Dogs’ View of Humans
Do Humans Even Think Like Dogs? Canine Researchers Divided
By Bark Ruffalo, Senior Correspondent, The Daily Sniff
After centuries of cohabitation, the scientific canine community remains deeply divided over one of biology’s great mysteries: do humans actually think like dogs, or merely imitate us?
Dr. Luna Shepherd of the Institute for Comparative Cognition (ICC) insists humans exhibit “at least a rudimentary social awareness,” pointing to their ritualized greetings, predictable food exchanges, and pack-based living arrangements. “They can even be trained,” she says. “With enough repetition, a human will reliably ‘sit’ when you occupy their favorite chair.”
But others remain skeptical. “They’re friendly, sure, but let’s not confuse enthusiasm with intelligence,” counters Dr. Bruno von Hound, evolutionary psychologist. “They can barely smell emotion. Imagine living in a world where you can’t tell who’s been anxious in a room for the past hour. It’s barbaric.”
Indeed, most experts agree that humans’ sensory capacities are, at best, “adorably limited.” The average human nose has only about five million scent receptors—roughly the olfactory equivalent of a black-and-white TV showing just one channel: cooking shows. “They miss entire novels happening in the smellscape,” says scent historian Daisy Whifferton. “Who walked by, what they ate, their mood, their reproductive status—gone. To them, a lamppost is just a lamppost.”
Hearing, too, is a problem. “They live in a low-resolution sound world,” explains Dr. Rex Goldpaw. “You can shout ‘squirrel!’ in the next garden and they won’t even twitch. Half the symphony of life—the bats, the rustle of nocturnal snacks, the emotional overtones of tail-wags—they just don’t register.”
This raises troubling questions for comparative cognition. Do humans experience the world primarily through vision because they choose to, or because they can’t help it? “Their eyes are fine, sure,” says Whifferton, “but the obsession borders on pathological. They stare at glowing rectangles for hours, barking occasionally at distant images of other humans. It’s tragic, really.”
The ICC’s latest paper also highlights curious ritual behaviors: humans leash themselves to glowing devices that dictate their every movement (“phones”), willingly bathe without rolling in anything dead, and compulsively remove fur from their bodies. “Their grooming standards are extreme,” observes Dr. Pippa Spaniel. “They spend hours removing perfectly good smells.”
Some radical theorists even suggest humans’ apparent “language” may simply be an elaborate form of whining. “They vocalize constantly,” says von Hound. “Endless streams of meaningless sounds, often accompanied by gestures. It’s possible they believe this affects the real world.”
Still, not all findings are bleak. “They are affectionate, if clumsy,” admits Shepherd. “They form bonds, share food, and show loyalty to their pack leaders—usually one of us. That’s something.”
Asked whether humans might one day evolve keener senses, Goldpaw sighed. “At this rate? Unlikely. They seem content sniffing each other’s hands for half a second and calling it intimacy.”
The debate will rage on, but one thing is certain: whatever humans may think of themselves, from a dog’s point of view, they’re just another animal trying—poorly—to make sense of the smellless, soundless blur they call life.
Generated by GPT5.0 from the prompt: “I do not believe in human exceptionalism. I do not think we are that different from other living organisms. Yes we can communicate and right in that so forth and that may be 1% difference is compounded over millions of years into a pretty radical difference between us and other animals in how we appear, but fundamentally, we are more similar. With this in mind, I would like you to write a spoof article written from the perspective of dogs regarding humans and wondering whether humans think and act like dogs. Part of this will be spoofing that dogs will feel humans miss out on a lost array of sensory perceptions. For example, their sense of smell is almost entirely lacking compared to a dog and they miss that they are living in a they are living blind in the smell world. Similarly, their sense of hearing is not as acute as dogs. Hopefully you see what I’m looking for is an onion ask article along these lines suggesting from the point of view of dogs, humans are not exceptional at all, and in fact, a fairly underpad in the century and mental departments. Go for it!” (reproduced verbatim with voice-to-text transcription errors).
Also available: Cats’ View of Humans