Puppy imitates sound of howling wolves

[Video Link] She's a quick study. (Via Arbroath)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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zombiebob

Isn’t that both cute and interesting. It awakens something in his instinct that reminds him his forbearers were more than purse accessories.
- Guest
  
  That’s ‘her’ instinct. Puppy is a girl. :3
  
  That head cocking is the cutest thing I will see all day.
obeyken

wow… you can see the eons of instinct come bubbling up from her subconscious. she’s even got the moves down.
- scifijazznik
  
  you can take the dog out of the wild…
herrnichte

..really get excellent data compression with DNA, dontcha?

i wonder why (adaptively) a roll head tilt rather than a yaw? one would think a yaw would do a better job of acoustical locating. probably unrelated purpose entirely.
- RedMonkey
  
  My minor experience with dogs is the head tilt has more to do with signalling comprehension problems – it’s like saying, I didn’t hear you or understand can you say that again? But that’s a total layman’s viewpoint.
  - wagonjak
    
    It’s the doggie equivalent of WTF!? All dogs do it…
- Ambiguity
  
  one would think a yaw would do a better job of acoustical locating.
  
  Dogs are actually very bad at acoustical locating. It’s often said that they have very acute hearing — and they do — but when it comes to discerning the direction of a sound, they’re a lot worse than people.
  - herrnichte
    
    With cases like the Fennec and Arctic foxes which often hunt entirely by sound, you’re sure of that statement? yeah yeah… dogs aren’t foxes; and dogs aren’t wolves, but this thread is about a little dog that is responding like one ;)
    
    Perhaps the whole head tilt thing is about adjusting the vision acuity, and has nothing to do directly with sound …who knows?
    - Ambiguity
      
      Fairly sure.
      
      First data point is a book on dog intelligence (I’d give the title, but it was a library book that my wife checked out that I read part of, not noticing the name). When the statement was made it resonated with me because of the consonance with the other three data points: my dogs. I’ve noticed with them, for example, that if there is a knocking sound coming from the playroom they often think it’s coming from the front door (90+ degrees in a different direction) and run to it.
      
      (I’ve always assumed the head tilting this was about sound. Many dog’s ears are floppy, and by tilting the head the ear canal on the downward ear is more exposed, and I would think that would increase their sensitivity. But that’s just speculation.)
      - flagler23
        
        If the head tilting was an adaptation to floppy ears it would be a learned behavior, not an instinct. Dogs are too genetically similar to wolves (same species in fact) for a response to an artificially selected character to have evolved, and to have evolved in spite of natural selective pressures having been eclipsed in the last few hundred years by artificial pressures.
      - Gindy51
        
        I would agree, but mine are programmed to run to the door because that is usually where knocking comes from (visitors). They’ll bark at the door if the doorbell rings, even if they see me doing it. They do not bark at the bell which is located well away from the door. I think with domestic dogs, they get a different signal from our house noises than they do from something outside.
http://twitter.com/blindeschildpad Blinde Schildpad

…and the next day she killed an elk.
http://www.facebook.com/jbisker Josh Bisker

You should have played blue whale recordings
http://twitter.com/ohtarzie The Rancid Honeytrap

The pup seems to know where the sound’s coming from (the speakers on the computer) but runs in alarm. It always seemed to me with the dogs I’ve had that head-tilting signified non-comprehension.
stevieQ

Nice how people get such a kick out of tormenting their pets for the benefit of YouTube. I don’t think he was howling to “imitate” the wolf, I think it was a natural reaction from being scared.
- Brewer_ME
  
  While the howl may have been coincidence, or perhaps the puppy was howling like that prior to the owner’s youtube search. But- that puppy was not scared. Confused perhaps, definitely curious, but nothing of her body language suggests that she was suffering in any way.
  - SKR
    
    I don’t know the head duck into the bed at 0:14 looked like it could have been anxiety driven. Not suffering but more, “wtf is going on here? maybe I should hide.” But then the curiosity and comfort of her secure bed space override that.
- Ramone
  
  Not sure that’s the case here. The owner would know if the howling to indicate fear predated hearing the noise on the computer. If not, then it’s a good bet it’s imitation.
cmpalmer

One of our dogs (we have two shih-tzu) howls any time my son or I play the saxophone (or a recorder or pretty much any wind instrument). At first we thought it might be hurting her ears or something, but if she’s in the far side of the house, she will come running from whatever she is doing to stand at our feet and howl. She actually seems to enjoy “singing along.” My son has to practice his horn with the door closed.
IvonaPoyntz

The Call of the Wild…
http://goodsharer.com/ Aloisius

Something tells me that the owners will regret their decision to teach their dog to howl like a wolf each and every night.
http://twitter.com/TheRealBIZKeT Scott Jones

My cocker spaniel would howl like that when ever he heard a saxophone on the stereo. He had never heard a wolf or wild dog in his life. I suspect that the puppy is having the same reaction as my old dog did to the tone and timbre.
Paul Renault

I used to live in a small village, a little farther out in the woods, some twenty kms from where I live now.

At least once a week, at around 4AM, I’d be gently woken up by coyotes off in the distance, howling for a quarter of an hour. I miss this.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  At least once a week, at around 4AM, I’d be gently woken up by coyotes off in the distance, howling for a quarter of an hour.
  
  In my case, they’re howling from the yard, or occasionally from inside the ground floor garage. Somewhat less romantic when you have to go chase them out with a broom.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    I should point out that most of the coyotes here are not much bigger than that puppy and almost as cute. Low desert/canyon coyotes run about 20 lbs, versus 50 lbs for other types.
    - RJ
      
      I had no idea there were fun-size coyotes. The temptation to snatch one up and cuddle it must be strong at times.
noah django

my 3 year old german shepherd does this, and in fact joined in with the puppy in this video when I played it. my roommate watches tons of nature shows on tv and will keep rewinding the wolf sounds to keep my dog howling. then he’ll start howling. then I will.

feelsgoodman.
obeyken

I think it would save a certain segment of the population a lot of trouble if Discus were to have a finger-wagging button.
flosofl

My dog (3yr Choc Lab) didn’t howl, but he had the same head reaction as the pup in this video. And when the puppy joined in, it became even more pronounced. No anxiety or fear display at all. Believe me, I know what that looks like thanks to violent thunder storms.
http://twitter.com/gratefulvideo gratefulvideo

I used to howl with my old roommates Pomeranian. Just a couple howls from me and he would join in. I think most dogs will do this. My old cat used to also howl like this whenever I sang in shower.
- Shawn RIchardson
  
  The image of you singing in the shower accompanied by a howling cat doesn’t seem like it would be nearly is cute as this puppy. But them I’m a dog person.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

The Intel plant across the street is (or was*) home to a family of fun size coyotes. Very shy, and very businesslike. Kind of like plus-size foxes. Handsome but not cuddly.

My dog and I once chased a couple across a field. Annoying them was fun, and helped them learn a proper fear of crazy humans.

* The plant is expanding, big time. A plot of Intel land used as a hay field by humans and as a rrodent hunting park by the ‘yotes has been turned into a parking lot, and there are more buildings going up next to the wetlands area that I believe was the coyotes home.
PurpleWyrm

My parents’ old dachshund used to make the most ungodly howling noises whenever an ambulance or fire engine went by. He sounded like an air raid siren winding up crossed with a drowning jackal.
labrys

my cat does something similar when i play harmonica – comes racing in from where-ever he is is, meowing like a manic and trying to headbutt me until i stop. very weird. Happens if i play the original all along the watch-tower too, so i think it’ssomething to do with the frequencies of the instrument. guitar doesn’t bother the cat at all
Daniel Gracia

Our Golden retriever would howl to the siren of a nearby textile plant. Curious about this, we read some books about dog behaviour, and near all of them say a dog articulating a long howl is saying:

a) “I’m here”.
b) “This is my place”.
c) “I can hear your howl!” :)
http://www.facebook.com/people/Richard-Paterson/731240659 Richard Paterson

Sorry to say she’s not “learning how to howl” from watching the movie. It’s an instinctive response. I can get my dogs to do that and they’ve never heard a wolf in all their days.
http://www.ikaink.net Itsumishi

I used to have a dog that was bit of an Australian sheep dog mutt, with a 1/4 dingo thrown in for good measure.

Its entire life it barked much like any kelpie or other sheep dog, but one night while I was sleeping I woke up to the dog sitting on my bed, head up in the air like this and it was howling its guts out (although its howling sounded more like this). My parents came in distressed not knowing what the hell the sound was.

We calmed Tilly down and she went back to sleep, in our knowledge she never howled again. Amazing what some deep imbedded genetic instincts can do sometimes.
http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/4RVC4DAZQO5I7ZLJ5SG67UH7FE Marla

My late dog did this too–I’d howl, he’d howl, I’d howl, he’d howl . . . until I got bored, which generally took less than 60 seconds.

Here’s the question: when I did this, I was just playing with my dog. But what did the dog think we were doing?
MrAdamWatkins

Son of a bitch… I wasn’t totally ready for that level of cute this morning. I like to be fully awakened and caffeinated so I can enjoy the cute to its fullest.
SvenOrtmann

My poodle always howled when the church began to ring in high tones.
lorq

The head-tilting thing immediately put me in mind of the ape-man in 2001 just as he discovers tool use.