Ten years have passed since the epic dogfight (or was it a catfight?) between John Hood and Jonah Goldberg over the issue of dogs, cats, and man’s best four-legged companion. Goldberg returns to the field of battle with an interesting commentary for the American Enterprise Institute.
One of my favorite kinds of news stories is the report of a new scientific study that verifies the obvious. You’ve seen them. New research finds that heterosexual men are attracted to very attractive women. Evidence collected by wildlife researchers has confirmed that bears really do use the woods as toilets.
But some research that corroborates the obvious is exciting because some people refuse to accept the obvious.
Which brings me to the work of Dr. Gregory Berns, a neuroscientist at Emory University and the author of “What It’s Like to Be a Dog.” Berns has, from what I can tell, the best gig in neuroscience. He spends all day taking pictures of dog brains. Don’t worry: He doesn’t remove them. He uses magnetic resonance imaging to study what’s going on in Fido’s head. It’s tougher than it sounds because the dogs have to hold absolutely still for Berns to get a good read. But that’s OK. They got the goodest doggos around, as folks on dog-obsessed Twitter might say, to volunteer.
And what did Berns discover? Something that almost every dog owner in the world could have told you: Dogs aren’t faking it when they act like they love you. Because it’s not an act.
