A jackal's nose for the job | Hacker News Reader

A jackal's nose for the job

rbth.com

107 pointscurtis13 comments

"It is not a breed," Sulimov explains. "We have reproduced the initial 'pre-breed norm' of a dog, the way it used to be 100,000 years ago. In other words before humans began to 'specialize' it, breeding it for hunting, guarding, etc. Any specialization limits possibilities."

I found this fascinating and the "Any specialization limits possibilities" reminds me of that Heinlein quote:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

Wow, that is the interesting article, not the wikipedia one. Some excerpts:

"The groundbreaking approach is based on analyzing the bioelectric activity of the animals' brain and central nervous system"

"Because of errors in "signal behavior," the accuracy achieved by the traditional dog method is only 60 percent, says Zaripov. However, the new method being used has increased detection accuracy to nearly 100 percent."

Interesting that it also seems to handle false positives well:

> Among other things, the new method makes it possible to detect "a false sit" (when a dog sits to signal that it has found something). "In traditional signal behavior, 'a dog's trick' is hard to detect: The dog does not smile, it does not wink," says Zaripov. "In this case, however, an encephalogram shows that the dog has a conscience. Deep down it knows that it has made a mistake. The reaction of its central nervous system is completely different."

Encephalogram lie detectors for dogs, as they roam the airport. Each day begets a new, ever more interesting layer of futuristic hell.

I can imagine lie detectors being deployed to test whether I was motivated to order a hamburger because of an advertisement I noticed.

Yes URL should be replaced with the rbth article.

So they developed a portable lie detector for dogs? And it works better than human lie detectors because the dogs don't understand it?

I wonder if a smart enough dog can figure out how to fool it to get a treat anyways.

> During the breeding process, male jackal pups had to be fostered on a Lapponian Herder bitch to imprint the jackals on dogs. Female jackals accepted male dogs more easily.

I thought this was really neat.

Maybe I'm a little skeptical but it sounds like, "Gee, what we really need is a lie detector for the dogs.". Maybe dogs aren't the right tools for the job.

I can't be the only one who finds the whole forced "inter breeding" bit morally extremely dubious, can I?

I think you're imagining gamified dog-on-dog rape in poorly lit parking lots, when really it's more akin to a 5 second livestock insemination procedure that the mother probably forgets about an hour later.

I wonder if these guys will ever hit the civilian market.

Those domesticated Russian foxes are supposedly starting to trickle out.

This article has a lot more information about the Sulimov dog: https://www.rbth.com/longreads/jackals/

Thanks! we've switched to that from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulimov_dog.

I think "High-tech jackal-dogs" would make a better submission title. It's used in the article as a section title and it seems like it better represents the content.

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