Release the Hounds/Dogs Are People, Too

Release the HoundsBy REBECCA SKLOOTDecember 18, 2013狗所知道的東西，我們所知甚少書評麗貝卡·斯克魯特2013年12月18日
在經過訓練並享用了熱狗之後，考利做好準備接受磁共振成像機的研究了。
Bryan Meltz
Gregory Berns wasn't sure if his pug Newton really loved him. Newton wagged his tail and gave kisses, but that wasn't enough. Berns, a neuroscientist, wanted hard data. He also hoped to uncover “what makes for a strong dog -human bond” and how that might improve canine welfare. So he built a special MRI machine, and trained dogs to lie still inside it, allowing him to study their brains. Though the results may seem obvious to dog lovers (that humans and dogs experience emotions similarly), they're not a given for science. Berns's book is a beautiful story about dogs, love and neurology that shows how nonhuman relationships are inspiring researchers to look at animals in new ways, for their benefit and ours.
格雷戈里·伯恩斯(Gregory Berns)不確定他的哈巴狗牛頓(Newton)是否真的愛他。牛頓經常對他搖尾巴，親吻他，但這些還不夠。作為神經學家，伯恩斯想要更堅實的數據。他還想找出“狗和人類之間強烈情感聯繫的原因”，以及那種聯繫對改善犬類身心健康的作用。所以他製造了一台特殊的磁共振成像機，訓練小狗安​​靜地躺在裡面，以便研究它們的大腦。雖然對愛狗人士來說，研究結果是顯而易見的（人類和狗經歷類似的情緒），但從科學的角度講，它們還不是既定事實。伯恩斯的書是關於狗、愛和神經學的美麗故事，展示出非人類關係如何激發研究者們從新的角度看待動物，以造福動物和人類。
It's baffling that animals have been an essential part of our lives for millenniums, yet, scientifically speaking, we know little about them. Researchers have long studied animals in the wild to learn how they interact, or in laboratories to see what they can teach us about human behavior and disease. But there's been little focus on animals for the sake of understanding their inner workings, and even less on our relationships with them. Now the birth of fields like anthrozoology, the study of human-animal interactions, is changing that , and this shift is showing in books as well.
幾千年來，動物一直是我們生活的重要組成部分，但令人不解的是，從科學的角度講，我們對它們知之甚少。長期以來，研究員們在野外研究動物是如何溝通的，或者在實驗室里通過動物研究人類的行為和疾病。但是對動物的關注極少是為了理解它們的內在情況，對人類與動物關係的關注更是少之又少。如今出現的一些新學科，比如人與動物關係學，正在改變這種情況，這種改變在一些書中也得到了體現。
Animal books are often either memoirs that tell stories of people and their pets (like “Marley & Me,” by John Grogan) or idea-driven books about specific areas of animal-related science (“Inside of a Dog,” by Alexandra Horowitz ). There's nothing wrong with these books. I adore many of them. But I often wish more titles blended those categories into something I'd call narrative animal science writing: a genre combining rich storytelling with science to explain animals, the roles they play in our lives and we in theirs. Berns's book does this. So does “What the Dog Knows,” by Cat Warren.
關於動物的書通常是講述人和寵物之間故事的回憶錄（比如約翰·格羅根[John Grogan]的《馬利和我》[Marley & Me]），或者是在某些與動物相關的具體科學領域內提出觀點的書（比如亞歷山德拉·霍羅威茨[Alexandra Horowitz]的《一隻狗的內心》[Inside of a Dog]）。這些書沒什麼問題。其中很多書我都很喜歡。但是我經常希望能有更多書把這些類別結合起來，寫一些我稱為敘述性動物科學的內容：既有豐富的故事，又用科學解釋動物們的行為以及我們在彼此生活中的角色。伯恩斯的書做到了這一點。卡特·沃倫(Cat Warren)的《狗所知道的東西》(What the Dog Knows)也是如此。
Warren, a science journalism professor ​​at North Carolina State University, never dreamed of becoming a cadaver dog handler, searching woods and rubble for dead bodies. She just wanted a new German shepherd puppy after the death of her saintly dog​​ Zev. What she got was Solo: “a maniacal clown,” loving and intensely smart, but “an unpredictable sociopath with other dogs.” After Warren's vet warned her Solo was en route to being dangerous, people recommended acupuncture and obedience trainers; Warren thought agility work might help. Nothing did.
沃倫是北卡羅來納州立大學的科學新聞學教授，她從沒想過成為一名尋屍犬訓練員，在樹林和瓦礫中尋找死屍。在她善良的小狗澤夫(Zev)死後，她只想要一隻新的德國牧羊犬。結果她得到了索洛(Solo)：“一個躁狂的小丑”，它富有愛心，特別聰明，但是“出人意料地不愛跟其他狗交往”。獸醫警告說索洛會變得很危險，別人建議採用針灸療法或請人馴服，沃倫認為敏捷性活動可能有用。結果什麼都沒用。
In too many cases, dogs like Solo end up in shelters (or worse) because they roam or fight or tear up furniture. Fortunately, Warren understood behavior issues are rarely the dog's fault. They often just mean humans haven't found the right way to channel their pet's energy. After a trainer mentioned cadaver dog work as an option for Solo, Warren entered a world she knew nothing about.
在大多數情況下，像索洛這樣的狗會淪落到收容所裡（甚至更糟的境地），因為它們到處亂跑，打架，撕咬家具。幸運的是，沃倫知道行為問題很少是狗本身的問題。通常是因為主人沒有找到釋放寵物能量的正確途徑。一個訓練員提到，尋屍工作也許能解決索洛的問題，從此沃倫進入了一個她之前完全不了解的世界。
“What the Dog Knows” is a fascinating, deeply reported journey into scent, death, forensics and the amazing things dogs can do with their noses: sniffing out graves, truffles, bedbugs, maybe even cancer. But it's also a moving story of how one woman transformed her troubled dog into a loving companion and an asset to society, all while stumbling on the beauty of life in their searches for death. “I never thought death could have an upside,” Warren writes. “I certainly never expected a dog to point that out to me.”
《狗所知道的東西》是本非常吸引人的書，它詳細介紹了氣味、死亡、取證以及狗鼻子能做的很多神奇的事情：嗅出墳墓、松露和臭蟲，甚至癌症。同時它也講述了一個動人的故事：一個女人把一隻愛惹麻煩的狗變成了富有愛心的伴侶和有益社會的動物，他們在尋找死亡的過程中發現了生命的美好。 “我從沒想到死亡能帶來正面作用，”沃倫寫道，“我更沒想到，是一隻狗讓我看到了這一點。”
Rebecca Skloot is the author of “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.” She is writing a book about humans, animals and ethics.

Copyright © 2013 The New York Times Company. All rights reserved.
本文作者麗貝卡·斯克魯特(Rebecca Skloot)著有《亨麗埃塔·拉克斯的不朽生命》(The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks)，她正在寫一本關於人類、動物與倫理的書。
本文最初發表於2013年12月8日。翻譯：王相宜

Dogs Are People, Too

Jane Evelyn Atwood/Contact Press Images

By GREGORY BERNS

Published: October 5, 2013

FOR the past two years, my colleagues and I have been training dogs to go in an M.R.I. scanner — completely awake and unrestrained. Our goal has been to determine how dogs’ brains work and, even more important, what they think of us humans.

Multimedia

• Video: How Dogs Love Us (YouTube)

Now, after training and scanning a dozen dogs, my one inescapable conclusion is this: dogs are people, too.

Because dogs can’t speak, scientists have relied on behavioral observations to infer what dogs are thinking. It is a tricky business. You can’t ask a dog why he does something. And you certainly can’t ask him how he feels. The prospect of ferreting out animal emotions scares many scientists. After all, animal research is big business. It has been easy to sidestep the difficult questions about animal sentience and emotions because they have been unanswerable.

Until now.

By looking directly at their brains and bypassing the constraints of behaviorism, M.R.I.’s can tell us about dogs’ internal states. M.R.I.’s are conducted in loud, confined spaces. People don’t like them, and you have to hold absolutely still during the procedure. Conventional veterinary practice says you have to anesthetize animals so they don’t move during a scan. But you can’t study brain function in an anesthetized animal. At least not anything interesting like perception or emotion.

From the beginning, we treated the dogs as persons. We had a consent form, which was modeled after a child’s consent form but signed by the dog’s owner. We emphasized that participation was voluntary, and that the dog had the right to quit the study. We used only positive training methods. No sedation. No restraints. If the dogs didn’t want to be in the M.R.I. scanner, they could leave. Same as any human volunteer.

My dog Callie was the first. Rescued from a shelter, Callie was a skinny black terrier mix, what is called a feist in the southern Appalachians, from where she came. True to her roots, she preferred hunting squirrels and rabbits in the backyard to curling up in my lap. She had a natural inquisitiveness, which probably landed her in the shelter in the first place, but also made training a breeze.

With the help of my friend Mark Spivak, a dog trainer, we started teaching Callie to go into an M.R.I. simulator that I built in my living room. She learned to walk up steps into a tube, place her head in a custom-fitted chin rest, and hold rock-still for periods of up to 30 seconds. Oh, and she had to learn to wear earmuffs to protect her sensitive hearing from the 95 decibels of noise the scanner makes.

After months of training and some trial-and-error at the real M.R.I. scanner, we were rewarded with the first maps of brain activity. For our first tests, we measured Callie’s brain response to two hand signals in the scanner. In later experiments, not yet published, we determined which parts of her brain distinguished the scents of familiar and unfamiliar dogs and humans.

Soon, the local dog community learned of our quest to determine what dogs are thinking. Within a year, we had assembled a team of a dozen dogs who were all “M.R.I.-certified.”

Although we are just beginning to answer basic questions about the canine brain, we cannot ignore the striking similarity between dogs and humans in both the structure and function of a key brain region: the caudate nucleus.

Rich in dopamine receptors, the caudate sits between the brainstem and the cortex. In humans, the caudate plays a key role in the anticipation of things we enjoy, like food, love and money. But can we flip this association around and infer what a person is thinking just by measuring caudate activity? Because of the overwhelming complexity of how different parts of the brain are connected to one another, it is not usually possible to pin a single cognitive function or emotion to a single brain region.

But the caudate may be an exception. Specific parts of the caudate stand out for their consistent activation to many things that humans enjoy. Caudate activation is so consistent that under the right circumstances, it can predict our preferences for food, music and even beauty.

In dogs, we found that activity in the caudate increased in response to hand signals indicating food. The caudate also activated to the smells of familiar humans. And in preliminary tests, it activated to the return of an owner who had momentarily stepped out of view. Do these findings prove that dogs love us? Not quite. But many of the same things that activate the human caudate, which are associated with positive emotions, also activate the dog caudate. Neuroscientists call this a functional homology, and it may be an indication of canine emotions.

The ability to experience positive emotions, like love and attachment, would mean that dogs have a level of sentience comparable to that of a human child. And this ability suggests a rethinking of how we treat dogs.

DOGS have long been considered property. Though the Animal Welfare Act of 1966 and state laws raised the bar for the treatment of animals, they solidified the view that animals are things — objects that can be disposed of as long as reasonable care is taken to minimize their suffering.

But now, by using the M.R.I. to push away the limitations of behaviorism, we can no longer hide from the evidence. Dogs, and probably many other animals (especially our closest primate relatives), seem to have emotions just like us. And this means we must reconsider their treatment as property.

One alternative is a sort of limited personhood for animals that show neurobiological evidence of positive emotions. Many rescue groups already use the label of “guardian” to describe human caregivers, binding the human to his ward with an implicit responsibility to care for her. Failure to act as a good guardian runs the risk of having the dog placed elsewhere. But there are no laws that cover animals as wards, so the patchwork of rescue groups that operate under a guardianship model have little legal foundation to protect the animals’ interest.

If we went a step further and granted dogs rights of personhood, they would be afforded additional protection against exploitation. Puppy mills, laboratory dogs and dog racing would be banned for violating the basic right of self-determination of a person.

I suspect that society is many years away from considering dogs as persons. However, recent rulings by the Supreme Court have included neuroscientific findings that open the door to such a possibility. In two cases, the court ruled that juvenile offenders could not be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. As part of the rulings, the court cited brain-imaging evidence that the human brain was not mature in adolescence. Although this case has nothing to do with dog sentience, the justices opened the door for neuroscience in the courtroom.

Perhaps someday we may see a case arguing for a dog’s rights based on brain-imaging findings.

Gregory Berns is a professor of neuroeconomics at Emory University and the author of “How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain.”