What a fascinating interview! Dr. Alexandra Horowitz, a PhD at Barnard College, Columbia University, discusses some really interesting research from her book Inside of a Dog. –Kim

Groucho Marx once said, "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."
But it is beginning to get lighter in there, thanks to modern cognitive science.
Groucho's quip graces the opening page of Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and Know, a new book by cognitive scientist and psychologist Alexandra Horowitz that goes a long way to suggest what it's like to think with a dog's brain – to actually be a dog.
Combining new knowledge from hundreds of scientific and animal behavior studies, and mixing it in with a fine style guided by her own loving bemusement of dogs – especially of her own Finnegan, rescued as a sick and needy pup from a shelter – Horowitz gives us a fascinating picture of a dog's umwelt (OOM-velt) – German for "their subjective or 'self-world'."

Copyright ©2010 ABC News

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See Part 2: http://topdogblog1.blogspot.com/2010/05/inside-of-dog-part-2.html
See Part 3: http://topdogblog1.blogspot.com/2010/05/inside-of-dog-part-3.html