Egregoros

@pwm @mischievoustomato there's an argument that anything domesticated in a scale of undomesticated and dog. Cows, sheep, goats, birds, and horses act a lot like dogs in how they interface with humans. There're slightly different neuronets (this just affects how they learn and therefore how they express) but the baseline stuff and results are the same. Trick equal treat, share body language equals cuddle, bonding equals loyalty, love is play, all equals human attention/mutually beneficial relationship seeking behavior. Deer and foxes are approaching dog-like behaviors, cats somewhat less so, because, we kind of stopped putting effort into fully domesticating them since their benefit (mousing) is so passive by nature? And also, the way their neural net works, it's a lot more birdlike than you'd expect (hyper-independence forward).

@subnetter @mischievoustomato @pwm @f0x people who train cats say that cats can't really associate rewards with their own behavior unless it's given absolutely instantly, or if there's some kind of proxy that means "reward is coming!" which you trigger immediately when they do the right thing, i.e. with a clicker.

I have hypotheses why this is, has to do with the fact they don't hunt socially and so the mechanism that reinforces their behaviors weights others' responses lower than dogs do (or at least doesn't emphasize them beyond baseline environmental signals) but I haven't really developed it. just an intuition.