Dogs understand humans far better than previously thought according to evolutionary biologists at Abertay University in Dundee.
A new study looks at the progress made in the ability of dogs to interpret and predict human behaviour due to thousands of years spent evolving alongside humans.
The research explains that as particular breeds of dogs are prized above others for their ability to best serve their masters, future generations will become much “smarter”, according to the Sunday Times.
It is predicted that dogs will be able to perform basic chores without being told or trained to, such as retrieving a paper, due to their increased cognitive abilities.
Clare Cunningham, the leader of this project, said: “As dogs have become domesticated, one of the abilities that has been selected for is attending to human behaviour.
“As they get to know particular humans, they pay more attention to them and this may mean they can read, and even predict human behaviour with more efficiency as familiarity grows.”
Cunningham and her colleague, Mari Ramos, monitored 24 dogs with varying degrees of training from the highly trained, house trained pets and abandoned dogs from a shelter.
The dogs were observed as to their response to visual clues from humans such as pointing or gazing at a location for a dog to move to.
The surprise result of the research was that shelter dogs with minimal or no training were predicted to be the worst performers but in fact did as well as their better educated counterparts.
The research team extracted from this result that it is DNA not training that controls the cognitive development of a dog.
New research from Emory University has concluded that a dog’s sentience level is similar to that of a human child’s.
According to this research, dogs are believed to use the same part of the brain as humans do to “feel.”