{"id":18892,"date":"2014-05-21T05:46:44","date_gmt":"2014-05-21T09:46:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=18892"},"modified":"2014-05-20T19:47:18","modified_gmt":"2014-05-20T23:47:18","slug":"how-dogs-say-im-just-playing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2014\/05\/how-dogs-say-im-just-playing\/","title":{"rendered":"How dogs say, “I’m just playing”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

You know how a dog will get down on his paws with his rear in the air, especially when meeting another dog?\u00a0 That\u2019s called a \u201cplay bow\u201d and means that he wants to play.\u00a0 He will also do it if he bites the dog and wants to communicate that \u201cI didn\u2019t really mean it.\u201d\u00a0 Or, if things get out of hand, \u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d\u00a0 Researchers are discovering other signs of the way dogs \u201cthink\u201d and communicate.<\/p>\n

From David Grimm, In dogs\u2019 play, researchers see honesty and deceit, perhaps something like morality \u2013 The Washington Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A shaggy brown terrier approaches a large chocolate Labrador in a city park. When the terrier gets close, he adopts a yogalike pose, crouching on his forepaws and hiking his butt into the air. The Lab gives an excited bark, and soon the two dogs are somersaulting and tugging on each other\u2019s ears. Then the terrier takes off and the Lab gives chase, his tail wagging wildly. When the two meet once more, the whole thing begins again.<\/p>\n

\n

Watch a couple of dogs play, and you\u2019ll probably see seemingly random gestures, lots of frenetic activity and a whole lot of energy being expended. But decades of research suggest that beneath this apparently frivolous fun lies a hidden language of honesty and deceit, empathy and perhaps even a humanlike morality.<\/p>\n

Take those two dogs. That yogalike pose is known as a \u201cplay bow,\u201d and in the language of play it\u2019s one of the most commonly used words. It\u2019s an instigation and a clarification, a warning and an apology. Dogs often adopt this stance as an invitation to play right before they lunge at another dog; they also bow before they nip (\u201cI\u2019m going to bite you, but I\u2019m just fooling around\u201d) or after some particularly aggressive roughhousing (\u201cSorry I knocked you over; I didn\u2019t mean it.\u201d).<\/p>\n

All of this suggests that dogs have a kind of moral code \u2014 one long hidden to humans until a cognitive ethologist named Marc Bekoff began to crack it. . . .<\/p>\n

he found that canines \u201crole-reverse\u201d or \u201cself-handicap\u201d during play. When a big dog played with a smaller one, for example, the big dog often rolled on her back to give the smaller dog an advantage, and she allowed the other dog to jump on her far more often than she jumped on him.<\/p>\n

Bekoff also spotted a number of other blink-and-you\u2019d-miss-them behaviors, such as a sudden shift in the eyes \u2014 a squint that can mean \u201cyou\u2019re playing too rough\u201d \u2014 and a particular wag of the tail that says, \u201cI\u2019m open to be approached.\u201d Humping a playmate during a romp, meanwhile, was often an invitation to nearby dogs to come join the fun.<\/p>\n

Such signals are important during play; without them, a giddy tussle can quickly turn into a vicious fight. . . .<\/p>\n

When a researcher points at one of two cups, for example, dogs almost always run to the cup that is pointed to, a sign that they have intuited what the scientist was thinking \u2014 i.e., that the researcher was trying to show the dog something. Chimps, by contrast, have no idea what we mean when we point at something.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote><\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know how a dog will get down on his paws with his rear in the air, especially when meeting another dog?\u00a0 That\u2019s called a \u201cplay bow\u201d and means that he wants to play.\u00a0 He will also do it if he bites the dog and wants to communicate that \u201cI didn\u2019t really mean it.\u201d\u00a0 Or, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[689],"class_list":["post-18892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","tag-dogs"],"yoast_head":"\nHow dogs say, "I'm just playing"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"You know how a dog will get down on his paws with his rear in the air, especially when meeting another dog?\u00a0 That's called a "play bow" and means that he\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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