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Are Dogs Really Man's Best Friend? · Stuff You Should Know

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  Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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  Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
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  Speaker 1: from how stuff works dot com? Welcome to the How
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  Speaker 1: Stuff Works Podcast. I'm editor Candice Giftson, joined today by
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  Speaker 1: two of my best friends in the office, Brior Josh Clark,
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  Speaker 1: and editors. Hello. So we're talking today about whether or
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  Speaker 1: not a dog is really a man's best friend or
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  Speaker 1: a woman's true Short answer to this is yes, of course,
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  Speaker 1: but illustraining this concept with the story of a Japanese
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  Speaker 1: dog and a key to new named We're all big
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  Speaker 1: fans of how Chico here at how stuff works dot com.
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  Speaker 1: A little background around the office. Candice wept openly when
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  Speaker 1: she read this article. Um, it was amazing. It was
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  Speaker 1: an amazing site. Uh and we now use it as
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  Speaker 1: a measuring stick to determine whether, well how much humanity
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  Speaker 1: one of our coworkers has. And a long story short, Um,
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  Speaker 1: this one of our one of our poor coworkers, is
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  Speaker 1: now considered a robot because she did not actually Uma
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  Speaker 1: will cry at this article. So, um, we're all big
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  Speaker 1: fans of hu Chiko. Somebody want to give some Chiko
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  Speaker 1: background A Chico. I'd love to give some background on hachik.
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  Speaker 1: His nickname was Hatchi. Essentially, he was a professor's dog
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  Speaker 1: at a Japanese university and they were very close, so
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  Speaker 1: close in fact, that Hitchiki would walk the professor to
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  Speaker 1: work every day at the train station and then wait
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  Speaker 1: for him at the train station when he came home
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  Speaker 1: at night. And this continued for say ten twelve years,
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  Speaker 1: Is that right? Yeah, I'd say about that. And then
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  Speaker 1: one day, very tragically, the professor actually died while he
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  Speaker 1: was at school and never returned, but Hichiko, undaunted waited
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  Speaker 1: for him at the train station. He continued to come
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  Speaker 1: every day and look for the professor even though he
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  Speaker 1: wasn't coming home. And it got to the point that
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  Speaker 1: people started to notice that the professor's dog clearly needed
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  Speaker 1: a human being to belong to, so they gave the
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  Speaker 1: dog to another family, but he routinely escaped from home
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  Speaker 1: and returned every day to the train station in a
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  Speaker 1: very um sad, Victorian orphan kind of way. He contracted
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  Speaker 1: all sorts of diseases. Yeah, he he got the mange.
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  Speaker 1: He became a little, uh, little street warren. I guess
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  Speaker 1: you could possibly say, although they cleaned him up pretty well,
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  Speaker 1: he's now stuffed at the Museum of Nature and Science
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  Speaker 1: in Tokyo. Um. Even what they did, he's white as
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  Speaker 1: a whistle here. Um that they buried his bones next
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  Speaker 1: to the owner. Yeah, so had she goes in two
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  Speaker 1: places at once. Um, we're here around here on the office.
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  Speaker 1: We actually had a pretty big debate over this article. Um.
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  Speaker 1: I when I wrote it, Chris actually edited. Candice had
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  Speaker 1: nothing to do with except for crying. Um. The some
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  Speaker 1: of the wording got changed. Originally I that Chico waited patiently,
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  Speaker 1: and we had something of a debate cannad dog wait patiently? Um?
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  Speaker 1: Or was what was I just anthropogenizing it? Well, no,
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  Speaker 1: anthropogenizing it. You have to say it with the hitch
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  Speaker 1: right after. We'll see. The thing is at how stuff works.
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  Speaker 1: You know. One of the big things that we strive
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  Speaker 1: for is to be as as scientifically accurate as possible,
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  Speaker 1: and you know, we don't want to attribute these feelings
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  Speaker 1: to a dog. But this is one of those things
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  Speaker 1: that I'm actually kind of glad that we had the
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  Speaker 1: debate about, because this is uh, this you know, obviously
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  Speaker 1: this can't be quantified scientifically. But if you look at
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  Speaker 1: Chico coming back day after day and fighting with other
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  Speaker 1: dogs and catching you know, doggy diseases on his way
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  Speaker 1: to the train station. Um. You know you've got to
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  Speaker 1: say that that's I mean, obviously, you know, he could
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  Speaker 1: have been waiting for people to give it more treats.
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  Speaker 1: It could have been something, you know, very survivalistic. But
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  Speaker 1: it doesn't seem that way. It seems like he was loyal.
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  Speaker 1: It seems like he was waiting patiently, so sure, And
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  Speaker 1: I mean he was doing this long before people started
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  Speaker 1: giving him treats as well. Um. And also, there's been
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  Speaker 1: studies that have shown that dogs are capable of displaying
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  Speaker 1: or at least exhibiting um secondary emotions like jealousy, shame, pride, guilt.
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  Speaker 1: And I think any dog owner knows that, you know,
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  Speaker 1: the dog can feel emotions, can show emotions, including ones
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  Speaker 1: that are supposedly just relegated to humans and chimps um.
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  Speaker 1: So I don't think saying that he was waiting patiently
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  Speaker 1: was anthropomorphizing him. Well. I think it's just simply one
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  Speaker 1: of those situations where you know, we were airing on
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  Speaker 1: the side of caution. I think it's up to everybody
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  Speaker 1: to make up their own minds, and you can make
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  Speaker 1: up your own mind too, Candice when they read is
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  Speaker 1: a Dog really a Man's Best Friend? On how stuff
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  Speaker 1: works dot com Exactly. For more on this and thousands
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  Speaker 1: of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Let
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  Speaker 1: us know what you think. Send an email to podcast
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