Clearly, dogs are quite good at understanding us. But how far does this go and how are they able to understand our emotions – what cues are they reading?
A dog who has lived among people is a much better reader of us than we are of them (or, one might suggest, of ourselves). In a way, dogs are anthropologists: they spend a lot of time observing us and thus learn associations between behaviours we might not know about ourselves.
In the home, you might see this in their learning to predict the difference between you getting up to take them out and getting up to go to the fridge.
Dogs can tell a happy expression from an angry one, and even match it to the right tone of voice - Photo credit: Getty
From studies with owned dogs, we also know that they can read stress and even detect fear, and they can identify the presence of diseases that we don’t know we have. Part of their skill is due to their acute sense of smell, but, despite not being bipedal and having no hands, dogs know about our bodies.
