Episode 8 Bang Goes the Theory

Welcome to Bang. We are in Grantham

at a dog agility show where some of the nation's cleverest pooches are being put through their paces.

We absolutely love our dogs.

According to the RSPCA,

there are eight million dogs here in the UK.

But what is it that makes some people love dogs so much?

Amazing intuition.

He picks things up extremely quickly.

It's going to sound really cheesy, but he is my best friend.

In tonight's show, Philippa Forrester is back

testing the claim that dogs really are good for your health.

Stop eyeing up the talent! Here, Dave!

I'm off to Austria to see

whether today's dogs are any smarter than their wild ancestors.

She can see all the way to the end of the string from there.

And are these handsome hounds really as clever as their owners think?

We'll be finding out in our very own Mastermind challenge.

Sit, wait.

Whatever you think about dogs, we've been keeping them as pets

for almost 40,000 years, and today,

more than one-in-five homes have one.

Based on audience research,

there could be half a million dogs watching his programme right now.

In which case, sit!

To many dog owners,

the relationship with their canine companions seems almost human.

The best thing about her is she is extremely motivated.

He can adapt to new situations.

He acts the fool but I think he's pretty smart.

He taught me way, way more than any previous ever dog has.

Anyone who owns a dog is going to vouch for the fact that

a real emotional bond exists between them and their pet.

Some people even suggest that the relationship can be

so strong it can do wonders for your health.

We invited Philippa Forrester, a bit of a dog specialist herself,

to investigate.

Dave is a border collie, so he is meant to be very bright.

And he's been part of our family for about seven years now,

and I don't think we can imagine life without him.

He's absolutely hilarious, great company, and very energetic,

so we get lots of walks in.

But I suspect there are more health benefits to having a dog

than just walks and good company. What do you reckon, Dave?

'I'm not alone in this belief.'

In 2006, Sergeant Pen Farthing

served with the Royal Marines in Afghanistan.

There he rescued Nowzad from a dogfight

and the two became firm friends.

I have some old military biscuits that none of us liked

but he absolutely loved them.

Luxury! Old military biscuits.

You didn't know you were born, did you?

Every time I walked past him with his biscuits he'd come out and see me.

Throughout his tour of duty are even now he's back home,

Pen's convinced he owes his own welfare to this very special dog.

Somebody shooting at you is probably the most stressful position you could be in.

I could sit down with Nowzad

for five minutes, just to get away from everybody and clear my head.

It was a de-stressing time.

It was like I could sit on a magic carpet

and just get myself out of Afghanistan for five minutes.

'Pen had grown so reliant on Nowzad that he went great lengths to bring him home.

'But he found he wasn't the only soldier who had befriended a dog in service.

'So, knowing how much now Nowzad had helped his return to civilian life,

'he began to help them all.'

Nowzad has inspired the Nowzad dogs charity to work in Afghanistan.

We have helped over 300 soldiers who have been in the same position as me.

The dogs found them and they've basically been buddies

for the whole of their tour of duty.

In the end, they've decided they can't just leave that dog there.

-Man's best friend, eh?

-And woman's.

Definitely.

-A few female soldiers as well.

-I can testify to that one.

Pen's work has made a real difference to the health

and welfare of returning soldiers and can even help them

recover from post-traumatic stress.

I wanted to know if there could be any medical explanation for this.

We certainly know a lot about how humans form strong emotional bonds

and these, it seems, are promoted by a particular hormone called oxytocin.

How can it benefit us, oxytocin?

There is some recent research showing that for pet owners and pets,

when they... After a session of stroking and close contact,

both owner and pet's oxytocin levels rise.

Hypothetically it should have long-term health implications because it helps regulate stress.

So, can we actually feel the oxytocin

as it's coursing through our veins?

Are you feeling it now?!

This is Dave's question! This is what he's asking you.

-I am a little bit, yes. I am, how can I say no?

-Dave!

'Stress relief can benefit health in many ways, helping our bodies

'tackle illnesses and the pain of both emotional or physical trauma.

'To demonstrate how well oxytocin does that,

'Angela has set up some torture for me.'

OK, this is a cold pressor task and we use this

in psychology as a stressor.

'I have to see how long I can hold my friend in a bowl

'of freezing cold water.

'First, on my own, and then while I stroke Dave.

'With heart-rate and blood-pressure monitors fitted,

'I get my hands nice and warm

and then it's into the ice.

Yeah, that's cold.

'Without Dave, I do pretty well.'

I think I want to get it out now.

Right, well, that was pretty impressive, actually.

The average is about five minutes,

-and you had your hand in for six minutes, five seconds.

-Did I?

'Now, this time, stroking Dave.'

A cat would be thinking, "Why on earth are you stroking me

"while you've got your hand in that tub of ice?"

A dog just thinks, "I love you so much!"

'I lose track of time.'

I'll ask you to take your hand out of the water now,

because you've reached

the maximum of eight minutes with your hand immersed, which is...

I'll just take your blood pressure.

That was quite something.

-And significantly longer.

-Yes, it was.

That was 6.05, and this was, well, I don't know how long you may have lasted.

We also see a greater increase in your blood pressure without Dave.

Heart rate, there was an increase of six beats per minute

without Dave,

and with Dave an increase of two beats per minute.

-Oh, so heart-wise I was a lot calmer as well?

-It seems so, yes.

So oxytocin is that feel-good hormone and it did its job.

Don't lick your bum on telly, Dave, it's really embarrassing!

To some people, this kind of hormonal connection is evidence that

dog and their owners really are on the same wavelength,

and even that dogs somehow understand us

in a way that other animals can't.

Of course, all of our domesticated breeds descended from the wild wolf

and, over the years, this has changed all the different breeds' looks

and their temperament and their behaviour.

But how has this affected their intelligence?

I took a quick trip to Austria to find out.

Scientists at this wolf research centre are comparing how wolves

and dogs solve practical problems.

They've raised packs of grey and black wolves in captivity

alongside a number of dogs and all have been kept in identical conditions.

They hope to find out how thousands of years

of domestication have affected dog intelligence.

'Researcher Zsofia Veranji showed me one of her most recent experiments.'

On the board lying on the ground, we lay out two strings.

One of the strings will be connected to a piece of cheese,

the other string is not connected to the cheese.

But there is cheese at the end of it, but it's not connected.

There's no physical connection.

To a human, it's obvious that you need to pull the string connected

to the cheese to get a reward.

But how did the dogs get on?

Right first time for Toto, but was that just luck?

When we changed the strings around,

Toto went back to the same side every time, regardless

of where the cheese was,

and it was the same for all the dogs we tested.

-Oh, wrong one.

-Side preference, possibly.

But no cheese for you, babe.

I'm really noticing with these dogs,

once they pick a side they tend to just stick with the side.

-Why is that?

-I would love to know that myself.

Either they don't have other ideas or just simply

they are not that flexible in general

in solving problems and trying to come up

with new ideas when the first solution didn't work.

So, what about the wolves?

She can see all the way to the end of the string from there.

'A good start for Shima,

'but will she work out what's going on when the strings are switched?'

No hesitation.

Averaging four out of six,

the wolves were obviously better at this task than the dogs.

And Zsofia found the same results time and time again.

Based on this evidence,

it would seem that domestication has made dogs less intelligent,

but Zsofia thinks it's more complex than that.

There is a hypothesis and a theory that wolves would have a better

physical understanding because wolves still live in the wilderness,

they have to cope themselves

with all the environment and find their own food and escape

from some situations.

For this they need their independent problem-solving abilities.

And the dogs live in a lot more artificial world

and they are protected by humans

so they don't need this problem-solving ability so much any more.

So it's just a different type of intelligence?

Wolves are more intelligent in a physical context but dogs are more

intelligent with humans and better skilled with humans.

That is the theory and we need a lot more research to figure out if it's true.

That makes total sense.

The kind of intelligence you need to survive in the wild has to be

different to that required to be an adorable family pet.

-Or chew slippers.

-In a living room.

That requires quite a lot of intelligence, though.

-Don't underestimate it.

-But it's a different intelligence required to

hunt down a rabbit or something.

So, maybe our affinity with dogs can be put down to their intelligence

being somehow in tune with our own.

But what does being in tune mean?

To find out I went to meet Daniel Mills,

who is Britain's first professor of veterinary behavioural medicine.

He tried to show me how a dog thinks.

'In this test, Riley here had to find the food in these two bowls.

'It was clearly to my right

'but I was pointing at the other, empty bowl.'

Riley, look at that.

That's really interesting because

you would assume that dog sees the food in the bowl

but he ignores that for a minute, goes for the one you're pointing to.

Because it's interesting to you, she thinks it's interesting to her.

It happened because dogs evolved

very closely with humans and we co-operate an awful lot

so it pays a dog to pay attention

to the sort of things humans pay attention to.

I'm going to see if we can do that again.

'Riley wasn't being daft.

'It actually revealed two things about dog intelligence.

'For a start, it's impressive that they understand pointing at all.

'Not many animals can do that.

'But, more importantly, you just can't measure dog intelligence

'against a human standard.

'Whilst blindly following my point looks a bit dopey to us,

'it makes perfect sense to a dog.

'All this makes testing dog intelligence very tricky.

'But, with Daniel's help, we're going to do just that

in our very own dog Mastermind.

MASTERMIND THEME MUSIC

Obviously if you're going to test animals, you need animals to test.

Over here we have three contenders.

We have Qannick and Hannah,

Skye and Sue

and over there it's Sid and Roland. And here are their back stories.

We were looking for a little dog

and he was the only dog available.

150 quid, he was.

Little did I know he'd turn out as he has.

Although he was born in the country, he is a London dog,

as I call him.

One of his clever things is his grasp of fundamental geometry,

where he knows where a ball will bounce against a wall

and the angle that it's likely to come at.

He is very, very smart.

This is my Samoyed, he's called Qannick.

He learns tricks really quickly.

I think there's a really good bond there between us.

Qannick really enjoys going on the bike.

Whenever we put his little harness on or get the bikes out,

he does the typical Samoyed bark to tell us he wants to go.

I think Qannick is a lot smarter than other dogs.

I've worked with other dogs before are they not quite

as intelligent as my Qannick is.

It was love at first sight.

I think it was reciprocated.

From watching Ronaldo, she picked up all the skills that she now has.

'Ronaldo did a particular goal which was quite phenomenal

'and Skye recreated it in the park the next day.'

Good girl. Can you cross?

'A lot of people saw it and came over and said,

'"Did you see that dog?"'

I think she'd probably be

at Oxbridge if there was an Oxbridge for dogs.

The concept of numbers is something us humans can grasp.

But Daniel has devised a test to see if our contenders can tell

the difference between numbers of rubber ducks.

What we're going to try and do is train your dogs in what's

known as a quantity discrimination task.

So, are our dogs clever enough to do this?

Before the tests they all need a little bit of training.

Quite a challenging task,

but with a bit of luck we should find a real star,

and we'll see how they go.

Indeed. Give me that back. How confident are you feeling right now?

-We're unconfident.

-Unconfident?

-Both of us, yes.

-This is a sort of false modesty, I can sense it.

-No, no. It's just...

They're smart dogs. OK, well, good luck, let's get going, yeah.

Qannick was up first. Yeah, he's not quite grasped it yet.

Her owner, Hannah, uses click training, giving Qannick

an immediate signal every time she does something right.

Good boy!

The aim was to get the dogs

to always choose a duck on its own in preference to ducks in groups.

If you keep his attention on you, while I just set things up.

Might not sound of that hard, but to a dog, a duck is a duck.

And what we can do is actually

give him that feedback as he's making the decision.

To tell the difference between one duck and five ducks is tough,

and telling one from two should be even harder.

-Interesting, let's see how quickly gets it.

-Good boy.

-Good boy.

But it wasn't long before Qannick was completely ignoring

a group of five every time.

And Sky was quite quick to pick it up, too.

But Jack Russell Sid wasn't convinced by any of it.

Luckily Roland was happy to show him the way.

Lots of people assume a dog's intelligence depends on its breed,

and that Border collies are one of the cleverest, but every individual dog is different,

and their upbringing can actually be more important than their breed.

Things were going pretty well by lunchtime, but then...

-Hello, Daniel what's going on?

-We've got a little bit of a problem here.

-Sky.

-We've got an injured soldier.

So, what happened to Sky since we last saw her, eh?

Unfortunately, I think what happened,

is that in one of the breaks she's gone out,

she was playing with a football, and she's gone and twisted her knee.

-Yeah.

-Now, she really needs to have rest,

so I don't think it's fair on her to, sort of,

put her through any more.

With Sky gone, we needed a new contestant

to make up the numbers, this was my chance to muscle in.

So, with the help of Daniel, I've found myself a dog.

His name is Lud, and I'm actually quite curious to find out

how much of an impact my not having a relationship with this dog will have.

-What do you reckon?

-It's difficult to know, he's a good working dog,

he's used to working with one person, so it could be an issue.

I think, perhaps the issue is going be

we've probably only got about 20 minutes to do this!

With that, Lud and I got to work.

Find out how we got on later in the show.

DOGS BARKING

Next up, how clever is your dog?

Well, here's a simple test you can do at home.

Take three cups,

and make sure they all smell of your dog's favourite treat.

Place a treat under one of the cups,

and see if your dog can find it straight away.

Oh, she got it wrong.

If they can, then repeat the test,

but this time it move the cup with the treat.

Now, most dogs won't understand that the treat has moved,

but if your dog can, it's a very smart animal.

In our test, only one dog succeeded.

It's pretty clear, some dogs are smarter than others,

but I wanted to know how clever they could get.

Is there any evidence of a higher intelligence?

Well, the classic test of really high-level intelligence

is to look at self recognition.

You have to know that you are yourself,

before you can know that someone else is something else.

Right. There's a standard way to test this sort of intelligence.

When trained to put its nose onto a blue spot, can a dog tell

that a spot is on its own chest when it sees it in the mirror?

So far, no dog has ever passed this test

Riley is intelligent. She's great to work with, she's a problem solver,

but she has no sense of self,

and we'd love to know if there's a dog out there that does,

because at the moment, there is no evidence that they do.

This is where you could really help out.

If you go onto the website there are details of how to perform

these tests on your dog, and if it turned out

that any of your dogs had a sense of self, it would be groundbreaking,

-and I'm sure you two would love to hear about it.

-Absolutely.

Now, dogs aren't the only pets with hidden talents.

In this week's brainteaser,

Dr Yan will be testing the wits of the humble goldfish.

Goldfish are notoriously dim-witted, three second memories, and all that.

But I'm hoping that my new friend, Gilbert here,

will have what it takes to prove all that wrong.

So, I'm going to try teaching him some tricks,

ones that any dog would be proud of.

How do you think he'll stack up against our prize-winning pooches.

As ever the solution is at /bang.

And while you're there check out details of our live roadshows.

The next one of those is in Poole, Dorset.

You can also get yourself one of these posters,

it features many of the things from this series.

You can get your free copy by ringing:

Or by following the links from /bang to the Open University.

Right, after all of our hard training, it was a bit tough, wasn't it, lads?

It's time to find out how we all got on in the test.

MASTERMIND MUSIC PLAYS

The challenge for our dogs is to distinguish

one duck from several ducks, starting with 10.

But with each attempt we'll reduce the group size,

making it harder for the dogs to tell the difference.

With two minutes on the clock,

how hard can we make it before they fail to tell one from more than one?

Right, can we have our first contenders? Your names, please?

My name's Roland Muldoon, and this is my dog, Sid Russell.

Come on, Sid.

Sid has to choose which side to go all by himself.

Rowland can encourage him, but only by pointing forwards,

and a screen clearly separates left from right in the dog's view.

OK, you've got two minutes on dog numeracy, starting now.

Brilliant. That's really impressive.

He made a beeline towards a single duck. That's very impressive.

Yeah, wonderful. Yeah.

Sorted.

So now it's one and eight, and obviously as the big number

gets smaller and smaller, the discrimination between the two

amounts gets more difficult for the dog.

Come on, Sid, come on.

But he's working against the clock, so he's using up time.

Not rushing to make a decision.

Looking good, well done, Sid.

This guy is doing his own thing, and when he's like,

"OK, I'll get it," he goes straight for the single duck.

-He makes the right choice again, first time.

-Not the four, Sid.

-That's it.

-Good boy, good boy.

Go on, get the duck.

And now, for the hardest test.

Oh, time is up,

but Sid did successfully manage to tell one duck from four.

Good boy. Good boy.

Right, our second contender, your names, please?

I'm Liz, and this is Lud, he's a six-year-old lab,

and he absolutely adores ducks.

Right, you've got two minutes

on telling the difference between a single duck and several ducks.

Come on, Lud. Come on, come on.

-With me taking the test, Dallas is joining Daniel to look on.

-By a man with a camera.

I do that thing where I rush up to it and start licking the lens.

We've got an unknown quantity here.

He's a working gun dog, he's very smart, don't know about the trainer.

-Get it, Lud.

-Great, look at this. Straight in. That's what we want.

-Come on, come on.

-She's very competitive, I think, Liz.

Believe me, she's competitive.

Good boy. Good boy. Oh, I'm so impressed with you.

He's doing it in seconds, he has been trained a lot,

since a young age, so, he's got a mind...

Very formally trained, in a way that Sid wasn't.

Good boy. I'm so proud of you.

And now for four ducks to one.

Get it, Lud, get it. Get it, Lud.

-And he's gone off stop

-Instead of working with me,

he's now made friends with our director. Brilliant.

Our time was up, but Lud managed to tell one duck from a group of six.

-Have a cuddle instead.

-I was rooting for you.

I secretly wanted Lud to win.

-He was doing well at the beginning, wasn't he?

-The underdog.

He did really well. That first one, he was down there like an arrow.

But we just trained him so quickly, and you were just so tired.

Look at him, he's just so tired. We'll just cuddle instead.

Right, our third and final contender. Your names, please.

I'm Hannah, and this is my four-year-old Samoyed, Qannick.

OK you have got two minutes on counting ducks.

Starting now.

-Get it, get it, get it. Go, go, go.

-Looks promising. Here we go.

-Good boy, there we go.

-Well done, Qannick.

A result, first time.

Go get the duck. Get it, get it, get it, get it.

-Get it, get it, get it, get it.

-He's gone to the right side again.

-I always knew it was a clever dog.

-Get it, get it, get it, get it.

-Good boy.

-Textbook stuff from Qannick, but then...

He slipped this time, he's gone to the four.

He's picked one of the ones out of the four.

Has he got time to make up for that mistake.

He's got another go, this time he's gone,

-and he's got it right this time.

-OK.

-Good boy. Well done.

-Who is a good lad?

-Now we're going for the two versus one.

This has got to be the toughest one.

If he gets this right then he's into another very different setup.

Get it, get it, get it, get it.

-Yeah. Well done!

-And Qannick's still got time on the clock.

Enough to attempt a bonus round that's an even more difficult test.

We want to rule out the chance

that he's just learnt to go for the familiar yellow duck each time.

If he's really understood the challenge

he'll know to go for a single duck,

even if it's a completely different colour.

What he's going to have to try and distinguish now is

one small red duck versus five of the familiar ducks.

Ooh, that's pushing him.

Yeah, if he's just going for yellow ducks,

he's going to fall on this one,

but, you know, sometimes he might use the concept of quantity,

he might use another rule, so, I'll go for what's new.

Red duck, that's amazing!

I am really impressed.

I thought that was going to be the test to throw him,

because it wasn't just the size, but also the colour.

So, dogs make us well, they relieve stress,

and are superbly adapted to live by our side,

and they even have a grasp of quantity.

That's really impressive. That dog gets it.

He made one mistake in the whole round, that's really impressive.

That's a smart dog.

Good boy.

DOGS BARK

The winner, Hannah and Qannick. Congratulations.

And the grand prize of our respect and good wishes is yours.

So, thank you very much for taking part, and well done, Qannick.

That's all we've got time for in this programme,

and this whole series of Bang Goes The Theory,

it's goodbye from all of us, and probably from all the dogs, too.

Definitely goodbye from all the dogs, and we'll see you next year.

In the meantime, thanks so much for joining us on all the roadshows.

-One more in Poole, we'll see you there.

-Take care, bye-bye.

-Bye.

-Bye.

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