Creativity is a fascinating behavior displayed by several animal species, but it’s understudied when it comes to man’s best friend, the dog (Canis lupus familiaris).
Dog owners feel that their cohabiter is attentive in a way that must be spontaneous and creative, and so indeed, demonstrating canine creativity. Let’s look into this a bit more.
In the following experiment, Creativity, defined here as the power to create or conjure up new and exciting ideas, has been dissected into three core components, namely
- fluency,
- flexibility, and
- originality.
The fluency component reflects the quantity of ideas produced, the flexibility refers to the variety of different ideas, and originality points to the uniqueness of the ideas.
From Dolphins to Dogs: Tracing the Trail of Animal Creativity
From previous experiments that have successfully trained dolphins to show creative behavior, here the focus is on dogs.
The aim is to determine whether the same creativity observed in dolphins can be replicated in dogs. Interestingly, the standards set to measure creative behavior in dogs require each pooch to exhibit a behavior that it has not shown before in the session.
The attributes looked for in each session are
- energy,
- novelty, and
- repetition.
Every response must have its origin in these factors.
Of Innovation and Creativity in Animals
Multiple studies have purposefully set out to explore these traits in a variety of animals, like great apes and elephants for instance.
But there’s a distinct difference between creativity and innovation. While such subjects like innovative problem-solving have been studied extensively in these species, the field studying their ability to generate new solutions to problems is still evolving.
However, research related to animal creativity still remains scant, with dogs being one such under-studied species.
There’s a growing body of evidence supporting the notion of animal innovation.
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Canine Creativity in Fashion
Canine Creativity Test
In a study to test creativity in canines, the dog needed to perform a behavior not already performed in the training session.
Trainers were encouraged to move around the training environment to encourage dogs to interact with their surroundings and incorporate environmental items into their responses.
Trainers were also instructed to reinforce movements between behaviors to help the dogs understand that the motivation for the “create behavior” cue meant asking for different responses.
The only required criteria for the create behavior was that the behavior offered had not yet been performed during that session.
Trainers were instructed to use positive reinforcement, ignoring incorrect behaviors and asking for the create behavior again if needed. Prior to beginning the experimental sessions, trainers videotaped their training sessions and uploaded them to an online social media group page for clarification and monitoring.
In this fascinating clip you can see one of the dogs in the experiment Frankie offering invented responses on cue:
Analysis of the dogs’ performances included three components of creativity: repetition, energy, and novelty.
“Happiness is a warm puppy.” – Charles Schulz
The repetition variable measured fluency and whether dogs repeated behaviors.
Energy was coded into either high energy (involving excessive movement or effort) or low energy (behaviors requiring little to no effort).
Novelty measured originality and whether dogs performed previously trained or novel behaviors.
Inter-rater reliability was reported for coding the repetition, energy, and novelty variables.
- – The results of the analysis showed that all five dogs performed significantly more non-repeated behaviors, supporting the hypothesis that dogs can be creative.
- – Four out of five dogs performed significantly more low-energy behaviors, indicating less behavioral flexibility.
- – One dog, Surfer, had a more balanced distribution of low and high-energy behaviors.
- – Rey performed significantly more novel behaviors, while Wellington performed significantly more previously trained behaviors.
- – The study suggests that future research could explore the creative abilities of different dog breeds.