Audiences at The City Library on Thursday night got a taste of what it’s like to be a dog.
The fourth and final lecture in the Science of Being Human lecture series presented by the Natural History Museum of Utah examined humanity from a non-human perspective.
Brian Hare, an author and associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University, spoke at the lecture. He founded the Hominoid Psychology Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, and in February he co-authored a book with his wife titled, “The Genius of Dogs: How Dogs Are Smarter Than You Think.” Hare, who has always had a passion for animals, studies the psychology and social behavior of great apes, dogs and lemurs. The lecture focused largely on dogs and human-dog interaction.
“You can’t know what it is to be human if you don’t know what it is to be not human,” Hare said. “There are a lot of things scientists argue are special about our species. If they’re right, then dogs shouldn’t be able to do a lot of things that they do.”
Hare said dogs are remarkably tuned in to human gestures and social cues. Hare and his colleagues have found through extensive study that even six-week-old puppies are capable of spontaneously using human gestures to make decisions. In a trick where a treat is placed under one cup without the dog seeing and with no human signals, a dog has a 50 percent chance of choosing the correct cup on the first try. However, if a human looks or points to a certain cup or even places an object such as a wooden block on one of the cups, the dog will invariably choose that one.
Hare said many dogs are as good at rapidly learning gestures and basic words as human infants.
“For years dogs were regarded by scientists as these simple, unremarkable creatures not worth researching,” Hare said. “All the while, there were these geniuses sitting at their feet.”

Coinciding with the publishing of his book, Hare also founded Dognition, a program that uses science-based games to help customers determine how their dogs’ minds work. The program has already taken off with hundreds of thousands of visitors to the site and more than 200,000 participants in the beta version.
The lecture also examined the social behavior of the bonobo, the primate most closely related to humans. They do not pick up nearly as well on gestures and social cues, but they might be one of the least selfish species on the planet. To prove his point, Hare conducted a test.
“Let’s say you went to Vegas and won 100 bucks,” he said. “How many of you would choose to share it with a friend or family member and how many would share it with a stranger?”
A total of three people claimed they would share the money with a stranger, while the rest of the auditorium said they would share the money with people they knew. The bonobos are the opposite in this regard. When given a pile of food, bonobos will invariably share and with a stranger if possible.
Brandon Davenport attended several of the lectures in the series and was sad to see them end. The final lecture was his favorite. He grew up with many pets and said this lecture was of particular interest to him.
“It’s because of the animals,” he said. “They have a better ground when it comes to life. They’re not caught up in this political overkill. They’re really a part of the family.”
Hare hoped the takeaway of his lecture would be to search for the genius in everything.
“There are different types of intelligence,” Hare said. “Whether in a species or individual, everybody’s goal should be to find that genius.”