[Giszmo]

All anecdotal. Wish they would gps-tag a dog and proof it's commuting between a small set of stations regularly visiting the same stations. I mean, using the train to just get away from where you are would already be cool, but that's not the author's claim.

[rjd]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casper_(cat) Heres a similar ca story thats not anecdotal.

I'm not at all surprised by the story growing up with working dogs on a rural farm. Dogs would constantly surprise you with the understanding of the world around them, often better than people you would work along side. One dog we had knew the locations of buildings by name, and you could tell it the speed to get there and wait for you (I think via the urgency in your voice). You could say "met at the house" and it would turn and head straight back to home, or "go to the kennels", it'd shoot off and wait for there etc.. (Collies BTW, various other breeds we had struggled with simple things like avoiding running head first into barns if you called their name out loud while they ran LOL).

Whats more fascinating to me is this Boing Boing piece on baboons raising pet dogs http://boingboing.net/2013/04/26/baboons-raise-pet-dogs.html

[nandemo]

It's not so much that it's anecdotal, it's that article that's poorly written. Financial Times has a better one.

> Neuronov says there are some 500 strays that live in the metro stations, especially during the colder months, but only about 20 have learned how to ride the trains. [...] “They orient themselves in a number of ways,” Neuronov adds. “They figure out where they are by smell, by recognising the name of the station from the recorded announcer’s voice and by time intervals. If, for example, you come every Monday and feed a dog, that dog will know when it’s Monday and the hour to expect you, based on their sense of time intervals from their ­biological clocks.”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/628a8500-ff1c-11de-a677-00144feab4...