by Ted Kerasote
On our River of No Return trip I also learned something more about Merle's past. One night, as we were camped by a lake, clouds covered the sky, and lightning began to flash. Soon it was snowing—heavy, wet snow in the middle of July. I was in my small, two-person tent, and Merle, as was his habit, was sleeping outside, by the zippered front door. No matter how much I cajoled him, he refused to come into the tent, and tonight was no different. Instead of joining me, he built oval-shaped nests in the duff.
These he designed with great care, excavating them with a different energy than he displayed when digging for marmots or ground squirrels. When digging out a rodent, he was feverishly excited. When excavating his bed, he was methodical and determined, taking it below grade several inches and then lying in it to test its shape. Inevitably he'd be dissatisfied. Standing, he'd dig some more, deepening the cavity here and there for his ribs and hips. As a last measure, he'd scratch out a hollow on one side into which he could snug his shoulder while laying his chin upon the nest's lip to gaze out at the world. I had never seen a dog so particular about his sleeping comfort, and on more than one occasion I had remarked, "Tu es un chien vraiment méticuleux, Monsieur."
In return, he would give me his put-upon look.
"You can come into the tent anytime you want," I'd tell him, holding open the tent door from where I was lying in my sleeping bag.
He'd look away with an air of mild irritation, indicating, "What good will it do me to be inside when I have to keep a lookout for bears?"
"I have pepper spray," I told him.
He'd hunch his shoulders and peer into the forest with a steady, sweeping gaze: "I must watch while you sleep."
And he did watch—all night. When I glanced out at him, he was staring intently into the darkness or dozing lightly, snapping awake at the slightest rustle. By dawn, he'd be haggard and have to catch naps throughout the day.
Now, in the middle of Idaho's River of No Return Wilderness, he lay in his nest as the sodden snow covered him.
"Come inside," I urged him gently.
As a reply, he huddled farther into his bed, which did little to protect him from the snow and wind.
Reaching out, I snagged his collar and pulled him toward the door. Flailing desperately, he twisted around, pulled his head out of the collar, and ran to the nearest tree, where he stared at me malevolently, as if I might have tried to drag him to his doom. He snorted at me, then began to dig a new nest directly under the shelter of the tree.
"Okay," I said, "I tried."
As the lightning continued to flash, I zipped down the tent door. The last I saw of him, he was casting dirt between his hind legs. In the morning, he looked totally played out, soaking wet and shivering from nose to tail as he stood by the front door of the tent, not uttering a sound except his polite little cluck, almost inaudible for the chattering of his teeth: "Could you please get up? You hung my food in a tree, and I'd like something to eat."
Two hours later, he was fine—fed and basking on a rock in the sunshine. But his behavior troubled me. What was it about the tent that scared him? And was his fear of it somehow connected to his having rejected the doghouse? I wondered if he had been confined in a small space as a young dog, and the experience had permanently scared him.
A few months later, on a trip in the Absaroka Mountains north of Jackson Hole, his fear rose again. We had made camp and eaten dinner when it began to snow. This storm was far worse than the one in Idaho. We were two thousand feet higher, at tree line, and it was September. Merle had dug a nest by the front door of the tent and huddled in it as the frigid wind blew over him.
"Come inside the tent," I said to him in a soothing tone, trying not to spook him as I stretched out my hand to grasp his collar.
He leapt to his feet.
"Merle," I said, lacing my voice with sweetness. "Please come inside."
He stood just out of reach.
"Come," I now ordered him.
That was it. Looking at me sternly, he turned his back and went to a nearby fir tree, under whose boughs he began to dig another sleeping spot.
Well, I wasn't going to freeze. I zipped the tent door closed and burrowed into my sleeping bag. About an hour later, I sensed him at the entrance. Opening it, I shone my headlamp outside. It was a wild scene: Snow blew horizontally; the trees lashed; the wind sounded like a runaway freight train; visibility was down to ten yards. Merle stood by the door, his fur plastered with snow, his eyelashes crusted with ice.
"Come inside," I said in my most entreating tone, and reached out my hand.
He slipped away, panting frantically. "I can't. I can't. But it's so cold out here."
And it was. My hand became numb and white as I reached for him, so I knew the wind-chill must have been about 30 below zero. Had Merle been alone, he'd have headed downhill into thick timber and shelter. But I was anchoring him to the spot. We were at an impasse: He wasn't going to leave without me, and I wasn't about to get out of the warm tent and move camp.
I slipped back inside and waited. Merle came closer, giving me a pleading look: "Do something, or let's leave."
I lunged, tackling him around his neck and shoulders. He yowled in terror, raking my chest and cheeks with his claws. I dragged him into the tent, snagging a hand through his collar, and twisting it so he couldn't escape. But as I zipped the door shut, he leapt against it, desperate to get out. I tackled him again, pinning him to the floor before wrapping my sleeping bag over him. He continued to struggle, yelping and crying out frantically.
"Easy, easy," I hummed to him. "Easy. It's all right. There's nothing to be afraid of."
I pulled the sleeping bag back from his head and saw his mouth wrenched open, his teeth bared, as he hyperventilated. Petting his head, I leaned my mouth down to his ear and said, "Hey, hey, hey," softer and softer, placing my other hand on his chest and holding him.
"You're fine. I'm right here. There's nothing to be afraid of." I pushed my headlamp aside so that it wouldn't shine in his eyes, which were bugged out and darting wildly up to the low ceiling.
I began to massage him through the sleeping bag, rubbing it over him like a towel. I worked from his neck to his rump, steadily warming him as I murmured to him, "Oh, he's the pup of my dreams. I don't know where I'd find a better dog than this. He's simply the best." And then I began to sing, "I know a dog and his name is Merle. I know a dog and his name is Merle. I know a dog and his name is Merle. He's the best dog in the world." His rapid breathing began to slow, his tensed muscles relaxed, and his face took on a look of surprise—nothing bad was happening to him.
"See," I told him. "It's pretty nice in here, isn't it?"
A moment later, I felt his tail try to wag. But it was trapped beneath me. I continued to rub and fluff his fur, then I took off his collar, and got under the sleeping bag with him. Putting an arm under his head, I wrapped the sleeping bag over us.
"Better?" I looked him in the eye.
His tail thumped hard. Then he regarded me with a calm and tender expression before closing his eyes and putting his nose into my neck. He rubbed his forehead against my chin, back and forth several times, and gave a great, weary sigh, the kind I hadn't heard from him since the moment he had refused to get into the raft on the San Juan River—a sigh of being emotionally wrung out. He sighed again, this time with an air of peaceful letting go, of being protected. Pressing his knees against my belly and chest, he was asleep within a minute.
I lay there, staring at the ceiling of the tent as it shuddered in the wind and wondering what could have provoked such terror in him. Maybe someone had lured him into a tent and beaten him. Perhaps he had raided a chicken coop and gotten stuck inside. I would never know. But unlike many dogs or people with embedded fears, his fear of tents vanished completely after that night.
In fact, it more than vanished. As darkness fell the next evening, I walked away from camp to brush my teeth, for the smell of toothpaste can attract grizzlies. Looking back to the clearing, I
cast my eyes around the forest, but Merle was nowhere to be seen. I figured he was off doing his evening reconnaissance before settling into his nest. Shaking off my toothbrush, I walked back to the clearing, knelt at the door of the tent, and took off my boots. I heard a noise and looked inside.
"Ha-ha-ha."
Sprawled on my sleeping pad, Merle gave me the classic grin of the dog who's been caught in the act. His tail drummed with a mixture of delight and nervousness: "This is great! I hope you don't mind."
Laughing, I took off my boots and slid him off the pad, making some room for myself. He groaned melodramatically. I got under the sleeping bag. The next thing I knew, he was edging onto the pad.
"So, this is how I get paid back for curing you of your fear of tents?"
Pushing his snout under my hips, he shoved, trying to make some room for himself.
"Who's going to watch out for grizzly bears," I asked, "if you're sleeping in here?"
He squirmed up to my face, looked me in the eye, and by way of reply licked me on the mouth, just once: "I think we'll be fine. Just move over."
Among the many stories of how animals come to know their world, one of the most illuminating is that of Clever Hans, a sleek and stately horse—called by some an Arabian stallion, by others a Russian trotting horse—who was owned in the early 1900s by a retired instructor of mathematics named Wilhelm von Osten. Von Osten, who lived in Berlin and was in his sixties, claimed that his horse could do addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, as well as read, spell, and identify colors and musical tones.
Von Osten demonstrated the astounding abilities of his horse by asking him questions whose answers could be converted into a number that Hans would tap out with his right hoof. For example, if von Osten asked him, "What are the factors of twenty-eight?", Hans would tap out two, four, seven, fourteen, and twenty-eight. He could also nod his head to indicate "yes," shake his head back and forth for "no," and use his long nose to point in the directions of up, down, right, and left.
Clever Hans was soon the talk of the German capital and attracted the attention of the scientific community, whose members saw in his abilities what one of them called "the essential similarity between the human and the animal mind, which doctrine has been coming more and more into favor since the time of Darwin." One of those who was both impressed and puzzled by Hans's talents was Carl Stumpf, the director at the Psychological Institute of the University of Berlin. On September 12, 1904, Stumpf helped to convene a commission consisting of veterinarians, circus animal trainers, zoologists, physiologists, and psychologists. They all watched von Osten and Hans perform and came to the conclusion that the white-haired man—wearing a large, black slouch hat—wasn't giving the horse any cues or signs. Indeed, when other questioners replaced von Osten, Clever Hans still gave the correct responses to the questions he was posed. The commissioners unanimously agreed that no trickery was involved and that "this is a case ... worthy of a serious and incisive investigation." Stumpf suggested to one of his colleagues at the institute, Oskar Pfungst, that Clever Hans would make an interesting study in "experimental animal and human psychology."
Pfungst proved thorough. In fact, the research he conducted has since been cited as a landmark in methodological sophistication, laying the groundwork for how future studies of animals would be conducted. He began by isolating Hans in a large tent in the courtyard of von Osten's apartment building, so that external distractions wouldn't influence Hans. He then recruited other individuals besides von Osten to ask the horse questions. By the end of the experiment, Hans was responding to as many as forty different questioners. Pfungst performed a large number of tests, to rule out chance, and varied the questioners, who sometimes knew the right answer and sometimes didn't. Sometimes they were deliberately given the wrong answer to see whether Hans could truly figure out the problems by himself. Last, Pfungst varied the distance between Hans and his questioners and even fitted the horse with blinders, so that he couldn't see who was talking to him.
Sadly, for all those thrilled by the seeming intelligence of the horse, his performance declined markedly when the questioners didn't know the right answers, or when they did but asked their questions while standing outside Hans's field of view. Pfungst concluded that both von Osten and the questioners must be giving Hans cues to the correct answers without realizing it.
Pfungst then carefully observed all the questioners, including himself, as they interacted with the horse. It wasn't long before he concluded that everyone to whom Clever Hans responded was giving the horse very subtle signs while he was striking the ground with his hooves and approaching the right answer. The questioner's body would subtly tense as Hans's hoofbeat approached the answer and then give an involuntary postural change when the horse reached it: a raising of the head, a twitching of an eyebrow, or even no more than the barest dilation of a nostril. At this moment, Hans would stop counting with his hoof. He was, it turned out, not mathematically gifted, but a master at reading the body language of people. As for Hans's shaking his head "yes" and "no," he was following the movement of his questioners' heads. As for indicating colored cloths, he was following the stare of his questioners' eye. When he couldn't see his questioners he not only failed to answer their questions, he also displayed great agitation.
Pfungst was not satisfied to stop here, though. He moved the experiment to his laboratory and, using himself in the role of Clever Hans, asked questioners standing close by him to think of a number between one and one hundred. He would then tap with his right hand and stop when he perceived that the questioner was giving him a subtle signal that he had arrived at the correct number. He was almost always right. None of the questioners was told the purpose of the experiment or what particular phenomena Pfungst was investigating, yet virtually all of them—twenty-three out of twenty-five—made the same involuntary raising of the head as the questioners of Clever Hans had, a movement Pfungst was able to graph by placing levers against the questioners' heads. These levers were in turn attached to pens that marked a smoked paper revolving on a drum. The graphs they produced were startling—the distances that the questioners moved their heads when giving a correct answer averaged only a millimeter. Pfungst later calculated that when von Osten interacted with Hans, he moved his head merely one-fifth of a millimeter, a movement slightly accentuated by the large brim of his slouch hat. That these distances were so tiny—in von Osten's case quite literally a hairbreadth—didn't matter. It was enough.
In this respect, neither man nor horse was exceptional. Both happened to be members of species, Equus caballus and Homo sapiens, whose ancestors had survived by interpreting subtle variations in the body language of their predators, minute distinctions that Pfungst described as "truly microscopic movements." Later psychologists would name this the "Clever Hans Effect," defining it, in the words of Robert Wozniak, a professor of psychology at Bryn Mawr College and interpreter of Pfungst's work, as "the fact that a subject's behavior may be influenced by subtle and unintentional cueing on the part of a questioner and that this cueing may reflect the experimenter's own expectations." In the case of Clever Hans, he had been trained to use his equine inheritance to an entertaining and lucrative end. People also use their inherited ability to read body language: Mind readers and poker players employ such skills every day.
Once, though, relying upon such skills meant the difference between life and death. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Hans Kruuk, a zoologist from Oxford University, studied an original example of the Clever Hans Effect in one of the horse's wild cousins, the zebra of Tanzania's Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro Crater. On some days, Kruuk found that the zebra would merely watch hyenas approach to within five or ten meters of them. On other days, the zebra would begin to flee when the hyenas were still over one hundred meters away. Kruuk wondered how the zebra could possibly know when hyenas were intent on hunting them and when it was safe to ignore them.
Part of the zebra's reaction, he discovered, wa
s related to the size of the hyena pack. He observed that only one to three hyenas would typically hunt a herd of wildebeest. By contrast, the average size of a group of hyenas attacking a herd of zebra was 10.8 animals. The difference lay in how much harder zebra were to bring down than wildebeest.
Wildebeest also proved to be adept readers of hyenas. If they spied a large pack of them approaching, they wouldn't run. Experience had shown them that large packs of hyenas always bypassed them and targeted zebra. Obviously, both the zebra and wildebeest could count.
Yet zebra and wildebeest would sometimes watch a group of hyenas approaching—a group that was appropriately sized to hunt them—and not flee. There was something about the predator's gaze, and by extension its intentions, that both the zebra and wildebeest could read accurately.
Nearly sixty years before, Pfungst had described this process when he saw that Clever Hans produced the correct answers only when his questioners focused their minds on that answer. "The state required for a successful response," he observed, "was not the mere passive expectation that the horse would tap the number demanded of him nor the wish that he might tap it, but rather the determination that he should do it. An inward 'Thou shalt', as it were, was spoken to the horse."
Given Kruuk's findings, perhaps hyenas, by their very posture, can't help but give an "I am hunting you" signal to those zebra or wildebeest they want to eat. And the zebra and wildebeest read these infinitesimally fine changes in the hyenas' demeanor. The rewards for doing so are significant. Prey species save a great deal of energy by not running away prematurely. By running away when it's appropriate to do so, they stay alive. And predators watch their prey just as keenly. So much so that many herd animals—gazelles, pronghorn antelope, mule deer, even bison—will stot, bound with a stiff-legged gait, advertising to their predators that they're in such good condition that they can waste energy bouncing up and down. In effect, they're saying, "Don't bother chasing me."