So, now, i am reading a book by Dean Koontz called "taken" and i know its just a story but i wanted to ask, you all somthing.

Well this story is about a laboratory that was burnt down, because of various reasons, but in it they were, making smart animals, animals that can communicate with other people, so there's a dog, that is ultra smart, he can look after himself and even tell people in a primitive way what he wants, he listens to music, looks at pictures and can communicate with the person whho found him found him while walking in the woods, he is a golden retreiver called "Einstein" but there is also an expierment gone wrong called "the outsider" who kills people, he rips they're eyes out, and takes they're heads of, and bascially mutilates his victims, but he is alos ultra smart to the degree where he can lock doors and trick his victims, but he is intent on killing the dog, now "The Outsider" is half dog and half i dont know yet, (i haven t got that far)

Now the dog was "made" because they miltary was going to use him, by sending the dog into areas of interest so the dog can tell them what the people there are planning, and they can "brief" the dog on the next assigment.

Yes again i know its just a story, but do you think there will come a time where we will be able to communicate with animals, and also use them has miltary spies? Also why use dogs?

Yes. But, it wouldn't work, one of the first things that flee a war zone are animals, they either end up dead or running away from the firefight. Plus, don't you think it'd be a bit weird if a dog suddenly decided to come into a hideout ? Although I can see the usefullness for surveillance reasons.

Through Genetics, yes, it is possible. However, we can't manipulate it that well yet.

Koko is a 35 year-old lowland gorilla who learned to speak American Sign Language when she was just a baby. Her teacher, Dr. Penny Patterson, began working with Koko as a Ph.D. project at Stanford, thinking it would only be a 4-year study.

Thirty-some years later, Penny and Koko continue to work together at the Gorilla Foundation in one of the longest interspecies communication studies ever conducted, the only one with gorillas. Koko now has a vocabulary of over 1000 signs, and understands even more spoken English.

Koko has become famous not only for her language capabilities, but also her heart-warming relationship with kittens (captured in the book Koko's Kitten). As Penny says, "she's just as much a person as we are."


http://www.koko.org/friends/

C'mon Challenger, you do know about the light horse brigade?

Ya. But LA is talking about animals alone. Not animals with people on them..

Ya. But LA is talking about animals alone. Not animals with people on them..

yes animals alone,

now this dog is ultra brave and ultra bright

why would we bother LA, a microscopic electronic "fly" would be much harder to detect and more useful

So, now, i am reading a book by Dean Koontz called "taken" . . . .I love Dean Koontz. That was the first book of his I read and I've been hooked ever since. If you like him you're in for a treat, he must write two or three books a year. He's almost as prolific as Alan Dean Foster, another of my favorites.

You might like Foster's novel Lost and Found. A man and a dog are kidnapped by aliens who sell to collectors of exotic animals. They equip all of their captives with the ability to communicate in a common language, including enhancing their brain centers as needed, so the dog can suddenly talk. Foster does a good job with that, he's not suddenly an Einstein dog, just a dog who still enjoys chasing his tail but can now talk about how much he enjoys it. It's a trilogy, I haven't read the two sequels yet.Yes again i know its just a story, but do you think there will come a time where we will be able to communicate with animals, and also use them has miltary spies?Most other animals don't have the brainpower to communicate at such a useful level. Dogs can remember about a hundred names for specific objects (not a noun for all objects of a certain type AFAIK) and a few dozen verbs.

As other posters have pointed out, there are a few species with well-developed intelligence that manifests as language ability. Obviously our closest relatives, the other apes. A chimpanzee named Washoe has also learned ASL and I think she's the one who was teaching it to her own baby. Apes have the ability to actually use language, not just point-and-name like dogs. When a zebra walked by Koko's enclosure, an animal she'd never seen before, she said, "Look, a white tiger."

Parrots also show a lot of promise. An African Grey named Alex was able to describe an object as a "round, red key." Unfortunately he died at age 35, a big shame since that species can live to be 100.

And then there are the cetaceans. We've barely tapped into their brainpower since they don't live in our world. Whales make long complex strings of sounds, and unlike birds each pod has its own identifying call so they can find each other. The sounds can also vary from one instance to another, making it highly likely that they're communicating information.

The U.S. Navy (and surely other countries) already uses dolphins for underwater work, a relationship that has drawn a lot of controversy.Also why use dogs?Dean Koontz loves dogs and often poses with one in his P.R. photos. So many of his protagonists are handicapped--and one even had an elaborately trained service dog--that many of us speculate that Koontz himself has a disability and uses a service dog. I'm sure that information must be available on such a popular author (one of his earliest books has sold something like fifty million copies) but I haven't looked hard enough.

As to why dogs would figure so prominently in any human endeavor, remember that dogs were the first domestic animal, and moreover they domesticated themselves. They volunteered to live with us! This relationship is something that is in the "collective unconscious" of both species.

Consider that the dog-human bond was formed during the Mesolithic Era, when we were nomadic hunter gatherers, living in small extended-family groups, regarding other clans as hated competitors for scarce resources. (This is no exaggeration, archeologists have discovered that more than half of the adult skeletons they dig up from the pre-agricultural era are of people who were killed by other people.) We learned to live in harmony and cooperation with individuals of another species before we accomplished that with other humans.

I have suggested that that experience may have planted the idea in our heads that it might be possible to accomplish the same thing with another clan of humans. It might be that dogs are responsible for the fact that we ever considered inventing civilization at all.

He always has a smart dog in his books

Read "Seize the night" :)

I love Dean Koontz. That was the first book of his I read and I've been hooked ever since. If you like him you're in for a treat, he must write two or three books a year. He's almost as prolific as Alan Dean Foster, another of my favorites.

You might like Foster's novel Lost and Found. A man and a dog are kidnapped by aliens who sell to collectors of exotic animals. They equip all of their captives with the ability to communicate in a common language, including enhancing their brain centers as needed, so the dog can suddenly talk. Foster does a good job with that, he's not suddenly an Einstein dog, just a dog who still enjoys chasing his tail but can now talk about how much he enjoys it. It's a trilogy, I haven't read the two sequels yet.Most other animals don't have the brainpower to communicate at such a useful level. Dogs can remember about a hundred names for specific objects (not a noun for all objects of a certain type AFAIK) and a few dozen verbs.

As other posters have pointed out, there are a few species with well-developed intelligence that manifests as language ability. Obviously our closest relatives, the other apes. A chimpanzee named Washoe has also learned ASL and I think she's the one who was teaching it to her own baby. Apes have the ability to actually use language, not just point-and-name like dogs. When a zebra walked by Koko's enclosure, an animal she'd never seen before, she said, "Look, a white tiger."

Parrots also show a lot of promise. An African Grey named Alex was able to describe an object as a "round, red key." Unfortunately he died at age 35, a big shame since that species can live to be 100.

And then there are the cetaceans. We've barely tapped into their brainpower since they don't live in our world. Whales make long complex strings of sounds, and unlike birds each pod has its own identifying call so they can find each other. The sounds can also vary from one instance to another, making it highly likely that they're communicating information.

The U.S. Navy (and surely other countries) already uses dolphins for underwater work, a relationship that has drawn a lot of controversy.Dean Koontz loves dogs and often poses with one in his P.R. photos. So many of his protagonists are handicapped--and one even had an elaborately trained service dog--that many of us speculate that Koontz himself has a disability and uses a service dog. I'm sure that information must be available on such a popular author (one of his earliest books has sold something like fifty million copies) but I haven't looked hard enough.

As to why dogs would figure so prominently in any human endeavor, remember that dogs were the first domestic animal, and moreover they domesticated themselves. They volunteered to live with us! This relationship is something that is in the "collective unconscious" of both species.

Consider that the dog-human bond was formed during the Mesolithic Era, when we were nomadic hunter gatherers, living in small extended-family groups, regarding other clans as hated competitors for scarce resources. (This is no exaggeration, archeologists have discovered that more than half of the adult skeletons they dig up from the pre-agricultural era are of people who were killed by other people.) We learned to live in harmony and cooperation with individuals of another species before we accomplished that with other humans.

I have suggested that that experience may have planted the idea in our heads that it might be possible to accomplish the same thing with another clan of humans. It might be that dogs are responsible for the fact that we ever considered inventing civilization at all.

i love dean koontz, so far i have read

Odd Thomas (which is a blinding good book)
taking
the husband
santas twin
Mr Murder
Dragon Tears
Hideaway
strangers
bad place
wtchers

i think he is a brilliant writter, for me he's up there with stephen king

Thought the name of the story was "Watchers".

Try "Phantom's" by koontz in the middle of the night.