Scientists have found new evidence for canine intelligence

There has always been speculation about what animals might understand in their interaction with humans.

“He’s smart”, “I talk to him and he understands everything”, “he seems to understand”, These are usually the phrases of those who share their life with the company of a dog at home.

Now, As revealed recent research, there would be new scientific evidence on canine intelligence.

Is that German scientists have discovered that dogs appear to be able to tell whether human actions are deliberate or accidental.

“When dogs interact with humans, they often show reactions appropriate to intentional human action.. But from these daily observations, it is not clear if dogs simply react to the results of the action or if they are able to discriminate between different categories of actions ”. With this assumption in mind, the researchers set out to determine whether dogs are able to distinguish intentional human actions from unintentional actions, even when the results of the action are the same.

Previous research had suggested that dogs can follow human attention to decide when to chew food and respond to pointing gestures. Additionally, many dogs are excited by certain signals that may suggest an upcoming action, such as when a leash is lifted to walk. However, experts believed it was unclear whether dogs really grasped the notion of human intention.

“Our results provide important initial evidence that dogs may have at least one aspect of theory of mind: the ability to recognize intention in action.”the authors wrote in an article published in the journal Scientific reports. And they pointed out that among the other animals that show such an ability are chimpanzees, African gray parrots, and horses.

German scientists have described how they tried to solve the problem by having a researcher pass treats to a dog through a hole in a screen.

During the process, the researchers tested the dog under three conditions: in one, they tried to offer a treat but “accidentally” dropped it on their side of the screen and said, “Oops. ! In another, they tried to offer a deal but the gap was blocked. And on a third attempt, the researcher offered the treat, but suddenly took it out and said, “Ha ha!”

“The idea of ​​this experiment is that in all three situations, they don’t get the food for some reason.”, described Juliane Bräuer, co-author of the research on Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

The results, based on analysis of video recordings from 51 animals, revealed that the dogs waited longer before going around the screen to receive the treat directly in the event of sudden withdrawal of the snack than in the other two situations. They were also more likely to stop wagging their tails and sitting or lying down.

The team writes that dogs they clearly show different behavior between different conditions. “This indicates that dogs are actually distinguishing intentional actions from unintentional behavior,” they said.

“The dogs clearly distinguished in their spontaneous behavior the conditions of reluctance and incapacity. This indicates that dogs actually distinguish intentional actions from unintentional behavior. “, they concluded between the results of the work.

However, said more work is needed to determine whether the dogs may have already learned not to approach the food to be removed, or whether they were responding to the researcher’s various exclamations, as published The Guardian.

Dr Suilin Lavelle, professor of philosophy at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in the study, said that while dog owners may find the result unsurprising, it is far from trivial.

“Distinguishing between intentional and unintentional behavior within one’s own species provides critical survival benefits; be able to generalize this to another species, even if it has co-evolved with you, further supports the claim that dogs distinguish behaviors based on their intentions rather than other cues», He evaluated.

And while Lavelle said it was correct that the authors were cautious about how animals acquire this ability, noting that dogs less familiar with humans may not make the same distinction, he felt that demonstrating the ability of pets was “a promising start”.

“Whether this ability is sufficient to attribute theory of mind to dogs is a more controversial question, as researchers debate the level of understanding of the psychological states of others required to deserve this label,” a- he argued.

The concept of intention is central to theory of mind, the ability to attribute mental states to others and to oneself. Theory of mind has long been viewed as a unique human ability. However, while this may be true for the full adult theory of mind which includes the assignment of complex subjective states, accumulated evidence suggests that some basic abilities to attribute simple mental states to other agents are present in some non-human species.

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