Can we ever know our dogs?

Summary

Summary of "Today, Explained" Episode: Can We Ever Know Our Dogs?

Podcast Information:

• Title: Today, Explained
• Host/Author: Vox
• Description: Today, Explained is Vox's daily news explainer podcast. Hosts Sean Rameswaram and Noel King guide listeners through the most important stories of the day.
• Episode: Can We Ever Know Our Dogs?
• Release Date: June 29, 2025

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Introduction

In the June 29, 2025 episode of Today, Explained, Vox delves into the intriguing question: Can we ever truly understand what our dogs are feeling? Hosted by Noam Hassenfeld, with contributions from Chelsea (Alexandra Horowitz) and Holly Molinaro, the episode explores the complexities of interpreting canine emotions and the human tendency to anthropomorphize our pets.

Listener Experiences: Understanding Through Connection

The episode begins with personal anecdotes from listeners who believe they have a deep understanding of their dogs' emotions.

• Jared Martin's Story (02:33): Jared, a filmmaker from LA, shares his bond with his dog, Enzo. He describes moments where he feels an almost telepathic connection, such as Enzo seemingly mouthing words or reacting with specific sounds to different needs like hunger or wanting to visit the dog park.

  "Sometimes I can just, like, look at him, or I'll kind of give him a look, you know, like, he knows what you're thinking." (03:35)

• Chelsea’s Experience (05:46): Chelsea expresses her belief in communicating effectively with her dog, Sweet Pea. She highlights the intuitive moments where she feels understood by her pet.

  "He was a Puerto Rican street dog, and from the moment I met him... Be my sole dog. I've had my dog Vixen since I was 19 years old." (05:46)

These stories illustrate the profound connections people feel with their pets, setting the stage for a deeper exploration of whether such understanding is genuinely achievable or a result of projecting human emotions onto animals.

The Challenge of Interpretation: Scientific Perspectives

Transitioning from personal anecdotes, the episode introduces Holly Molinaro, a researcher and recent PhD graduate from Arizona State University, who investigates the accuracy of human perceptions of dog emotions.

• Holly Molinaro’s Insight (09:55): Holly challenges the notion that humans can accurately read their dogs' emotions, suggesting that much of it is projection.

  "We just project our emotions onto animals and think we know what they're feeling, and that has always just, like, sat wrong for me." (09:55)

Holly's Study: "Barking up the Wrong Tree" (10:56)

Holly designed a study to test whether humans can correctly interpret dogs' emotions without contextual biases. Using videos of her dog Oliver in various scenarios, she presented participants with two sets of footage:

1. Isolated Dog Videos: Oliver filmed against a black background, focusing solely on his expressions and behaviors without any contextual cues.
2. Contextual Videos: Original videos showing interactions between Oliver and Holly's father, providing context for Oliver's emotions.

Findings:

• Isolated Videos: Participants struggled to accurately gauge Oliver's emotions, often rating his feelings as neutral regardless of the situation.
• Contextual Videos: When contextual information was present, participants reliably interpreted Oliver's emotions as happy or sad based on the scenario.

"We're just not as smart as we think we are when it comes to understanding our dogs." (14:43)

These results highlight the significant influence of human perception and context in interpreting animal emotions, suggesting that without external cues, accurately understanding a dog's feelings is challenging.

Rethinking Our Approach: Species-Specific Emotions

Holly proposes a novel approach to understanding animal emotions by moving away from human-centric interpretations.

• Holly’s Theory (15:19): Instead of mapping human emotions onto dogs, we should develop a species-specific framework that acknowledges dogs have their unique emotional experiences.

  "Maybe dogs have their own set of emotions that we humans could never even comprehend because we're not dogs." (15:22)

This perspective encourages researchers and dog owners alike to appreciate the distinct ways dogs experience the world, rather than forcing anthropomorphic labels onto their behaviors.

Expert Perspective: Taking the Dog's Point of View

Chelsea (Alexandra Horowitz), running the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College, emphasizes the importance of understanding dogs from their sensory perspective.

• Sensory Differences (18:48): Chelsea discusses how dogs prioritize smell over sight, fundamentally altering their perception of the world.

  "Smells are just information about the way the world is. Their world is wrought of smells the way ours is wrought of visual images." (21:49)

• Experiential Insights (20:35): Chelsea shares her experiment of sniffing at dog height in New York City to emulate a dog's sensory experience, revealing how odors provide a dynamic and transient understanding of space and time.

  "Time is in smell. My presence in this room really smells to my dog. When I've been gone for an hour, I'm still sort of in the room to them, but a little less." (24:44)

These insights underscore the complexity of canine perception, highlighting that our visual-dominated understanding falls short in capturing the richness of dogs' olfactory-driven experiences.

The Complexity of Understanding: Acknowledging the Unknown

Both Chelsea and Holly acknowledge the limitations in our current understanding of dog emotions.

• Chelsea’s Agnostic Stance (27:36): Despite extensive research, Chelsea admits that accurately knowing a dog's feelings remains elusive.

  "I don't really know what they're like and what their feelings are at any moment." (27:36)

• Holly’s Reflections (15:22): Holly finds delight in the mystery, appreciating that the unknown keeps the study of animal emotions exciting and open-ended.

  "There's a lot of mystery about what it's like to be a smelling creature, and we coexist and share space during the day." (26:33)

Conclusion: Embracing the Mystery

The episode concludes by reaffirming that while humans share meaningful bonds with dogs, fully comprehending canine emotions remains a complex and largely uncharted territory. The interplay between human perception and animal behavior suggests that our connections may be as much about mutual understanding as they are about projection and interpretation.

"I like that the knowledge is ever elusive. Kind of like a dog." (28:57)

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• "We just project our emotions onto animals and think we know what they're feeling, and that has always just, like, sat wrong for me." — Holly Molinaro (09:55)
• "Sometimes I can just, like, look at him... he knows what you're thinking." — Jared Martin (03:35)
• "Maybe dogs have their own set of emotions that we humans could never even comprehend because we're not dogs." — Holly Molinaro (15:22)
• "Smells are just information about the way the world is." — Chelsea (21:49)
• "I don't think I do, and I don't know how anybody could really." — Chelsea (27:36)

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This episode of Today, Explained offers a thoughtful exploration of the human-dog relationship, challenging listeners to reconsider how they interpret and understand their canine companions. By blending personal stories with scientific research, the discussion underscores the delicate balance between connection and comprehension in our interactions with dogs.

Transcript

[Chelsea]

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[Noam Hassenfeld]

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[Chelsea]

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[Holly Molinaro]

We just project our emotions onto animals and that has always just like sat wrong for me.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

I believe that I can read my dog's mind.

[Chelsea]

I think we have to try to take the dog's point of view.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

A couple weeks ago, I went to my friend's backyard to see him play a show. So from here on out, it's only songs about dogs. A literal dog show.

[Chelsea]

Well, a good dog on the ground's worth three in the saddle, no matter where you're from. Been many good dog who was friends.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

I'm Noam Hassenfeld, by the way, sitting in for JQ this week. And I'm not exactly a dog guy. I mean, I'm not a hater. I love petting a fuzzy puppy in a sunny spot as much as the next guy. But these people at this show, these were dog people. Well, a three legged dog walks into.

[Holly Molinaro]

A saloon and he says, I'm, I'm looking for the man who shot my paw.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

And then there was me, dogless, watching a band called the Beagles run through their greatest hits. Who let the dogs out. Everyone seemed like they were having a great time. The people seemed happy. The dogs seemed happy. But as I was sitting there, I started wondering, am I sure? Like I barely know what other people are feeling. How could I be sure about a dog? So I was excited when I found out a listener was wondering the same thing.

[Jared Martin]

The things that we perceive through our human lens to be sad or happy or whatever it might be, is that actually what's happening in the dog's brain?

[Noam Hassenfeld]

This question came from Jared Martin, who's a filmmaker living in la.

[Jared Martin]

But probably more important than that, is my little child here? My child dog child here. Enzo.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Enzo. Tell me about Enzo.

[Jared Martin]

So Enzo is two and a half. He'll be three in early September. I'VE had him since he was about 8 weeks old. He's trying to get out of my lap right now. He's a mix. A total mutt. And, yeah, I got him. I recently. I lived with the roommate for, like, over 10 years. Moved out on my own, and I was, like, thought it would be great. And then I got really lonely, and I was like, well, I kind of. I kind of want to get a dog. And we found each other. It was just kind of like the stars aligned and the rest is history.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

How well do you think you guys communicate?

[Jared Martin]

There seems to be something like a special connection that we have. I. I feel that's different than other interactions I've had with dogs, but also, like, dogs that I've had, you know, in my. In my life. I don't know. It's like, sometimes I can just, like, look at him, or I'll kind of give him a look, you know, like you might give a small child, and they. They know what you're thinking.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Yeah.

[Jared Martin]

Because he does have these little, like, talkative moments where he. He doesn't bark, he doesn't growl. It's like he's, like, mouthing actual words. And I. I sent a video of that, and we can.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Yeah, that was a crazy video.

[Jared Martin]

Enzo. No. Enzo wanted to play with a specific toy, and I told him, no, not right now. Not right now. And it felt like a. Like a moody teenager in a way, Like. Like talking back. That's how I took it.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

You're saying that, like, he understands you. Do you feel like you understand him? Like, you can look at him and know what he's feeling?

[Jared Martin]

Yeah, there's. There's definitely times where that. That happens, too. And he has sort of different ways of, I guess you could say, talking to me, depending on what he wants. He'll make different sounds for different things. Like, I know the sound. He. Like when he's hungry, he sort of behaves differently, and he'll make a different sound versus, like, if he wants to go to the dog park. And I. I just said his trigger word, but if he wants to go to the dog park, it's a. It's a very specific sound. He's getting my attention in a specific way versus, like, when he's hungry. Like, it's just a certain, I guess, like, energy level that I'm picking up on. I. I don't know. I. I tend to do that just with other humans, too, in terms of, like, I. I sense people's sounds very cliche. I. I'm. I'm an empath, right? Like, I can. I can pick up on people's energy, and I feel like I can do the same with him.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Lots of our listeners feel like, Jared. They know their dogs. They get their dogs.

[Chelsea]

Hi, my name is Chelsea, and I really feel like I can communicate with my dog. Her name is Sweet Pea.

[Holly Molinaro]

She is a chiweenie, and she taught.

[Chelsea]

Herself how to say yes to things.

[Holly Molinaro]

So we adopted our dog Rico a couple of years ago.

[Chelsea]

He was a Puerto Rican street dog, and from the moment I met him.

[Holly Molinaro]

I knew that he was going to.

[Chelsea]

Be my sole dog. I've had my dog Vixen since I.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Was 19 years old.

[Holly Molinaro]

I adopted her when I was in college.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

She is like my aunt entire life. I call her the love of my.

[Chelsea]

Life, and my husband gets super annoyed. But it's true.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

There you have it. I believe that I can read my dog's mind. Maybe I'm projecting, but I don't care. I believe it's true, but at a certain level, even Jared isn't sure.

[Jared Martin]

I definitely feel these things, and I just don't. Yeah, there's sort of a disconnect there, too, of, like, am I actually understanding this the way I think I am?

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Can we ask Enzo a question?

[Jared Martin]

Yes, Enzo.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Ask Enzo if he thinks you understand him.

[Jared Martin]

Enzo, do you understand me? Do you understand me? Yeah. No. He's like, what? Where's. Where's the reward?

[Noam Hassenfeld]

This week on Explain it to Me, we're gonna ask the question Enzo refuses to answer. Do we actually know what our dogs are feeling, or are we just fooling ourselves with a Venmo debit card?

[Chelsea]

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[Noam Hassenfeld]

You can Venmo everything. Need g. You can Venmo this. How about snacks?

[Chelsea]

You can Venmo that. Your favorite band's merch. You can Venmo this or their next show. You can Venmo that. Visit Venmo me Debit to learn more.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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[Chelsea]

My human tied me in a bag and throwed me in the water.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

And, yeah, it's fun to suspend our disbelief a little and watch a dog play basketball. But even serious documentaries do this, like March of the Penguins.

[Jared Martin]

They're not that different from us, really.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

They pout, they bellow, they strut. You get the sense that so many people who are looking at animals are just searching for the little humans inside the outer shell. But there are some people who don't spend their time trying to find the little humans inside. They're obsessed with how alien animals are.

[Holly Molinaro]

I grew up watching Animal Planet. I started when I was, like, 3 years old, and I thought, what makes animals so cool is they're not human.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Holly Molinaro is a researcher and a dog lover who just finished up her PhD at Arizona State.

[Holly Molinaro]

I have this vivid memory of first grade watching an ant crawl across the window. And my teacher yelled at me because I wasn't paying attention, but I was just fascinated with, like, what could this ant be thinking? There's no way. It's just, like, thinking human thoughts walking along the window.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Holly had the same question. Our listener Jared did the same question I did. Can we ever understand what animals are feeling?

[Holly Molinaro]

I know from my own personal experience, like, we just project our emotions onto animals. We think we know what they're feeling, and that has always just, like, sat wrong for me, like, throughout my whole life, even though it's so fun to do. Like, my cat's sitting in my lap now. Like, oh, my gosh, she's obviously loving me so much right now. But in terms of taking care of them, those, like, biases can get in the way.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

She did find some research that made it seem like even trying to understand other humans could be hard. There were these researchers that photoshopped the face of someone with one expression onto different kinds of body postures, so postures that were disgusted or sad or afraid or angry. But when people looked at these images, even though the face was the same, people thought the emotions were different. They cared more about the context of the picture than the actual face.

[Holly Molinaro]

And so I was like, what if we just did this with dogs? What if I changed things around the dog and asked people the same question? What do you think the dog is feeling?

[Noam Hassenfeld]

So Holly designed a study.

[Holly Molinaro]

This study is called Barking up the Wrong Tree. Human perception of dog emotions is influenced by extraneous factors.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

She started with zoom.

[Holly Molinaro]

It was, like, you know, 2021, so pandemic time still, and just, like, zoom blurs out the background. I was like, well, I feel like I could figure out how to do that.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Oh, like blur out everything except the dog.

[Chelsea]

Yeah.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Interesting.

[Holly Molinaro]

Yeah. Took a crash course in video editing on YouTube, you know, and figured out that you can, like, take away the background with software editing. But then I needed dogs to do it. And I go home for Christmas break, and I see my dad and my dog interacting, and I was like, this is perfect.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Can you tell me about your family dog?

[Holly Molinaro]

Yeah, Oliver. He sadly passed away a couple years ago. So it's really sweet that his memory now lives on in this research. He was like a beagle, boxer, pointer mix. We got him from a shelter when I was, like, in fifth grade, and him and my dad were, like, so tight. So we cleared out the living room, we moved all the furniture away, and I just asked my dad to do things that people would think is positive. So, like, seeing a leash, seeing a treat, getting praised, being played with, and then things that people would think Oliver doesn't like. So seeing the cap, the vacuum cleaner, being reprimanded, I just filmed everything to make sure that I got, like, a bunch of videos that I could then figure out how to edit them.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

So if you're trying to study whether we can tell if dogs are happy or sad, how do you know if Oliver likes cats or vacuums in the first place?

[Holly Molinaro]

One was just, like, we wanted to do, like, general perceptions of people. So, like, what would generally people associate positive or negative with dogs. But that is, like, a good point that has been brought up a lot is that I don't really know how Oliver was feeling with those things. You'd need to actually do some different type of studies to see how Oliver was actually feeling.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

But ultimately, in fairness to you, Right, like, you're not studying what Oliver is feeling. Right. You're studying what we think he's feeling.

[Holly Molinaro]

Exactly. So I edited the video so all you saw was Oliver on a black background. And then I set up this survey, sent it out to ASU psychology undergraduates. We had, like, 400 participants in the first study and first showed them six videos of Oliver on a black background. So three were when Oliver was in a positive situation, and three were when Oliver was in a negative situation and showed them just the video of Oliver on a black background and said, how happy or sad do you think Oliver is? And also how calm or agitated. And then we showed them the original videos with my dad in there. You could see everything. And this time their responses were different. So before, when they couldn't see the background, all they saw was Oliver. They could not tell the difference between positive or negative videos. But suddenly when they could see everything, they saw the context. They saw my dad. They rated the positive videos as Oliver feeling happy, and they rated the negative videos as Oliver feeling sad.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Can you show me some of these videos?

[Holly Molinaro]

Let me open up my Dropbox. Okay, here we go. So you can see that.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Oh, he's so cute.

[Holly Molinaro]

Okay, I'll play it.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Kind of like looking around, licking his chops a little bit. Seems kind of like a neutral.

[Holly Molinaro]

Okay, so what would you think the dog is feeling?

[Noam Hassenfeld]

I would say he seems relatively happy.

[Holly Molinaro]

Okay. All right now. All right, ready?

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Uh huh. Oh, God, no. He seems so sad now. Yeah. So Oliver looks exactly the same, but now that I see your dad yelling at him, it seems like he's learning a lesson now.

[Holly Molinaro]

Yes.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

So what do you think this study tells us about us or about dogs or how we relate to dogs?

[Holly Molinaro]

I think, number one, we're just not as smart as we think we are when it comes to understanding our dogs. And sometimes people are like, that's really depressing, Holly. And I'm like, no, no, it's okay. Because now we can actually start to pay attention. Now we can, like, recognize that we do this and start to look at our own dogs and just kind of get away from like blanket statements of, oh, tail wagging equals happiness, barking equals upset, and actually pay attention to your own dog. I'm also trying to develop a new theory for animal emotion.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

A new theory of animal emotion or a new theory of dog emotion.

[Holly Molinaro]

My proposed theory is just to start from like a species specific point of view. Maybe like, dogs have their own set of emotions and try to figure out what emotional capabilities they might have that we humans could never even comprehend because we're not dogs. So instead of looking for what does happiness look in a dog? Let's come up with just like a brand new word. Maybe dogs have some type of like, happiness, but it's like subservience, because they like, love to do things for us. And then we can look at their behavior in this context and kind of piece together bits and then come up with a whole new dog emotion.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

That's really interesting. So you're kind of saying, let's not try to put them on our terms. Let's see them on their terms.

[Holly Molinaro]

Exactly. Exactly.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

So what if we stop treating dogs like fuzzy little humans? What would it be like to see dogs on their terms, not ours? In a minute, we talk to a human who tried to become a dog.

[Jared Martin]

Woof.

[Chelsea]

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[Noam Hassenfeld]

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[Holly Molinaro]

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[Noam Hassenfeld]

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[Holly Molinaro]

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[Noam Hassenfeld]

See mintmobile.com why don't we start with your name and what you do? Like how you'd introduce yourself at a dinner party.

[Chelsea]

Well, I might not say this at a dinner party because then the whole dinner party will be about dogs. But I'm Alexandra Horowitz and I run the dog cognition lab at Barnard College in New York City. And I study what it's like to be a dog.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

That is one thing. You're right. You can't say that to people. It'll just derail any conversation.

[Chelsea]

Yeah, it's really. If I want myself to be the center of attention, that's I guess, the thing to say. But often I don't. So, yeah, I don't lead with it.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Okay. So in the previous segment, we just heard how people can misinterpret their dogs. They can maybe think they're feeling something and maybe they're not feeling something. But you. You know exactly what they're feeling, right?

[Chelsea]

Definitely not. But that is entirely what I'm interested in. Sure. And I guess part of the first step is to kind of forget about my automatic assumptions about what they're feeling, which is a very normal step for people to take, especially people who live with dogs. But it's from our point of view, and I think we have to try to take the dog's point of view.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Okay, so how do you start to take the dog's point of view? What does that even mean?

[Chelsea]

So they are smelling animals. Smell is their primary sense. And my interest is in saying, like, well, okay, like, let's try to understand the dog's way of seeing the world through their nose instead of just assuming that they're just like us, you know, but furrier and sitting on the floor where I'm sitting on the couch.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Yeah. I think the best way maybe to describe what it's like to take that seriously, to take sort of a nose first perspective of the world, is to ask you about your experience doing this. You kind of did a little experiment about this at one point, right. Where you pretended to be a dog. How should I put that?

[Chelsea]

Yeah, I mean, I tried to sort of step into some of the dog's behaviors, I guess, in order to a little bit understand them. Because here's one thing about smell versus vision. We're visual creatures. Let's acknowledge, right? We see the world first. But if you're a smelling creature, I thought, well, you know, how do you see the world? Smells don't just appear when you open your nose, when you exist in the space. If you look at dog behavior, they go and search out smells, Right. They spend a lot of time with their nose on the ground or smelling objects that are nose height. And they sniff a lot more than we do. You know, our sniffs are pretty feeble little sniffs. And they'll do seven sniffs a second if they want to get a really good sense of something. And so I tried to do those things. I mean, that was just the first step is going around and saying, like, all right, what are smells like down at dog height and what does something smell like? If I put my nose right up.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

To it, I feel like I need to get a bit more detail here. You're walking around. Where are you walking around trying to smell things at dog height?

[Chelsea]

Well, I did this in New York City, right? Where I live.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

So no one gave you a second thought, Right. Cause it's New York City.

[Chelsea]

Oh, no. People moved away from me, you know, that's for sure. That's not. But I walked out of my house and followed what my dog did where he sniffed. I would lean down and sniff with him. I would get to his height, see what he sniffed, and tried to smell it myself. Right. Is it A tree post protecting a tree from, you know, people on the sidewalk. Is it a bush? Is it the grass? Something in the grass that is super interesting to him that I try to smell. I didn't sniff other dog butts because there are other issues involved there. But if a friend met us and my dog sniffed the friend, I also sniffed the friend.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

What do you think this experience of trying to smell everything the dog smells told you about what it might be like to be a dog?

[Chelsea]

Well, I think the big lesson for me was that unlike the way I had kind of characterized smells in my life, which I think is very human, as kind of good or bad. Right. Smells are something appealing, maybe a food smell or something unappealing. Like in New York, there are lots of those smells like garbage in the summer. But for dogs, I think smells are just information. They're just information about the way the world is. So their world is wrought of smells the way ours is wrought of visual images.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

You know, when I think of looking at the world, I kind of create, I don't know, a spatial map of the world. Right. Like, I'll walk through my apartment and I'll look around. Here's the door, here's the window, here's the hall. If you're doing something like that through smell, on the one hand, I have no idea what that means. Right. I have no idea how to wrap my head around that. But what does that mean for the world you live in if you're mapping it by smelling it?

[Chelsea]

Well, a space inside, I think, is sort of redefined in smell as being less static. Right. So smells move. That's one of the interesting things about them. So we know this. You have a cup of coffee, you put it on the table, and you can smell it on the other side of the table. Right? The smell comes out of it. So where that coffee is is like a slightly different space, maybe to a, let's say, purely olfactory creature than to a visual creature. It's right in the cup to me. But to somebody who's seeing the world through smell, it's in this whole kind of universe around the cup as the smells go into the air.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Oh, that's fascinating.

[Chelsea]

That doesn't mean that there's nothing concrete and real. It just means that it's a little more transient than we see.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Yeah. If I were to think about what that means for what it's like to be a dog, Right. It feels a lot more chaotic. I mean, if I'm again, walking through my apartment, if I go into my living room, And I'm like, okay, here's the couch. It's just right here. I can put my hand on the couch, and then I can put my hand a little bit to the side. And there's no couch. And I feel like if I just smelled everything, everything would be kinda, kinda moving and fading and coming back and it would be blurry and chaotic.

[Chelsea]

I think chaos. The idea that it's chaotic is just because, you know, we aren't using our noses this way. You know, if you look at dog's behavior, it doesn't seem very chaotic. I mean, their behavior kind of is consistent with this just very organized but different way of seeing.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

It also feels like if things that a dog is smelling are changing all the time, it feels like the way they might be interacting with the world would depend a lot on time.

[Chelsea]

Yeah, I think time is in smell. My presence in this room really smells to my dog. And when I've been gone for an hour, I think I'm still sort of in the room to them, but a little less. And after a day, I'm a lot less in the room. And so they're sort of noting time, time passing by, the changeability of smells.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Wow, that is kind of beautiful and also kind of sad. I don't know, imagining you fading slowly out of a room, it feels like a very different type of thing to experience.

[Chelsea]

Yeah. Maybe I haven't ever thought of it as sad. I mean, in a way, there's something reassuring in the fact, and maybe even alarming, I suppose, but that I'm still here when I'm not here for them. Right. And that when I come home and I've pet another dog or I've had some experience which might potentially leave an odor on my clothes, that they can kind of experience that by just smelling me and seeing where I've been. To me, that's kind of extra neat, not melancholy.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

You know, a lot of the people we've heard from in this episode, they talk about this ability to understand their dog and this connection they have. And then talking to Holly, talking to you, we're actually just really different from dogs. We can connect with dogs. We have these points of overlap. We can have relationships, but we are clearly extremely, extremely different. What does that difference mean to you? Do you find that difference exciting? Do you find that difference daunting?

[Chelsea]

I mean, as an experimenter, I do find it daunting that they're quite different than we are perceptually and therefore probably cognitively. But also exciting. Right. There's a lot of of possibilities. A lot of things we can investigate and learn as a person who lives with dogs. There's the mystery of it, the mystery of what it's like to be a smelling creature and how we kind of get. Even though there's this fundamental difference between us, we coexist and seem to share a lot of things, at least share space during the day. Right. Share a life. I find that mystery kind of delightful, and I don't try to solve it in my ordinary life.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

You know, we've been hearing from listeners about whether they understand their dogs. And a lot of them are like, yeah, totally. And I wonder, you know, you're someone who understands exactly how much we don't understand our dogs. But I'm also curious. Do you think you understand your dogs?

[Chelsea]

Oh, no, definitely not. I mean, I don't think I do, and I don't know how anybody could really. But, you know, they're familiar to me. And we use all the anthropomorphic words that everybody uses to talk about our sense of whether they're feeling depressed or grumpy or proud or whatever. But that's just a gloss for me. I don't really know what they're like and what their feelings are at any moment, and whether they choose to stay with me if they had an option. You know, it's a. It's a very puzzling thing living with dogs, and I'm okay with that. As a scientist. I think I've just grown more and more agnostic. You know, I just feel like I know less and less in some ways because I see how much more I didn't even imagine was out there. And that's delightful to me. Yeah. It's not to me about pinning it down and saying, well, now we have the answers. I mean, what. What's the fun in that? Then you. Something that's pinned down and. And un. Sort of completely understood, you'd put that away. You know, I like that it's that that knowledge is ever elusive.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Kind of like a dog.

[Chelsea]

At least one that you though it doesn't come when you call Y Let the dog.

[Holly Molinaro]

In, let the cat out Let the cat in Let the dog out Let him mold in.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

This episode was produced by Miles Bryan. It was edited by our executive producer, Miranda Kennedy and Nerene Khan, Fact checking by Melissa Hirsch. Engineering by Patrick Boyd. And before we let you go, we want to ask about AI friendships. Do you have regular conversations with your friends known as Chatgpt or quad or Gemini? We're not talking intimate relationships, but if you do have regular chats with some kind of LLM. We want to hear from you. Give us a call at 1-800-61-8-8545. I'm Noam Hassenfeld. This is. Explain it to me. And once again meet the Beagles.

[Chelsea]

Hungry?

[Holly Molinaro]

Kitchen's dirty. Clean the kitchen. Wash the dishes. Cook some breakfast. Wash the dishes. Let the dog in. Let the cat out.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Let the dog in.

[Holly Molinaro]

Let the cat out. Let the cat in. Let the dog out. Let him move in.