If there's a frisbee or ball in sight, my female border collie won't even attend to basic bodily needs. And she'll chase the object while she's in pain and exhausted or shivering with cold and not notice. She has lupoid onychodystrophy which causes her nails to come in deformed and split and painful and she'll still obsess on some running play/task while she's got bleeding paws and can barely walk. An an owner we have to intervene to remove the object of obsession and force disengagement.
This is a product of centuries of breeding to focus on a task and enjoy the task above all else.
>Behavioural addictions, characterised by compulsive engagement in rewarding activities despite adverse consequences in the long term, are more heterogeneous and less well-understood than substance addictions
Indeed. Mostly because every study on "behavioral addictions" is published in third tier journals or is a negative result in real journals. It's something that doesn't actually exist in mammals and it's current popularity is mostly from profit seeking scams for rehabilitation "clinics" preying on the 'screens are addictive' meme burning through current parent populations.
And despite the headlines suggesting otherwise, and the press likely running with those false headlines, *the actual study itself does not find any addictive behavior*. A null result.
>Despite the observed parallels between high-AB dogs and humans affected by behavioural addictions, we refrain from conclusively characterising high-AB dogs as exhibiting addictive behaviour, given the absence of established benchmarks or standardised criteria. It is important to be cautious when pathologising behaviour, especially given that even in humans, addictive behaviours are still difficult to define and measure.
Perhaps not surprising, working breeds – many of which are known to have been artificially selected for high toy or predatory motivation – were overrepresented in the sample.
This is the vibe I get from my golden retriever. Chasing the tennis ball is more than play, it's a justification for life, her contribution to the pack. Actually eating food has a higher priority than chasing the ball, but not much else does. When I got her I thought that the "retriever" part was optional but it turns out to be obligate. As in I'm obligated to throw the damn ball.
I grew up with a cocker spaniel obsessed with tennis balls to the point of covering his food with them and letting it rot. Looking into his eyes conveyed no emotion and he didn't seem to care much for affection. He was a tennis ball tracking machine.
There was nothing you could do to satiate his desire. If you gave in to a catch session, you could throw it 100 times, he would start coughing/convulsing from exhaustion, yet still drop a ball at your feet begging you to throw it. You could probably have killed him with it.
If no one was playing catch with him he would spend hours scouring the neighborhood for balls hidden in bushes. At one point I believe he had over 20 balls piling up in various places in our backyard. We would regularly take his balls away so he only had a couple, but more would magically appear.
We did have a little fun with this. My dad would use him as a tennis practice 'partner'. And we built a tennis ball cannon powered by M80s (note: this was mid-80s in the SFV when/where things like bottle rockets and blow guns were legal).
I've had to put down quite a few animals, and he was the only one were there was no sadness, only relief when his time came, esp. after 15 long years of having to pander to this obsessive behavior.
My belief is animals experience something similar to autism, and he was as far along the spectrum as possible, to the point where the only thing that defined him was his working instinct. That million years of mind-meld evolution w/ humans? Simply not there.
Just imagining your retriever feeling obligated to sit patiently by your side as you contribute to the pack by deconstructing your life while staring lifelessly at a flashing screen.
i have a Lab/Staffie mix and he has insane retriever drive when we get the tennis ball launcher out. pupils dilate and nothing else matters, to the point that we had to ban launcher because he kept loosing his thumb claws from sliding on the grass when the ground is too hard. Before we banned it his muscles were massive, rippling shoulders etc.
When we had his (non-tennis) balls removed he developed insane food drive, the vet said this was common, to the point he'll raid the kitchen at night if we don't lock it down.
The boy is build to do 1 of 2 things, eat or fetch!
I once stopped at a bar near a large train station in my hometown, next to a music club, alternative vibe etc.
Originally, I went there to pee after arriving from a long train commute.
Then I had a drink outside, it was a summer evening. And there was a group of people in the outside area of the bar with a dog, a tame Labrador/Golden-Retriever-like dog.
It was a good friendly dog, but it had a toy.
I got to know the dog because I threw the toy after the dog came to my table and the owners were bored.
10 minutes later, I felt increasingly stressed by the dog "forcing" me to throw the toy again and again :D
And that outside area was near, while not directly next to, a large road, which also was my final straw to get rid of my new companion before I left – the dog was running after a rolling, misthrown toy and almost ran into a cyclist on a smaller, non-car pathway next to the seatings.
I was completely overwhelmed at first by that dog's firm insistence on me throwing that toy over and over, after I had done it one time.
I don't think I want another dog again after our Akita died. She was such a good pup. Big dog which does well living in smaller areas. Is defensive of family, but isn't necessarily over aggressive with human strangers. She was so quiet. The only time she barked you knew it was time to pay attention. I haven't owned many dogs so I don't know the degree to which personality is determined by individual or breed. But everything about our Kira was what I loved in dogs. And everything I loved about her is what stops me from getting another one. I just don't think they could live up to her example. And I cannot abide a noisy dog.
We've recently come to this conclusion with our Cockapoo. His mother was a working Cocker Spaniel.
When the weather is poor we have often tried to get shorter walks in dry spells but augment it with as much ball time as possible to make sure he's getting enough exercise (since he generally dislikes bad weather).
It's become apparent that there's no possibility of satiety through chasing the ball though. He will simply go forever, however tired he looks.
I joked that as a Labrador will seemingly eat itself sick, a Spaniel will run itself lame.
For a breed that is partly bred to flush out game, throwing a ball is incredibly adrenaline inducing and will not tire them out - they’ll just keep going till they fall down. Working cockers are one of the breeds susceptible to exercise induced collapse, albeit rare it shows how insanely motivated they are.
To get them tired, you need to chill them out and have them use their brain and/or nose.
Maybe try some sniffing games, sit down during the walk and have them just take in the environment, do some obedience that makes them think, or throw their food in the grass and have them figure it out.
We have a springer, cocker and a sprocker. We knew that addiction to these things were a problem and so we didn’t allow it to develop. I do think that people who are constantly throwing balls, especially with a wanger, are idiots.
You know your dogs' breeds were susceptible to enjoying fetch so you never played fetch with them. Ah yes those poor idiots who actually work their dogs for their bred purpose.
One of my best friends has a toller (canadian duck retriever) that's a total ball junkie, it's all he seems to live for. I too often played fetch with him as a pup and now he goes completely loco any time I show up at their house. So I accidentally conditioned him to see me as mr playtime, oops. Nowadays I try to just play frisbee and tugging games whenever I'm over for some time. When a ball is in sight, the world just disappears.
If you ever get a chance to see sled dogs in Alaska or wherever, holy shit do those dogs ever want to pull a sled. I’ve never seen an animal so fixated.
My dog (Briard) isn't just addicted to play fetch with balls.. Since he knows that when another dog enters the dog park, the ball will be removed/hidden from him (to prevent the dogs clashing trying to get the ball), he becomes hostile to the dog entering the park, actively trying to prevent them from doing so! This happens only if we started to play with balls. If not, he'll be totally friendly... What an ass!
I read somewhere that domesticated dogs are to some degree bred to stay in their "childlike" state, so in a way they act like wolf puppies that never get older. Probably different breeds have different degrees of this. But anyway, I wonder if there is supposed to be some counterbalancing "maturity" or "responsibility" impulse that would cause them to decide not to do the thing, but since that has been bred out / disabled, they just run on impulse forever.
Incidentally I feel this way also: like I never fully grew up, and I easily regress to being trapped in a childlike state where I'll e.g. play video games all day. To snap out of it I have to "remember" to be an adult, like it's easily forgotten especially if my daily life doesn't ask me to have any serious responsibilities. maybe dogs don't have any responsibilities so they have no reason to stop playing.
my shiba inu rarely plays with any of his toys these days. he's 4.5 years old. of course that breed is typically known as being more primitive, so i wonder if that can be attributed to it.
This is a really fun 16 minute listen to how this precise dog behaviour is exploited to eradicate rats on Lord Howe Island.
They search specifically for dogs obsessed with ball chasing and turn them into rat hunting dogs.
There's funny bit where they talk about finding a dog that had learned how to use the tennis ball firing machine and spent all day chasing a tennis ball and putting it back in the machine which fires the tennis ball in a never ending loop.
Slightly off topic, but I once had a Siamese cat. I could not teach her to fetch a ball, but she could very well teach me to throw again. And it had to be a yellow foam ball - none of the other colors were of any interest.
I have 2 standard poodles that come from working (hunting) lineage. After few throws of tennis ball they realize that game is rigged, and just go away, making me to go and retrieve the ball
ffs. What does this study tell anyone about anything?
> Behavioural addictions, characterised by compulsive engagement in rewarding activities despite adverse consequences in the long term, are more heterogeneous and less well-understood than substance addictions, and there is a relative lack of translational research.
Does that make sense to anyone?
"more heterogeneous" (trans: different)
"less well-understood: (trans: I have no idea, but I need to finish this paper)
"adverse consequences" (trans: Who knows? But, I surveyed pet-owners for their opinion, and cited some other source)
"relative lack of translational research" (trans: sounds good, whatever it means)
i haven't seen any mention of lasers here, so i'll add my laser anecdote. I have a very active German shepherd rescue. I made the mistake of introducing him to the laser pointer which I used to exercise my previous dog, a doberman. Now he lives and breathes for laser. He nags me all day long. He sometimes sees laser dots where there aren't any. His appetite for laser can never be satiated, heh
> with dogs as the only non-human species so far that appears to develop addictive-like behaviours spontaneously without artificial induction
How did they reach the conclusion that dogs are the only species affected by this if they only investigated dogs?
This feels like confusing "absence of evidence" with "evidence of absence" - especially as they write it right after stating that there is a lack of research in the field.
As a recovering addict/alcoholic, I completely "get" these dogs and think maybe if this idea spreads it could help non-addicts understand our obsessive/compulsive behavior without as much judgement.
I'm struggling to understand what the result really is: it seems that some dogs at some point would rather play with a toy than eat or come play with their owner. That seems pretty normal. Is this really "addictive-like"? Why isn't it "really enjoy"?
> play has remained somewhat of a mystery, being associated with no immediate adaptive function
because it releases dopamine and is not related to whether the animal or someone will crack or be cracked with viable offspring
evolution via natural selection doesn’t require every trait to have a meaning or purpose, why do intellectuals get it backwards with retroactive explanation
if the trait persists or is present after sexual maturity, then it doesn’t get weeded out by sex and has no purpose or adaptive explanation whatsoever
in this case, play releases dopamine. dopamine production is a guiding force for being with dopamine.
mammals get addicted. rats and humans react the same to the same reward experiments. dogs exhibit the same traits while being exempt from the experiments
Sometimes when I watch my border collie chase a ball, it really makes me reflect on humans too. We’re constantly scrolling through our phones, watching short videos, playing mobile games. In a way, it feels like we’re just throwing a ball for ourselves to chase again and again.
35 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 59.5 ms ] threadThis is a product of centuries of breeding to focus on a task and enjoy the task above all else.
Indeed. Mostly because every study on "behavioral addictions" is published in third tier journals or is a negative result in real journals. It's something that doesn't actually exist in mammals and it's current popularity is mostly from profit seeking scams for rehabilitation "clinics" preying on the 'screens are addictive' meme burning through current parent populations.
And despite the headlines suggesting otherwise, and the press likely running with those false headlines, *the actual study itself does not find any addictive behavior*. A null result.
>Despite the observed parallels between high-AB dogs and humans affected by behavioural addictions, we refrain from conclusively characterising high-AB dogs as exhibiting addictive behaviour, given the absence of established benchmarks or standardised criteria. It is important to be cautious when pathologising behaviour, especially given that even in humans, addictive behaviours are still difficult to define and measure.
There was nothing you could do to satiate his desire. If you gave in to a catch session, you could throw it 100 times, he would start coughing/convulsing from exhaustion, yet still drop a ball at your feet begging you to throw it. You could probably have killed him with it.
If no one was playing catch with him he would spend hours scouring the neighborhood for balls hidden in bushes. At one point I believe he had over 20 balls piling up in various places in our backyard. We would regularly take his balls away so he only had a couple, but more would magically appear.
We did have a little fun with this. My dad would use him as a tennis practice 'partner'. And we built a tennis ball cannon powered by M80s (note: this was mid-80s in the SFV when/where things like bottle rockets and blow guns were legal).
I've had to put down quite a few animals, and he was the only one were there was no sadness, only relief when his time came, esp. after 15 long years of having to pander to this obsessive behavior.
My belief is animals experience something similar to autism, and he was as far along the spectrum as possible, to the point where the only thing that defined him was his working instinct. That million years of mind-meld evolution w/ humans? Simply not there.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/no-take-only-throw
Just imagining your retriever feeling obligated to sit patiently by your side as you contribute to the pack by deconstructing your life while staring lifelessly at a flashing screen.
Originally, I went there to pee after arriving from a long train commute.
Then I had a drink outside, it was a summer evening. And there was a group of people in the outside area of the bar with a dog, a tame Labrador/Golden-Retriever-like dog.
It was a good friendly dog, but it had a toy.
I got to know the dog because I threw the toy after the dog came to my table and the owners were bored.
10 minutes later, I felt increasingly stressed by the dog "forcing" me to throw the toy again and again :D
And that outside area was near, while not directly next to, a large road, which also was my final straw to get rid of my new companion before I left – the dog was running after a rolling, misthrown toy and almost ran into a cyclist on a smaller, non-car pathway next to the seatings.
I was completely overwhelmed at first by that dog's firm insistence on me throwing that toy over and over, after I had done it one time.
---
[a] https://improbable.com/ig/about-the-ig-nobel-prizes/
When the weather is poor we have often tried to get shorter walks in dry spells but augment it with as much ball time as possible to make sure he's getting enough exercise (since he generally dislikes bad weather).
It's become apparent that there's no possibility of satiety through chasing the ball though. He will simply go forever, however tired he looks.
I joked that as a Labrador will seemingly eat itself sick, a Spaniel will run itself lame.
To get them tired, you need to chill them out and have them use their brain and/or nose.
Maybe try some sniffing games, sit down during the walk and have them just take in the environment, do some obedience that makes them think, or throw their food in the grass and have them figure it out.
Incidentally I feel this way also: like I never fully grew up, and I easily regress to being trapped in a childlike state where I'll e.g. play video games all day. To snap out of it I have to "remember" to be an adult, like it's easily forgotten especially if my daily life doesn't ask me to have any serious responsibilities. maybe dogs don't have any responsibilities so they have no reason to stop playing.
They search specifically for dogs obsessed with ball chasing and turn them into rat hunting dogs.
There's funny bit where they talk about finding a dog that had learned how to use the tennis ball firing machine and spent all day chasing a tennis ball and putting it back in the machine which fires the tennis ball in a never ending loop.
https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/scienceshow/dogs-help...
> Behavioural addictions, characterised by compulsive engagement in rewarding activities despite adverse consequences in the long term, are more heterogeneous and less well-understood than substance addictions, and there is a relative lack of translational research.
Does that make sense to anyone?
"more heterogeneous" (trans: different)
"less well-understood: (trans: I have no idea, but I need to finish this paper)
"adverse consequences" (trans: Who knows? But, I surveyed pet-owners for their opinion, and cited some other source)
"relative lack of translational research" (trans: sounds good, whatever it means)
How did they reach the conclusion that dogs are the only species affected by this if they only investigated dogs?
This feels like confusing "absence of evidence" with "evidence of absence" - especially as they write it right after stating that there is a lack of research in the field.
(PS: I have black & yellow labs)
because it releases dopamine and is not related to whether the animal or someone will crack or be cracked with viable offspring
evolution via natural selection doesn’t require every trait to have a meaning or purpose, why do intellectuals get it backwards with retroactive explanation
if the trait persists or is present after sexual maturity, then it doesn’t get weeded out by sex and has no purpose or adaptive explanation whatsoever
in this case, play releases dopamine. dopamine production is a guiding force for being with dopamine.
mammals get addicted. rats and humans react the same to the same reward experiments. dogs exhibit the same traits while being exempt from the experiments