Comments on: Elephants Are Not Ethnic-Blind

By: nan

nan — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 09:00:09 +0000

I think that’s true of a lot of dogs…Years ago a landlord’s dog, K, was teased by the kids in the apartment next door. For the rest of its life it always barked at anyone that had the same skin tone as those kids.

By: Skemono

Skemono — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 00:25:55 +0000

Bah! John Van Evrie knew this nearly 150 years ago!

By: 6EQUJ5

6EQUJ5 — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 15:26:02 +0000

I used to have a black-and-tan Doberman pinscher, Boomer, who grew up in an all-white community in Appalachia. We later moved to southern California.When he saw his first black, he got wildly excited and wagged his whole body, grinning broadly as he approached the man. The guy read the signals right, and while puzzled by the behavior accepted the dog’s extreme friendliness toward him. The man kneeled and hugged the dog, and the dog rubbed his face on the guy.I realized that Boomer had finally seen a human with what he thought was nice coloring. His kind of guy!

By: Sandra Porter

Sandra Porter — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 13:09:05 +0000

Interesting post!I wonder if dogs do that too. My dog responds differently to the teenage African American boys who come to door selling candy bars vs. the girl scouts, who are usually white.

By: Monado, FCD

Monado, FCD — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 12:42:22 +0000

Neato! I think we’re blind to a lot of animal discrimination. For example, researches studying prairie-dogs’ whistles on oscilloscpe noticed something unexpected, which they could not detect by ear: the prairie dogs had different whistles for different sexes, different people, and sometimes even different clothing. Whether dhose differences were meaningful to other prairie dogs or just a result of, say, generalized stress or alarm, I don’t know.