Clever Dog Lab

People usually understand what others are doing by reasoning about their intentions, not just by watching their movements. For example, we can tell the difference between someone playing or being rough, even if the movements look similar. Scientists still do not know how much animals share this ability.
In this study, we tested whether dogs react differently to human actions that look similar but have different intentions. We showed 40 dogs short videos of a person interacting with a dog. In one video, the person gently petted the dog’s snout, which is a familiar and friendly action. In another video, the person held the dog’s snout closed, which is more unusual and can be seen as ambiguous or unclear in intention. While the dogs watched the videos, we measured where they looked and how their pupils changed, using eye-tracking technology.
We expected that if dogs automatically understand the difference between these actions, their eye movements or pupil sizes might change. However, we did not find clear evidence that dogs reacted differently to the two actions, even though they paid attention to the movements closely (the picture shows they mainly focused on the face areas of both species).
These results suggest that dogs may not process third-party human actions in the same way humans do, at least in this situation. The findings also highlight that more research is needed to better understand how dogs perceive and interpret social interactions they observe".

Congratulations to Lucrezia Lonardo and colleagues fior this new publication.