BUDAPEST?In 1994 when ?d?m Mikl?si,
then a young ethologist at E?tv?s Lor?nd
University in Budapest, learned that his lab's
director planned to switch the team's
research from fish to dogs, he couldn't
believe it.
"
'My god, are you crazy?' That's
what I thought, although I didn't say it," says
Mikl?si, who now directs the university's
highly regarded dog cognition lab. "None of
us were happy about this." At the time, scien
tists who studied animal behavior and cogni
tion were busy investigating a variety of
species, including ants and dolphins, but
they shunned dogs because they thought the
animal's domestication, and the bond
between human and dog (Canis familiaris),
precluded objective study. In fact, lab direc
tor Vilmos Cs?nyi's interest had been spurred
by his admiration for Flip, a mixed-breed dog
he had found in the woods and adopted. "He
would tell us some crazy story about Flip and
say, 'Now, devise an experiment to fin