Dogs can recognize emotions in humans by combining information from different senses — an ability never before seen outside of humans, a new study shows. The researchers presented 17 dogs with pairs of sights and sounds of different combinations of positive (happy or playful) and negative (angry or aggressive) emotional expressions in humans and dogs. These were presented to the animals simultaneously, without prior training. The team found that the dogs spent significantly longer looking at the facial expressions that correspond to the emotional state or vocalization, for both humans and dogs.
“Importantly, the dogs in our trials received no prior training or period of familiarization with the subjects of the images or audio. This suggests that dogs have the ability to combine emotional signals," said the researcher.
