Bonus: Exploring Dog Cognition with Alexandra Horowitz

The Animal Turn

Claudia talks to scientist and author, Alexandra Horowitz about dogs’ cognition. They discuss everything from dogs’ sense of smell and capacity to play to how anthropomorphisms sometimes skew human understandings of what dogs are doing.

Date Recorded: 15 August 2024

Alexandra Horowitz heads the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College, where she also teaches seminars in canine cognition, creative nonfiction writing, and audio storytelling. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know and four other books, most recently The Year of the Puppy: How Dogs Become Themselves. She lives with her family of Homo sapiens, Canis familiaris, and Felis catus in New York City.

Claudia Towne Hirtenfelder is an animal studies geographer and podcast producer and host. Claudia has a PhD in Geography from Queen’s University, and her research is focused on the significance of the problematization of urban animals. She is particularly interested in multispecies urban spatial governance. Contact Claudia via email ([e-mail]) or follow her on Twitter (@ClaudiaFTowne).

Featured:

• On Looking by Alexandra Horowitz
• S2E2: Cognitive Ethology with Marc Bekoff on The Animal Turn
• Bonus: Wonder(dog) with Jules Howard on The Animal Turn.
• Anthropomorphism and Anthropodenial by Frans de Waal
• What is it like to be a bat? By Thomas Nagel
• The Study That Made Rats Jump for Joy, and Then Killed Them by Christine E Webb, Peter Woodford, and Elise Huchard.
• Can dogs tell the time? By BBC.

Thank you to A.P.P.L.E for sponsoring this podcast; Gordon Clarke for the bed music, Jeremy John for the logo, and Rebecca Shen for her design work. This episode was edited and produced by the host Claudia Towne Hirtenfelder.

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Animals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.
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The Animal Turn is hosted and produced by Claudia Hirtenfelder and is part of the iROAR Network. It can also be found on A.P.P.L.E, Twitter, LinkedIn, You Tube, and Instagram Learn more about the show on our website.

Hoofdstukken

1. Introduction (00:00:00)

2. How Alexandra Horowitz found dogs (00:04:00)

3. Where dogs roam (00:11:52)

4. The Politics of Studying Dogs (00:17:38)

5. Anthropomorphizing Dog Behavior (The Guilty Look) (00:20:06)

6. Settling a Debate: The Complexities of Animal Cognition and Society (00:31:06)

7. Exploring Canine Olfactory Cognition (00:38:28)

8. Understanding Dog Communication in Play (00:52:35)

9. Science and Animal Welfare (Quote) (01:03:30)

10. Currently Working on (01:10:38)

11. Farmed Animals' Cognition (01:13:20)

12. Credits (01:14:27)