Department of Evolutionary AnthropologyAll animals must navigate in space as well as remember places and social encounters. Dogs must also navigate and remember experiences in their daily lives. However, very little is known about how dogs navigate or how they remember things.
The Duke Canine Cognition Center is carrying out a series of projects to begin to understand how dogs navigate and remember experiences. What cognitive strategies do dogs use when navigating or remembering events? Do all dogs navigate and remember things in a similar way? Are there systematic breed differences?
We hope to not only describe the skill dogs have in these domains but also reveal how these skills are constrained. In this way we can help improve the ability of those training dogs to help humans with disabilities navigate or potentially to even detect IEDs (explosives).