Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/12/watch-a-dog-play-the-shell-game.html
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good boy!
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SHILL!
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Not to denigrate that dog (who I’m sure is indeed a genius and a very good boy), but I don’t think the human is very good at the shell game.
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Smart and cute!
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The dog isn’t looking at the cups, so this is likely a Clever Hans type effect where the dog is reading the person to tell which cup to pick
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You may be right. Dogs can read human body language, facial expression & gaze much better than humans. The human isn’t even aware he is giving it away. That, plus the smell of the treat
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If this dog is the breed I think it is, then the odds are good the dog is pretty smart.
Well, yeah, all dogs…
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Yeah, the guy handles the block with the same hand he uses to pass over the treat, so, I assume, there will be some treat smell on the block.
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It’s cute but…
1st) The human never shows there’s nothing under all 3 cups cups at the same time (as in, all 3 cups are never revealed to be empty at the same time) and, out of 3 games, the dog only picks cups in 2 positions.
2nd) I don’t know if we ever see the side of the cups the dog sees (I don’t feel like examining) so a cup may be marked.
3rd) The human blocks the cups & his handling of them, a lot, from the camera with his body/bulky sweater.
It doesn’t seem the dog is smelling/investigating at all - so it’s either all the cups have shells and the dog just has to knock over a cup -or- two cups have shells and the dog knows to knock over the middle or right cup -or- the shelled cup is marked -or- the person is cueing the dog out of camera sight.
Again, it’s a cute vid but I hope we can we all agree the dog is not “winning” the shell game on its own.
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