Are we clumsy or do we make fun of them? I can understand it. The study of how they can read the intentions of human beings
Dogs are able to recognize where a person’s attitude is clumsy or they are movements aimed at make fun of them. To carry out the study, published on bioRxiv and appeared on Science, were researchers from the Vienna University of Veterinary Medicine. The study provided further evidence for dogs’ abilities to read human intentions.
The question of whether or not the canines should correct the thoughts of their humans has always been a source of discussion. Cognitive biologists have already shown how these four-legged companions are able to understand what is meant by pointing to something, such as a hidden snack. I can, however, stay really interpreting the thoughts of the humans around them or have they lived with the man for so long that they have simply learned to make an association between, for example, a hand and a ready-to-eat delicacy?
In a new studio, Christoph Volter, a psychologist at the Medical University of Vienna, and colleagues used a comparative veterinary experiment for whether human children can read the intentions of adults. The researchers attempted to offer treats to a number of dogs, then “awkwardly” dropped the snack or teased the dogs, tearing it off just before the puppy could eat it. Even though the basic hand gestures were the same, the dogs seemed more frustrated with the teasing conditionsuggesting to understand the difference between good and bad intentions.
To conduct the work, a member of Völter’s team put herself “in jail” or so it might seem to the dogs. In a university laboratory room, Maud Steinmann, then a university student of biology at the University of Applied Sciences (HAS), sat in a rectangular box with a mesh on the sides and with a clear plastic panel in front of her. In the center of the panel, the team had drilled a hole the size of a golf ball. The researchers then led into the room a series of 48 companion dogs of various breeds.
Eight cameras, in various positions, recorded everything and a 3D tracking software, driven by artificial intelligence, it captured every movement, from a twitch of the tail to a slight shift in direction. Then the mind games began. In a series of experiments, Steinmann held a piece of cage sausage close to the hole, but each time the cage approached, the snack “slipped” out of his fingers, falling into the cage. Afterwards, he kept the tidbit in the hole again, but pulled it off as soon as the dog’s muzzle came close. The dogs seemed to know when they were being teased. Although the study is preliminary, the results are important, especially considering how difficult it is to understand what is going on in the mind of another species. The work supports the idea that dogs are attuned to thoughts and humans.
Alessandro Berlingeri