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.
There’s some documentation out there suggesting the original Labrador retrievers had food obsession as a trait in common with bidability, which is why more than half of them end up chonky. Not all have the gene but odds are high.
There’s a guy who trawls dog rescues looking for retrievers who are toy obsessed and then trains them to hunt truffles. He reasons you can’t reward them with food for finding even tastier food, so you have to train them with ball time as a reward/distraction when they find a trove.
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 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 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.
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.
As opposed to my Newfoundland that will tease me with the ball and then I'm obligated to chase her until she wears out, I catch her, or I bribe her with a treat.
The dog is not reflecting on its true nature. If that is true, then it's possible there are many beings, including us, who are not reflecting on their true nature. It shows the meditative power a human actually has. For example, if a parent actually sits down and realizes they'd die for their child no matter what, it would sort of be like the dog realizing how far it would go for a tennis ball. Only a human being can reflect and change, the dog cannot (it's one of the reasons humans fall in love with dogs, they realize the thing is utterly innocent).
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.
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.
It’s kind of funny how the idea of behavior being a result of breeding goes out the window when it comes to pitbulls. Retrievers naturally retrieve, collies naturally herd, but when a murder-canine eats a family it’s all “oh it could have been any breed”.
I wonder if autism is a similar kind of selection process. They are people selected by nature to be obsessed about different things, but this could be incredibly fruitful if you end up focused on the right thing. Of course in this situation we have no control over the selection process, it's a product of living in a world that's difficult to
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!
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.
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.
Indeed most domestic animals exhibit some degree of neoteny, or juvenile characteristics as adults, including humans ourselves. We’ve sort of domesticated ourselves.
>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.
> I'm shocked to see an informal survey based study (which will just confirm the owners pre-existing biases and opinions) being published in Nature of all things.
It's not "Nature", it's "Scientific Reports" with impact factor of only 3.8 vs 48 of "Nature".
Sure the publisher is "Springer Nature", and the domain is "nature.com" but that doesn't make the journal "Nature".
> given the absence of established benchmarks or standardised criteria
The quote you cite doesn't support your claim. If there is no established criteria, then no amount of evidence will establish the link. But absent a rigorous definition, they are still giving evidence for a qualitative similarity between human addiction and the observed animal behavior. That's not a null result.
There are things you don't do but you understand not doing them is hurting you, so you decide to follow CBT (for example - there are other ways, but CBT has decent efficiency although it's expensive). They don't really need to be classified disorders or fobias.
Similarly, there are things you do and you realize not doing them would be beneficial to you. So you try to stop them and you realize it's hard. Again, you can use CBT or another method (or even medication in some cases). Whether you classify these things as "behavioral addictions" or use another term is secondary, the phenomenon itself is very real and I find it baffling anyone would dispute that.
>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.
can you provide more context for this claim? my intuition and experience tells me the opposite.
what is the definition here? are impulsive avoidance copings like playing a video
game instead of doing the hard work of addressing the worries/planned hard activities not a “video game addiction”?
and if we are talking physical withdrawal, then how should we call the same aspect of nicotine/alcohol addiction mechanics?
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
Squeaky toys are our GSD's main play toys, even just seems to like carrying them around. Games of chase, tug-of-war or just as a way to annoyingly get your attention with squeaking.
The other weird obsession seems to be hunting related. I once attached a toiletry holder in the shower that uses a pump to create the suction. It made a popping sound when I removed it and the GSD came running over to find what made the noise. Even a year later she still gets in the shower to see if there's anything there, especially if I'm crawling around cleaning. Maybe thinking I'm looking for it as well.
Studies show laser play actually makes dogs n cats stressed. They need to win to feel fulfilled. They cannot actually catch the laser, so they dont get fulfillment. It can cause a form of PTSD.
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.
> 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
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.
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 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
My grandparents had a hunting dog. She did not care about "play-time" at all. On the other hand, she got excited when she heard "forest" or "rabbit". Had to be careful with those words.
I think when she wasn't in the forest, she was just waiting to go there again. Instead of ball, it was forest.
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.
> 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.
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"?
It doesn't though. Only the headline implies that. If you read the discussion you find the authors of this study do not claim any addictive behaviors were found.
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.
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.
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)
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.
delichon|4 months ago
brandall10|4 months ago
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.
hinkley|4 months ago
There’s a guy who trawls dog rescues looking for retrievers who are toy obsessed and then trains them to hunt truffles. He reasons you can’t reward them with food for finding even tastier food, so you have to train them with ball time as a reward/distraction when they find a trove.
hippo22|4 months ago
moritzwarhier|4 months ago
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.
squishy47|4 months ago
tstrimple|4 months ago
jancsika|4 months ago
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.
bitwize|4 months ago
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/no-take-only-throw
gwbas1c|4 months ago
As opposed to my Newfoundland that will tease me with the ball and then I'm obligated to chase her until she wears out, I catch her, or I bribe her with a treat.
1oooqooq|4 months ago
uslic001|4 months ago
ivape|4 months ago
jncfhnb|4 months ago
brap|4 months ago
froh|4 months ago
cmrdporcupine|4 months ago
This is a product of centuries of breeding to focus on a task and enjoy the task above all else.
gigatree|4 months ago
tsol|4 months ago
captainclam|4 months ago
iancmceachern|4 months ago
librasteve|4 months ago
Arech|4 months ago
herghost|4 months ago
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.
JimBlackwood|4 months ago
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.
ajkjk|4 months ago
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.
Sharlin|4 months ago
croisillon|4 months ago
superkuh|4 months ago
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.
croemer|4 months ago
It's not "Nature", it's "Scientific Reports" with impact factor of only 3.8 vs 48 of "Nature".
Sure the publisher is "Springer Nature", and the domain is "nature.com" but that doesn't make the journal "Nature".
qnleigh|4 months ago
The quote you cite doesn't support your claim. If there is no established criteria, then no amount of evidence will establish the link. But absent a rigorous definition, they are still giving evidence for a qualitative similarity between human addiction and the observed animal behavior. That's not a null result.
dvfjsdhgfv|4 months ago
There are things you don't do but you understand not doing them is hurting you, so you decide to follow CBT (for example - there are other ways, but CBT has decent efficiency although it's expensive). They don't really need to be classified disorders or fobias.
Similarly, there are things you do and you realize not doing them would be beneficial to you. So you try to stop them and you realize it's hard. Again, you can use CBT or another method (or even medication in some cases). Whether you classify these things as "behavioral addictions" or use another term is secondary, the phenomenon itself is very real and I find it baffling anyone would dispute that.
stirfish|4 months ago
What about gambling, eating, or shopping?
unkulunkulu|4 months ago
what is the definition here? are impulsive avoidance copings like playing a video game instead of doing the hard work of addressing the worries/planned hard activities not a “video game addiction”?
and if we are talking physical withdrawal, then how should we call the same aspect of nicotine/alcohol addiction mechanics?
electroglyph|4 months ago
dwd|4 months ago
The other weird obsession seems to be hunting related. I once attached a toiletry holder in the shower that uses a pump to create the suction. It made a popping sound when I removed it and the GSD came running over to find what made the noise. Even a year later she still gets in the shower to see if there's anything there, especially if I'm crawling around cleaning. Maybe thinking I'm looking for it as well.
Xss3|4 months ago
guffins|4 months ago
ChaoPrayaWave|4 months ago
yieldcrv|4 months ago
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
wewewedxfgdf|4 months ago
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...
labrador|4 months ago
cristaloleg|4 months ago
(PS: I have black & yellow labs)
throw-10-13|4 months ago
tguvot|4 months ago
emerongi|4 months ago
I think when she wasn't in the forest, she was just waiting to go there again. Instead of ball, it was forest.
user____name|4 months ago
xg15|4 months ago
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.
fluoridation|4 months ago
caturopath|4 months ago
cs702|4 months ago
---
[a] https://improbable.com/ig/about-the-ig-nobel-prizes/
superkuh|4 months ago
heikkilevanto|4 months ago
arethuza|4 months ago
spike021|4 months ago
kayo_20211030|4 months ago
> 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)
card_zero|4 months ago
Dogs can mess themselves up for these rewards in various ways, and nobody much has worked out any useful facts about it yet.
... including us.
callamdelaney|4 months ago
mrlatinos|4 months ago
squidsoup|4 months ago
_joel|4 months ago
hshdhdhehd|4 months ago
WD-42|4 months ago