Most of the time, we think we choose our dogs.
But the reality is, there are times when our dogs choose us. As an animal that has evolved alongside us for thousands of years, dogs have a unique relationship with humans.
While the science behind canine psychology is relatively young, they have already broken past assumptions about how empathic and intelligent these animals truly are.
An experiment in Japan revealed that dogs can actually discern who they can trust.
In the experiment, researchers pointed to a container full of food. Quite obviously, the dog ran to it immediately.
Then, they repeated the experiment but this time the container was empty. The dog ran to it, only to find out that the food wasn’t there anymore. As early as the third attempt, the dog refused to go near the container.
The experiment was done on another 34 puppies to see if the behavior is consistent.
It revealed that dogs don’t follow cues from people they deem “untrustworthy”. The experiment surprised researchers because it showed how intelligent dogs are.
For one, they can follow visual cues. Dogs know that when you point toward something, it meant that you are calling their attention to whatever that is. Not all animals, even monkeys, display that kind of non-verbal comprehension.
Secondly, dogs, they found out, are quick to learn from experience. In such a short time, they already know if a person will most likely play on them.
Dogs are known to have a non-verbal language with humans.
And even if they know that a person is cueing them, in this case, to go to the container by pointing at it, dogs can correct their own behavior and decide not to follow.
Akiko Takaoka of Kyoto University said that this only shows that “dogs have more sophisticated intelligence than we thought”.
“These results suggest that not only dogs are highly skilled at understanding human pointing gestures, but also they make inferences about the reliability of a human who presents cues and consequently modify their behavior flexibly depending on the inference.” The research also stated.
But this is not the only thing dogs are known to understand.
In another study, researchers showed that dogs can actually learn words. While the skill of remembering words can vary from one dog to another, a dog can be trained to remember more than 1,000 different words.
And speaking of words, researchers also showed that dogs also process the words we use in speech and not just how we say them.
These skills may have been the effect of evolving alongside humans.
And with this level of relationship, it is also not surprising that dogs are emotionally connected to their owners. In one of the “most striking experiments”, dogs’ caudate nucleus – a part of the brain involved in emotional attachment – flared up with activity when presented with their owner’s smell.
These things only go to show how truly amazing dogs are and if there’s anything we can pick up from these experiments, it’s this: Maybe don’t prank your dog so much because it might affect the trust between the two of you.
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