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Dogs Who Think in Verbs and Abstracts
Description
These dogs built mental filing systems where “things you pull” and “things you throw” became umbrella categories so robust they reorganized the dogs’ understanding of their entire toy collection. Function trumped identity.
We do this too, of course. We reorganize our mental maps constantly based on use-context. The same object can be a doorstop, a weapon, a paperweight, depending on what we’re doing with it. But we’ve always assumed this flexibility was uniquely human, tied to our symbolic language and our capacity for metaphor.
References:
Dogs extend verbal labels for functional classification of objects
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Independent, moderated, timely, deep, gentle, clinical, global, and community conversations about things that matter. Breathe Easy, we go deep and lightly surface the big ideas.
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