We all know that dogs have super keen senses that surpass the abilities of humans. They can sniff out bombs, alert us to intruders, and have the ability to turn us into piles of loving mush.
But one study says that dogs can even recognize whether or not a human is being a jerk.
A study published in the journal Neuroscience and Biobehavioural Reviews says that dogs can sense when a human is being mean to another human.
And they use this information to decide how they’re going to respond to someone.
“Dogs are known to consistently follow human pointing gestures. In this study, we asked whether dogs ‘automatically’ do this or whether they flexibly adjust their behavior depending upon the reliability of the pointer, demonstrated in an immediately preceding event,” the study says.
Researchers had dog owners act out different scenarios: one where a volunteer helped someone struggling to open a jar, one where the volunteer was passive, and another where one flat out refused to help.
At the end of the scenarios, the volunteers gave the dog a treat.
The study found that the dogs were just as likely to take the treat from the person who was passive as they were to take it from the person that helped their owner open the jar. They were, however, more likely to take the treat from the volunteer who was nice and offered to help their owner open the jar.
But the dogs were significantly more likely to ignore the volunteer who was mean and refused to help their owner open the jar.
The study found that dogs are more likely not to trust those who are jerks.
And that says a lot especially when treats are at stake. This means that they are capable of judging human behavior.
“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 study says.
So, if your dog is staring at you like they’re judging you, they probably are.
You might want to start watching what you say around your dogs and not just the children. You can also watch your dog’s behavior around people that you’re iffy about.
We’ve all heard that dogs can sense danger, but apparently, they can also sense whether or not you’re an asshole.
And if a dog thinks you’re a jerk, you probably are… a big one.
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