I think it’s awesome that we’re always finding out new and exciting things about animals. And by “we,” I mean “scientists who apparently already know all there is to know about humans.”
For example, according to scientists in Budapest, dogs can understand human language. At least Hungarian.
Or maybe they understand whatever language the humans around them speak. We always assumed that they don’t understand what we’re saying because sometimes someone gives the dog a command, and it just doesn’t listen. But by that logic, kids don’t know English either.
“What part of ‘Go clean your room’ do you not understand?”
“I don’t know.”
They don’t understand the question.
Yes, dog owners have been saying for years that their dogs understood them, but no one believed these people, because these are the same people who dress dogs up for their holidays. Hey, just because he understands what you’re saying doesn’t mean he shares your religion. The dogs are thinking, “I don’t know what we’re celebrating here. You know that chocolate kills me, right?”
But even people who haven’t been saying this have been pouring their hearts out to dogs for years, because the dogs listen and don’t interrupt. And they just assumed that, at most, the dogs understood the occasional word, like, “Talk talk talk talk Rover talk talk talk talk Rover.”
But scientists always knew that dogs understood something. So what they did was they put 13 dogs in an MRI machine.
Not all at once. They did it one at a time. The idea was to monitor what happened inside their brains when a trainer spoke to them through a pair of headphones. Of course, first the scientists had to train them to lie still in the machine, because those machines are noisy. (I was in an MRI machine once, and it sounded like people were spending the entire half hour dropping folding chairs on the floor. And all I wanted to do was scratch my nose.)
The researchers spent the entire time alternately saying “happy” words and phrases, such as “good boy,” and neutral words that had no meaning to the dog, like “however.” They said them over and over, sometimes in a happy tone and sometimes in a monotonous tone. They didn’t say any “non-happy” words like “bath,” because they didn’t want the dogs to dart out of the machine and get lost in the hospital.
Then they looked at the dogs’ brainwaves and saw which parts lit up as they said each word. It turns out that the left hemisphere lit up when they heard a happy word, the right hemisphere lit up when they heard a happy tone and a whole pleasure center lit up when it was a happy word in a happy tone.
“Dog brains care about both what we say and how we say it,” one researcher said. “Like people.”
Your wife tells you that all the time—that it’s not just what you said, it’s how you said it.
Not that I should be making fun. After all, dogs can understand English, and we still don’t understand dog. I can’t even tell whether a dog is telling me something in a happy tone or a monotonous tone. Do dogs even do monotonous tones?
Maybe scientists should look into that. But, no, scientists are busy answering questions like, “Why are dogs’ noses wet?”
They’re wet because they can’t hold a tissue. Duh.
Nor do they study giraffes nearly enough, because according to recent reports, they just discovered that what we’ve long thought of as “the giraffe” is actually four distinct species (all of them giraffes).
And all the dogs reading this paper are going, “Yeah, I knew that. They smell different.”
And no, one of these species is not a mini giraffe that you can keep in your pocket. These all look like giraffes, and the main visible difference is that they have different coat patterns. It’s the kind of thing that you only realize if you have a bunch of giraffes in an MRI machine, sticking out both ends.
Okay, they didn’t do that. To study them, scientists collected DNA samples by shooting darts at various herds of giraffes. The darts collected a small piece of giraffe tissue and fell to the ground, and then they had to get an intern to run out and collect the darts.
And what do you know? There are four kinds of giraffes! That we know of!
Scientists have since renamed them, very creatively spinning off on the giraffe theme: There’s the reticulated giraffe, the southern giraffe, the northern giraffe, and the Masai giraffe. The Reticulated giraffe has patterns on its neck that look like a net. Southern giraffes have redder necks and say things like “Y’all.” Northern giraffes drink cawfee, eat hot dawgs, are roughly 10 percent Jewish and are educated enough to know that we’re making America-centric North-South jokes when we’re clearly dealing with Africa. And the Masai giraffes, who come from Kenya, have cool accents, are good at basketball and come to New York once a year to win the marathon.
But now that we know there are four species, artists might have to update their drawings of the teivah, which currently show two heads sticking out of the top. They should probably update those pictures anyway, seeing as:
- Giraffes are kosher, so there should probably be at least 14 necks sticking out, and
- The giraffes lived on the middle floor, and they’re only 20 feet tall. They didn’t have their heads sticking out of the roof with rain streaming in. At most, their heads were on the top floor, watching Noach’s family eat.
“Are they talking about us? I think they’re talking about us.”
By Mordechai Schmutter
Mordechai Schmutter is a freelance writer and a humor columnist for Hamodia and other magazines. He also has six books out and does stand-up comedy. You can contact him at [email protected].
