Dog cognition: how much does your dog understand?

What's Bred in the Bone: now available.

Back in August, I wrote a guest post on dog cognition for Booker T's Farm. That blog also later posted a very nice review of What's Bred in the Bone. Booker T's style, however, didn't include the hyperlinks to my sources that I'd suggested.

Because science doesn't stand still, there's also some updated information to add. I've previously written about working dogs on this blog. So I've decided to expand on my August post.

How much do dogs really understand?

Have you ever wondered how much your dog knows? Does she really understand your facial expressions and gestures? Is his behavior mostly instinct and the impulse of the moment, or is it rooted in more complex thought processes?

Recent studies suggest the answers to all of these questions are “more than you might think.” Just how much your dog understands is still being studied, but it’s already clear we have more in common with our canine companions than we might imagine.

This puppy, buried in a Stone Age grave along with a man and a woman in Oberkassel, Germany (today in a suburb of Bonn) shows signs that it died of distemper, and would likely have been cared for over a period of many weeks. Sick though it was, its people apparently loved it. (screen capture from a video by University of Alberta, via National Geographic).

An ancient bond
Humans have a longer history of evolving side by side with dogs than with any other domesticated animal species. Archaeologists have found dog remains with a human burial as long ago as 14,000 years ago. But geneticists have found mutations that would suggest a more domesticated diet that date back some 32,000 years.

There's even a sandstone cliff in Saudi Arabia that offers pictorial documentation of a man hunting with dogs (on leashes?) that’s more than 8,000 years old. This video is short, but informative:



So dogs and humans have had a pretty long time to get used to each other. How much have we “rubbed off on each other”? Some researchers say quite a lot! Neither humans nor dogs would be what we are today, without each other.

That’s true physically, but studies in dog cognition also tell us it’s true in terms of dogs’ brains. This first became clear when dogs showed they could easily understand gestures such as a human pointing to an object, although chimpanzees could not. They are more tuned in to what humans are doing.

Watch the eyes (and the eyebrows!)
Researchers also have shown that dogs pay attention to where we are looking , and recognize the difference between happy and angry human expressions.

According to a study from the University of Helsinki, "the social gazing behavior of domestic dogs resembles that of humans: dogs view facial expressions systematically, preferring eyes. In addition, the facial expression alters their viewing behavior, especially in the face of threat." (Photo: S.Somppi Ja 123RF.DOI: 10.1371/Journal.Pone.0143047)

Moreover, recent studies have established that dogs have more facial muscles than wolves. The muscles that move their eyebrows and give them such expressive faces developed after they'd become a separate species. In other words, they have puppy-dog eyes, and they are not afraid to use them.

Believe it or not, this reflects sophisticated dog cognition. Along with the "pointing tests," it shows that that dogs have a "theory of mind. That’s the ability to intuit how others see the world and even, to some extent, know what they’re thinking," according to studies done by Duke University researchers.

Dogs may not be as smart as humans (yet), but their cognitive capabilities run deeper than many people imagine. We'll look at more aspects of this next week, in my mid-week post.

Till then, I'd be fascinated to learn your thoughts on this post, and read any stories about super-smart dogs you have known, if you'd care to share them in the comments section.

IMAGE CREDITS: The cover artwork for What's Bred in the Bone is © 2019 by Jody A. Lee. The photo of a puppy buried in a Stone Age grave is a screen capture from a video by University of Alberta, posted by National Geographic. The video about the ancient Saudi Arabian petroglyphs of hunters with dogs (on leashes?) is courtesy of YouTube and Science Magazine.  The illustration that describes where dogs typically look at faces depicting emotion is from the University of Helsinki, by S.Somppi Ja 123RF.DOI: 10.1371/Journal.Pone.0143047. Many thanks to all!