Dogs may understand human point of view, study suggests

If you sometime feels like your pet dog is giving you that knowing look, you are probably right. A new study by Dr. Juliane Kaminski of the University of Portsmouth's Department of Psychology shows that dogs are capable of understanding a human's point of view, ScienceDaily reported. Kaminski's study showed that when a human forbids a dog from taking food, dogs are four times more likely to disobey in a dark room than a lit room, "suggesting they take into account what the human can or cannot see." "That's incredible because it implies dogs understand the human can't see them, meaning they might understand the human perspective," Kaminski said . ScienceDaily said this was the first study to examine if dogs can differentiate between different levels of light when they are developing strategies on whether to steal food. Kaminski said humans usually attribute certain qualities and emotions to other living things and may feel "our own dog is clever or sensitive, but that's us thinking, not them." "These results suggest humans might be right, where dogs are concerned, but we still can't be completely sure if the results mean dogs have a truly flexible understanding of the mind and others' minds. It has always been assumed only humans had this ability," she added. Experiments In her research, Kaminski ran experiments in varied light conditions, with each test having a dog forbidden by a human from taking the food. The research used 42 female and 42 male domestic dogs aged one year or older. The dogs were chosen only if they were comfortable without their owners in the room, even in complete darkness, and if they were interested in food. "The results of these tests suggest that dogs are deciding it's safer to steal the food when the room is dark because they understand something of the human's perspective," Kaminski said. But she said more research is needed to identify what mechanisms are controlling the dogs' behavior. ScienceDaily said previous studies showed chimpanzees have a sophisticated understanding and seem to know when someone else can or can't see them and can also remember what others have seen in the past. Many earlier research papers also found that for dogs, a human's eyes are an important signal when deciding how to behave, and that they respond more willingly to attentive humans, than inattentive ones. — DVM, GMA News