Can Dogs Appreciate Art?

Relatives of mine have had dogs who "sang" along with them, or their piano playing.  The dogs may have just had the instinct to join into a stand-in for a  canine chorus. My brother's German shepherd, however, would get started with help, but went onto more solo singing than I'd expect from pure instinctual behavior. 

Last night my dog reacted to a photograph, making me wonder if dogs can make sense of two dimensional images. If dogs can make sense of pictures, it follows that they might be able to appreciate art in some way.  Perhaps they are even capable of having an aesthetic experience. 

I had sat down on the old white sofa to look at a magazine.  Because it's the only piece of furniture my dog is allowed to come up on, he happily made his arthritic effort to join me there.  I leafed through page after page of creative advertisements as he relaxed beside me, but when I came to the double spread for Bulgari in which a bare model embraces  a fragrance bottle while cuddling up to a lion, he lifted his head and strained his nose towards the magazine, sniffing intently.  My dog continued his investigation until he satisfied himself that there was no living creature there wearing that fur.  Although the ad shows a fragrance bottle, there is no sample of it in the page, so he was not reacting to a smell.  He must have reacted to the image of fur or perhaps the lion's features.  I tested the theory by continuing to turn pages of photographs and watching him ignore me.  I stuck some other pages under his nose, which he simply ignored, but when I stuck the spread with the lion in his face again he sniffed it again, for a shorter time and with less interest than the first time before relaxing again with a sigh, as if saying,  "Oh yeah, that's that same nothing I checked out before." 

In an article in Cerebrum, from the Dana Foundation, "your gateway to information about the brain and brain research", authors Gisela Kaplan, Ph.D. and Lesley J. Rogers, D. Phil., D.Sc. say,
"Creation and appreciation of art are aspects of consciousness that we have tradition-ally viewed as purely human activities, ones that express our highest cognitive abilities. If animals share at least some aspects of this ability, we will have to look upon them with more respect and perhaps change the ways we treat them."
The authors go on to say that "some researchers have dared to suggest that animals may play because they find it pleasurable to do so. Doing something for pleasure, rather than for survival, is part of how we define the act of creating art."  They warn against forming any conclusions too soon, but I'll peak around that corner to see what may lie there.  Perhaps my dog has not only the ability to appreciate art, but the ability to create it! 

I've been amazed to watch my dog play creative games.  He has trained me to throw treats out the window.  Usually he runs right to it, settles down on a plush patch of grass, and begins to devour it.  Several times, though, although I'd thrown the treat with pretty good aim, landing it near him and certainly within his sight and smell range, I've seen him pretend not to see it.  This dog who has smelled a stale oreo cookie 15 ft. away, pretended that he just could not see or smell that fresh treat right under his nose!   After a few minutes of exhaustive "searching", he finally "discovered" it, joyfully tossing it in the air.  This was pure pretending, pure playing.  To create art it is necessary to engage in lots of pretending in order to create illusions of form and space.  Having the ability to pretend implies an ability to appreciate creative pretending, does it not?

The magazine lion incident reminded me of a Halloween some years ago.  When my daughter was a toddler (before we had our dog) she had a lion costume.  We later gave it to a friend who had two adorable little girls, and one Halloween they came trick-or-treating to our house, one wearing that costume and the other in a similar one.  Our dog did not know what to make of them.  He kept his distance and looked quizzicaly up to me, then barked a very questioning alert and looked back at me with the most confused expression ever.  The funny and adorable scene left such an impression on me that I spent several hours searching for the photograph before realizing that the image was only committed to my memory.

More funny incidents occur around Christmastime, when we walk our dog around the neighborhood.  Several people display sculptures of reindeer in their yards.  Our dog has slowed down to suspiciously eye those white cutout wooden deer, and he has actually charged at the willow branch ones.  This is slightly embarrassing to both of us.  You would hope your dog could tell the difference between reality and decoration!

I have not practiced showing my dog two-dimensional images so he could perhaps appreciate portraiture.  If he could "read" a photograph of fur or a lion's face to recognize it as resembling a real animal; if he could "read" a sculpture of a deer as the actual animal, perhaps he would enjoy a little portrait gallery at his own eye level.  Hmmm....