Inside of a Dog_ What Dogs See, Smell, and Know - Alexandra Horowitz [109]
The long-term discovery from Harlow's work was that these isolated monkeys developed relatively normally physically, but abnormally socially. They did not interact with other monkeys well: terrified, they huddled in the corner when another young monkey was put into their cage. Social interaction and personal contact is more than desirable: it is necessary for normal development. Months later, Harlow tried to rehabilitate those monkeys whose early isolation so malformed them.
He found that the best remedy was regular contact with young normal monkeys, whom he came to call "therapy monkeys," in play. This restored some of the isolates to more normal social actors.
Watch an infant child, with limited vision and even more limited mobility, try to snuggle into his mother, his head rooting around for contact, and one is seeing just what newborn puppies look like. Blind and deaf at birth, they are born with the instinct to huddle with siblings and their mother, or even with any solid object nearby. The ethologist Michael Fox describes the head of a puppy as a "thermotactile sensory probe," moving in a semicircle until it touches something. This begins a life of social behavior reinforced by and embracing contact. Wolves are estimated to make a move to touch one another at least six times an hour. They lick—each other's fur, genitals, mouths, and wounds. Snouts touch snouts or body or tail; they nuzzle muzzles or fur. They are oriented to touch even in agonistic activity, which, unlike many other species, usually involves contact: pushing, pinning with a bite, biting the body or leg, seizing another's muzzle or head with one's mouth.
Directed toward us, the dog's youthful instinct becomes a drive to burrow a head under our sleeping bodies or to rest a head upon us; to push and bump us as we walk; to gently nibble or lick us dry. It seems no accident that dogs playing at full steam regularly run into any observing owners nearby, using them as living bumpers defining their playing field. In turn, dogs suffer being touched by us. This is to their infinite credit. We find them touchable: furry and soft, right under dangling fingertips and often wearing their neoteny to greatly cute result. The dog's experience of that touch, though, is likely not what we think. A child may rub the belly of a dog fiercely; we reach to pat a dog's head—unknowing whether they want to be either fiercely rubbed or head-patted. In point of fact, their tactile umwelt is almost certainly different than ours.
First, sensation is not uniform across one's body. Our tactile resolution is different at different points on our skin. We can detect two fingers one centimeter apart at the nape of our necks, but if the fingers are moved down the back we feel that they are touching the same spot. The resolution of touch to animals is likely different still: what we think is a gentle pat may be barely detectable or may be painful.
Second, the somatic—body—map of the dog is not the same as our somatic map: the most sensitive or meaningful parts of the body are different on dogs. As seen in many of the aforementioned agonistic contact actions, grabbing a dog's head or muzzle—the first part a guileless dog-petter reaches for—may be viewed as aggressive. It is similar to what a mother will do to an unruly pup, or an older dominant wolf will do to a member of his pack. Here too are the whiskers (vibrissae), which like all hairs have