Dogsof course do make a study of the family that they have become partof, or at least the smart ones do. In fact the whole subject of dogcleverness needs to be properly investigated. The best are notautomatons simply channeled.
Wehad an excellent farm dog who simply chose to not eat what we wouldnot eat ourselves or directly give him. He still hunted out thepests, but then brought them to us for disposal. And he always actedin an intelligent manner.
Knowingthis, the following item is unsurprising and is actually a niceexercise in experimental design to ferret out the actual details. Itstill needs to be applied against the population of dogs.
Dogs understandhuman perspective, say researchers
By Sean Coughlan 11February 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-21411249
Dogs are more capableof understanding situations from a human's point of view than haspreviously been recognised, according to researchers.
They found dogs werefour times more likely to steal food they had been forbidden, whenlights were turned off so humans in the room could not see.
This suggested thedogs were able to alter their behaviour when they knew their owners'perspective had changed.
The study, publishedin Animal Cognition, conducted tests on 84 dogs.
The experiments hadbeen trying to find whether dogs could adapt their behavior inresponse to the changed circumstances of their human owners.
It wanted to see ifdogs had a "flexible understanding" that could show theyunderstood the viewpoint of a human.
Dog's understanding
It found that when thelights were turned off, dogs in a room with their human owners weremuch more likely to disobey and steal forbidden food.
The study says it is"unlikely that the dogs simply forgot that the human was in theroom" when there was no light. Instead it seems as though thedogs were able to differentiate between when the human was unable orable to see them.
The experiments hadbeen designed with enough variations to avoid false associations -such as dogs beginning to associate sudden darkness with someonegiving them food, researchers said.
Dr Juliane Kaminski,from the University of Portsmouth's psychology department, said thestudy was "incredible because it implies dogsunderstand the human can't see them, meaning they mightunderstand the human perspective".
This could also beimportant in understanding the capacities of dogs that have tointeract closely with humans, such as guide dogs for the blind andsniffer dogs.
Previous studies havesuggested that although humans might think that they can recognisedifferent expressions on their dogs' faces, this is often inaccurateand a projection of human emotions.
"Humansconstantly attribute certain qualities and emotions to other livingthings. We know that our own dog is clever or sensitive, but that'sus thinking, not them," said Dr Kaminski.
"These resultssuggest humans might be right, where dogs are concerned, but we stillcan't be completely sure if the results mean dogs have a trulyflexible understanding of the mind and others' minds. It has alwaysbeen assumed only humans had this ability."
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