If you have a dog, hopefully you will be fortunate enough to know that they are very attuned to their owners and understand a wide variety of commands and gestures. But are these skills innate or are they learned through training only?
To find out, a new study examined whether untrained stray dogs could understand human pointing movements. The study found that about 80% of the participating dogs successfully followed pointing gestures to a specific location, despite never having received training before. The results suggest that dogs can understand complex gestures simply by looking at people and this may have implications in reducing conflict between stray dogs and humans.
Dogs were domesticated 10,000-15,000 years ago, making them probably the oldest domesticated animals in the world. People then bred dogs with the most desirable and useful traits so that they could function as companions and workers, leading to domestic dogs that are highly receptive to human commands and gestures.
However, it was not clear whether dogs understand us through training alone, or whether this was innate. Can dogs interpret a signal, such as a gesture, without specific training, or even without meeting the signaling person before? One way to find out is to see if untrained, stray dogs can interpret and respond to human gestures.
To investigate this, Dr. Anindita Bhadra of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata, India, and colleagues stray dogs in several Indian cities. The researchers approached solitary stray dogs and placed two covered bowls on the ground near them. An examiner then pointed to one of the two bowls, either momentarily or repeatedly, and recorded whether the dog approached the indicated bowl. They also recorded the dogs' perceived emotional state during the experiment.
About half of the dogs approached neither bowl. However, the researchers noticed that these dogs were anxious and may have had bad experiences with humans before. The dogs approaching the bowls were noted as friendlier and less fearful, and about 80% correctly followed the pointing cues to one of the bowls, regardless of whether the aiming was momentary or repeated. This suggests that the dogs were indeed able to decipher complex gestures.
“We found it quite amazing that the dogs could follow a gesture as abstract as a temporary cue,” explains Bhadra. “This means they keep a close eye on the human they are meeting for the first time and they use their understanding of humans to make a decision. This shows their intelligence and adaptability.”
The results suggest that dogs have an innate ability to understand certain human gestures that transcend training. It should be noted, however, that the more fearful animals tended not to participate, so future studies are needed to more accurately determine how an individual dog's personality affects their ability to understand human cues.
In general, dogs can be more observable than we realize. “We need to understand that dogs are intelligent animals that can coexist with us,” Bhadra said. “They are quite capable of understanding our body language and we have to give them space. A little empathy and respect for another species can reduce a lot of conflict. “
