XPost: alt.animals.ethics.vegetarian, alt.animals.dog, rec.pets.dogs.behavior   
   From: doxielover_2004@yahoo.com   
      
   I had a doxie that was totally blind.  He knew the limits of his yard and   
   used hearing and smell to analyze his world.  One night a possum wandered   
   into his yard.  When I woke I found the possum being pulled from one end   
   by the blind dog, and the other by a sighted dog.  The possum played dead   
   (his instinctual strategy for defense) but that did nothing to dissuade   
   the blind dog... he grabbed it not because it moved, but because it   
   smelled right.  The sighted dog might very well have never gotten the   
   possum because it remained still (dead) while he barked and ran around it   
   and even if he picked it up.   
      
   Another doxie lover to chase squirrels, who always made it to the tree   
   and safety.  One day the neighbor kid killed a squirrel with a stone and   
   came over to tell me.  Wondering what the dog would do with the squirrel,   
   I propped it up on a stump I used to split wood, and then held the dog to   
   a window just inside of his hated enemy.  Then I took him to the deck and   
   let him go.  He crouched, moved slowly and furtively a few steps and then   
   sprang.  He ran right passed the squirrel (clearly in his view) and   
   directly to the tree.  Because the squirrel had always made for the   
   safety of the tree.  Eventually he gave up his tree pursuit and began to   
   amble back to the deck.  When he came abreast of the squirrel and saw it,   
   the shock on his face was obvious.  And he tore it off the stump and   
   paraded around with it as a trophy, showing it to his imaginary pack.   
      
   > notgenx32@yahoo.com wrote:   
   >> If you destroyed the olfactory nerves in a dog, it would continue to   
   >> attempt to sniff at things in order to learn about them.  It would   
   >> simply conclude after each episode, in which it couldn't smell   
   >> anything, that there was nothing interesting about the sniffed thing.   
   >> But if you did the same thing to a human, the person would no longer   
   >> attempt to smell things; he would have AWARENESS that his sense of   
   >> smell was gone.   
   >   
   > Has this ever been attempted? If it has, can you direct me to the   
   study?   
   >   
   >   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)