Telepathy Goes to the Dogs
Telepathy: “The supposed communication of thoughts or ideas between minds by means other than the known senses.” (Stevenson, A. & Lindberg, C.A. (Eds.), (2010). New Oxford American Dictionary, 3rd Edition). New York, N.Y: Oxford University Press, Inc.)
Almost all dog owners believe that dogs have minds, and are not just machines driven by instinct. During the last century, academic psychologists have caught up with that conventional wisdom. The strict behaviorist theories of the 1920s-1960s ignored the mental determinants of animal behavior, but have been supplanted by cognitive theories. These cognitive theories include mental constructs such as expectancies, values, intentions and the like to best explain why animals do what they do. (Zentall, T.R. (2002). A Cognitive Behaviorist Approach to the Study of Animal Behavior. Journal of General Psychology 129 (4), 328-363. Complete article at www.uky.edu/~zentall/pdfs/1.pdf )
But telepathy? Even if dogs do have minds remotely like our own, could we “read” Pepper’s mind, or “send” our thoughts to Toby? Some answer “yes!” Rupert Sheldrake, noted biologist and author of Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home (Sheldrake, R. (1999). New York: Three Rivers Press.), is especially sympathetic to the idea of animals sensing human thoughts, and presents compelling testimonials from dog owners. But he rightly cautions that subtle sensory cues—cues of which humans are often blithely unaware—can create the appearance of telepathy. For example, you decide to take Mocha for a walk. Seemingly at the moment of your decision, she leaps to her feet and trots to where her leash hangs on a peg.
Did Mocha sense your intention? Of course! But most likely she watched you shut down your computer, glance outside the window to check for rain, and observed your big smile directed at her. These are all cues that have heralded walks in the past, so Mocha drew the sensible conclusion.
Sheldrake offers a series of thoughtful scientific experiments studying the ability of dogs to sense their owners’ intentions. One such study, “A Dog That Seems To Know When His Owner is Coming Home: Videotaped Experiments and Observations,” presents compelling evidence for this type of telepathy, at least for one dog-owner pair. Visit Sheldrake’s website and look under the “research” button for this study and others. (www.sheldrake.org)
Sheldrake’s work has been resoundingly dismissed by skeptics, some of whom are even scientists. I will address these criticisms in a later blog, but for now, I believe his experiments seem to control for important extraneous variables and are carefully executed. His results, at the very least, support efforts to continue research into the area of dogs sensing the human mind.
But what about the reverse? Can humans telepathically sense a dog’s mind?
In my book, A Second Chance Life, Sara the skeptic dismisses her apparent ability to telepathically feel a dog’s distress as her own. For example, she could notice pain in her hand when she’s with a dog who has a thorn in its paw. But, she explains away her experience as paying close attention to canine behavior:
Sara stared at Jude. “Well, believe it or not, it’s like I can feel what the dog is feeling. No, that’s not exactly right. It’s more like I have a sense of what the dog is experiencing, like sensory images, like I’m in the dog’s head.”
“Sara, that’s remarkable. Just to have those feelings is remarkable, even if your diagnoses are just guesses.”
“Yes, but I don’t get something from every dog. Whatever it is I’m feeling, it’s not dependable, so I don’t want to make a big deal about it. The vet might find my opinions useful, but I don’t see myself as one of those animal communicators. I’m skeptical of those people anyway.”
“Amazing, Sara.” Jude’s tone carried more than a whiff of irony. “You’re the trained scientist. You’re the one who wanted to study ESP back when you were a grad student and now you’re refusing to take a hard look at what could be your own telepathic talent.”
Sara snorted. “Don’t even go there. First of all, ESP means extra-sensory perception: Knowledge without input from the senses. In my case, I think I’m getting subtle visual and auditory cues from the dogs. I’m not even aware I’m picking up on them.”
Jude raised his voice. “Yes, but you feel what the dog feels.” He wanted her to admit how amazing her experiences were.
“Okay, for some screwy reason, my unconscious turns the cues into personal feelings.” Sara waved a hand dismissively. “But it doesn’t happen all that often and not with every dog. And besides, I don’t even know how often I’m right.”
Sara points to her keen awareness of dog behaviors as the reason for her unusual experiences, but telepathy could be explained in other ways, as well. My short story, The Mission, explores the boundary of telepathic experiences and psychosis. Keep in mind that two possible symptoms of psychosis, such as schizophrenia, are thought insertion and thought broadcasting. Thought insertion is “the delusion that certain of one’s thoughts are not one’s own, but rather inserted into one’s mind.” This could be just a short hop to the belief that one is receiving another’s thoughts. Thought broadcasting is “the delusion that one’s thoughts are being broadcast out loud so that they can be perceived by others.” Perhaps not that far from a belief that one is sending thoughts to another? (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition, Text Revision (2000). Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association.)
In my story The Mission, Joseph Mallory is a skilled dog trainer for the Army. He struggles to understand his vivid dreams of being dog-like and his compelling hunches about his dogs having ESP. But does he truly have a telepathic communication with his animals, or is he over the edge into crazy delusions?
(Photograph from www.humanK9bond.com)
