DOG SCIENCE WEEKLY

Understanding the “self” and “others” is something we as humans comprehend easily – but can dogs? Researchers set out to determine if dogs could understand their inner “selves” through smelling their urine, the urine of another dog, and a modified sample of their own u...

Researchers found that dogs were able to discriminate between angry and happy faces – when only shown half of a face. This was tested by training the dogs to tap a touch screen with their nose when they saw either happy or sad portions of human faces. Each time the dog...

Scientific investigations have supported the notion that dogs can understand the difference in human vocal tones and respond accordingly. One experiment found that dogs took food more quickly from a person saying “leave it” in a happy tone when compared to commanding t...

When given the choice to fetch two objects, researchers found that dogs choose the item associated with their owner’s happiness more often than items associated with disgust, or no emotional association. However, they also found that dogs approached items previously as...

Your dog might have the ability to be deceptive and sneaky when trying to steal table scraps. Researchers found that when people were paying less attention, while playing a handheld video game for example, the dogs in their study were more likely to attempt to steal fo...

fMRI is a cutting-edge technique used in human neuroscience – but some dog scientists are getting dogs in the scanner! Dogs were trained to lay in an fMRI scanner and watch pictures of either human faces or inanimate objects. The dog brains were highly activated in a b...