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Originally Posted by yorkiefan_  It's amazing how in-tune with humans dogs are. If you have never seen BBC Horizon's episode called The Secret Life of the Dog, it's a must. For instance, one side of a human face is way more expressive than the other (can't remember which side it was though), which causes people to instinctively look to that side of a person's face when talking to them. This episode showed dogs do the same with humans but not to any other animal, and no animal other than humans or dogs is known to do this. Then they showed how even a young puppy will respond to a human pointing in the direction of a hidden treat, but closer ancestors to us, such as chimps, do not. Neither will wolves even though their DNA is so close to that of dogs. The most amazing thing though was a Border Collie they showed who could reason abstractly, which is something that had never been seen outside of humans. By that I mean the owner would hold up a small toy as a representation of the big toy the owner wanted, and then the Border Collie would run to the other room and grab the corresponding big toy. This is without using a word for the toy or anything. The dog would only get to look at the small toy, and would dig through the big toys until he found the one equivalent (equivalent as in looked just like, but way bigger) to the small one. I mean that was really mindblowing to see that a dog could reason about representations of objects. |
I've seen that show - watch anything and read everything about dogs. I think it's the right side of the face both people and dogs automatically look at first - which is to the left when they are facing us. I am probably wrong about that but maybe not as mostly in the western cultures of the world anyway, we usually automatically and are taught to "read" things before us from left to right. Dogs have exceptional human "face reading" skills in addition to all their other abilities to sense our mien!
Wasn't that Border Collie amazing?!?! It could have probably been well trained to respond to subtle stealth commands to do that but that alone would be amazing - a dog trained to that level. I prefer to accept the story as true. Some dogs are just "Einsteins" and exceptional just as humans are.
What was amazing to me and I think it was in that same show, apes wouldn't follow our eyes or our pointing at things the same way our dogs do! And they are supposed to be way, way more intelligent than dogs - but dogs have grown up with humans and co-existed so closely with us for so long, they've better adapted at how to "read" us in order to help themselves live better.