By: Anuradha
If you are a dog lover, I’m sure that you will be fascinated with this amazing discovery about dogs. Dogs have always been best friends of man from ancient times and there are sometimes, that you may feel like you can say anything to your dog including the secrets that you have never told to anyone before. You would surely trust your dog but does it trust you?
A recent study conducted by Akiko Takaoka of Kyoto University in Japan shows that dogs are very good at understanding how reliable a person is and it will decide whether to like someone or not accordingly.
The researchers wanted to know whether a dog would trust a person who lied it and they divided the experiment into three parts.
The research was basically focused on a dog’s behavioural study and according to John Bradshaw at the University of Bristol, dogs prefer this world to be certain.
In the experiment, dog owners would point to a container with foods. Dogs would surely run to it and then owners would point to a container without foods. Dogs would believe their masters and will run to the second container as well.
It was previously understood that dogs would run to an object that their owners point at. So, if the gestures are not fixed, dogs can become nervous and stressed.
When a container was pointed for the third time, dogs would not run to it. they didn’t believe the liars and out of 34 dogs that were participated in the experiment, no one went for the container for the third time. According to Animal Cognition Journal, dogs would use their previous experiences to know that a person was unreliable.
The same experiment is expected to be conducted on wolves as they are the closest relatives to dogs. This experiment also shows the idea that dogs are curious about new things.
Some other researchers which were conducted by using dogs say that dog control how other people interact with their owners. In the experiment, their owners asked for a help from some people and they didn’t offer it. Later these same people who didn’t help the dog’s master were called and they were asked to give the dog a treat. Surprisingly, the dogs would not take any treat from these people who treated their masters badly. They preferred to be fed by those who helped.
Another study conducted by Neuroscience and Bio behavioural Reviews state that dogs can understand the communications between their masters and strangers. They generally avoid the people who mistreated their owners.
It was founded that dogs are good at reading our facial expressions and gestures. But these latest studies show that they are actually much more intelligent than we think them to be. They can decipher our gestures and they can decide whether to follow the social cues or not. However, they live mostly in the present without having any consideration for the past or the future.
So, if you mislead your dog, it might not trust you and if your dog doesn’t like your friends, watch out for them too!