I'm pretty sure its a learned behavior-I have a new puppy and most of the time he is interacting with things physically to demand attantion (such as my older dog), so if he is not addressed right away he does learn to bark or whine. He also learns we don't like it very much, especially when puppy does it out of excitement. 

I have been enthralled by the idea (taken from Berndt Heinrich, I think)  that human evolution is actually the result of selection upon communities that include not only a small group of humans but their commensals as well.  I have  been struck by the lack of fear of and interest in large moving objects on the part of my grandchildren.  Not to mention, of course, their intense interest in animals, stuffed and real.  

But I want to protest against the idea that the "learned" -ness of a behavior tells us anything about its being part of our evolved system.  You wouldn't doubt that the imprinted following behavior of precocial birds is part of their evolved system of development, would you?  Or would you?  So, part of neural propensity the questioner asks about, might be a propensity to learn about the animals that we encounter as toddlers. 

Nick Thompson

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Thank you all for your replies - if I may, I'd love to respond in kind to each of you. This may take me a few replies to do. Natalia, thank you for reminding me about "ad hoc learning" - certainly many behaviors which seem innate, are actually just reinforced by present need and familiar affordance. Learnings that do not remain this pliable actually seem to become reluctant expectations anyway. I also feel that there is the "manifest learning" and the "latent learning" which seems part of our struggle to see some as innate and some as acquired. For me, recently, when we call it "learning" though, we also lose sight of the adaptive urgency and over-emphasize prediction/intelligence. Attachment urgency does not seem a knowledge construct. (Yet we perceive affective non-fulfillment as cognitive deficit). Lorenz' work comes to mind (which I really like), as it is being re-envisioned in modern social learning research (Fischer-Mamblona, e.g.). Thank you Natalie, very helpful.

--Lonny

Lonny, your ideas are intriguing. Given that we now know that somatic cell changes through both experience and nutrition can alter succeeding generations through germline alterations, it is certainly possible that we have influenced are domesticated animals partners as they have certainly influenced us, and perhaps just not through learning but mayhap at a more tissue based level.

Hi C. Lewis, thank you for the nice video and helpful thoughts. That is perhaps the first one I have seen where a feline exhibits intense attachment anxiety (anticipation of being back together) as the moment approaches. I think it seems like telepathy to us when our companion animals sense what we cannot sense (or believe in, probably), especially since it is unlikely we could attribute this elevation in intense feelings (apart from evidential stimuli!) to time perception (which pets do not seem to grasp). It's another example of "spooky action at a distance" which is our bewilderment when faced with evidence outside our acceptable assumptions.

Companionship seems to "defy" contiguous explanation - like a bond in the mind might be, aka a spatial coupling whose phantom presence is the other lateral's absence - as opposed to an obvious commensurability such as visual incidentality or measurable (non-contemporaneous) correlation.

(Ramachandran's thoughts on this are wonderful). We are "entangled" in the heart, and that is confusing for the empirically demanding mind. Great share, thanks!

-- Lonny

When I was working on turtle vocalization ion the '80s, I put the animals from my lab in a small pen and sat outside it to record their vocalizations and simultaneous behaviors. These female and male chelonians, first- and second-generation pancake tortoises and N.A. box turtles deliberately bonded with humans, had learned to mimic certain of our unvoiced phonemes, mainly /p/, /t/, /s/ /k/. What was surprising was that all of the vocalizations were directed to me--none to each other. I suspect the attention to the human was related not only to the bonding but also to the gestures the animals had "invented," if you will, for eating, drinking, and to be picked up, in this case, the latter. They were unaccustomed to being penned. As far as we know, wild terrestrial turtles do not ordinarily vocalize to each other, with the exceptions of the South American river turtles vocalizing to their young and in open-mouth agonistic encounters. Males only (50-some tortoise spp. identified) vocalize during mating and the latter stages of courtship. The chelonians in my lab, including two parents dating from the '70s, also learned to understand the referents of some human words, which ability they could demonstrate. Whether there is a particular locus in the turtle brain that enables that understanding or whether a more generalized cognitive ability is used is only speculation.

Hi Nicholas! Deep apologies for taking so long to get back here. Thank you for sharing about Berndt Heinrich - and the way tiny children exhibit very different seek behavior (and non-chunking behavior it seems!) until they truly develop "social cognition". (I am a big fan of Konrad Lorenz and imprinting, and quote Fischer-Mamblona often).

I do agree about the endless curiosity of toddlers (many of us as researchers seem to have retained rather than pruned that urgency - to discover for ourselves, not just to learn). As with the commensalism view between species, I wonder whether toddlers are "more curious" than the things they are curious about... or whether (as adults) we do not notice a co-aware, co-curiosity is happening at that age? As learned grown-ups, I think we have stopped looking for equally curious non-human species (even cows are intensely curious per Temple Grandin and learn to open complicated latches without being taught). Thank you!

Hi Edward! I really like that (cellular level adaptations, not just learning via perceptual avenues/cohabitation). I was so enchanted when a friend from India sent me this theoretical article, long ago here at RG:

Effects of multiple enzyme–substrate interactions in basic units of cellular signal processing, Physical Biology 9(4):045009 · August 2012 - DOI: 10.1088/1478-3975/9/4/045009

Thank you so much for reminding me that "neurons" aren't the only living cells that negotiate experiential growth with their surroundings... and when you figure in Lynn Margulis' work (endosymbiosis) the horizon for "co-adaptation" really gets nearer(!) It suggests each of us is already a self-adapting, ever-learning ecosystem, but our habit of chunking multiple species into just one species (or one concept) sort of masks the cellular level view of co-signaling and co-survival. You are always so helpful Edward, thank you.

Hi Rosemary! Thank you sincerely for your reply - that is so exciting to hear. "As far as we know, wild terrestrial turtles do not ordinarily vocalize to each other." Yes! I wonder how many species - having spent sufficient time in a codependent (or at least dependent) relationship with humans - have devised clever ways to let us know something (or devised clever ways to talk to each other about *us*, probably, just as we spell words in front of our beloved canine companions). Susan-Savage Rumbaugh also noted that about Kanzi (it was like a spectacular accident - teaching lexigrams to bonobos only needed for the bonobos to *need to teach each other* lexigrams - not for us humans to teach them, or because the bonobos "needed lexigrams" before people came into the picture).

The urgency to reach a novel need seems to foster novel attempts to reach it. "They were unaccustomed to being penned." Yes again! Domestic pets make specific sounds meant for humans - but their wild counterparts don't do that. Their unusual situation (confinement and domestication/dependency on us) seems to foster unusual gestures and utterances (to get around the limiting or unnatural circumstances). We look at it as "intelligence" but, really, it looks like a natural struggle to work around unnatural requirements (cleverness). Thanks Rosemary!