Take ten dog owners and ask them what they think of the ability of their animal’s judgment. We are ready to bet that almost everyone will answer that their dog is very good at getting an opinion on people: if they like someone, it is certainly good, and vice versa. But is it true or is it an extreme anthropomorphization that we invented?
A controversial study
A team from the Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology in Vienna, in collaboration with Kyoto University, has tried a systematic approach to the matter, trying to understand if dogs really are good judges of our character or not. The study, which leaves with more questions than answers, is published on Animal Cognition.
So far, the most complete study on the issue had been conducted by the Wolf Science Center, Austria: however, it was aimed at wolves and stray dogs living in herds, not to pets. And in fact the study showed how neither wolves nor wild dogs form a judgment with humans with whom they interact, perhaps because they are not used to. The new study, on the other hand, involved 40 domestic dogs, which were made to interact with a couple of humans.
The experiment worked like this: a dog was put in the company of two humans, one of whom filled him with compliments and above all food, while the other gave him nothing. Another dog was allowed to observe this interaction from distance. After that, the first dog was taken away and the second was brought closer to humans: the purpose was to observe if he showed some preference for the more generous one.
Well, the experiment did not go as expected: the dogs did not show any preference for the most nice human – for example, they did not always go before him, nor did the holidays made him more convinced than the other human, the one with the short poaches. Obviously every now and then some dogs approached the “good” person first, but the study explains that these are normal statistical variations, not of clear preferences.
Maybe the dogs are as we believed?
In short, the dogs, apparently, are not as quick in the judgment as we thought: not even the fact that they always live in contact with us seems to directly influence their ability. However, the authors of the study admit that the conclusions are not definitive, and could be linked to the form of the experiment: their advice is to continue investigating the matter until we have a clearer picture, trying to involve dogs of all ages, breed and lifestyle (therefore including guiding dogs and police dogs).
