called WSL (wolf sign language) – during which deafness of one or another of the wolves might have been of little handicap. Too, during the quite different activity of prey-herding by wolves, many wolves vocalizing was reported. Deaf wolves could participate: as domestic deaf dogs can cooperatively bark and growl with their hearing colleagues.
[i] Illustrative technical analogies: An alternative example of how dogs can shift their primary ways of hearing from their inner-ears and cilia, to other from birth present biological detectors and processes of analysis of vibrations – sounds for mapping, navigation and action. A simple analogy is the working of a television set connected at the same instant to cable, a rooftop antenna, and a set of "rabbit ears." If the cable failed, the TV set could begin to use the signals from the rooftop antenna, unless that antenna perhaps was blown away, when the TV then could use signals from the rabbit ears. As described by S. Coren, 2004, dogs were usually equipped with many ways to sense vibrations of sounds and certain types of light. Those ways potentially were coarser partial substitutes for the primary biological sense mechanisms of ordinary dogs.
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