Research finds that dogs can sense if a person is good or bad before trusting them
Dogs have been termed as human's best friends for as long as we remember. They are always there for us, and many will go to great lengths to save or assist their owner in an emergency. They are extremely smart animals even though they might seem mindless while licking themselves for endless minutes and rolling in grass with a grin on their face. They have an unending love for humans and apart from that they are extremely well-versed in social awareness. These friendly animals are even trained as "therapy dogs," where they are taught to be soft, and friendly to provide emotional support to humans. On the other hand, some dogs are even trained to help their owners cope with their disabilities, per Very Well Mind. One research found that dogs are fairly excellent at reading humans and determining whether or not they are trustworthy, reports DIPLY.
The research was undertaken by a team led by Akiko Takaoka of Kyoto University in Japan to investigate if dogs would still trust humans they deem untrustworthy. For the purpose of the research published in Animal Cognition, they tricked about 34 dogs in a safe and secure way. As per general dog behavior, if an object is pointed out to them, dogs will run to investigate the object. The researchers used the same technique to test if dogs can trust anybody. Three rounds of "pointing" were played by the 34 participating pups.
During the first round, the dogs were pointed out to full containers of food without any deception. In the second round, though, they pointed to a sadly empty container. The container full of food was pointed out to the dogs again in the third round. But, evidently following their instincts, the dogs stayed put, relying on their experience to determine that the researcher was not fully trustworthy. None of the 34 dogs ran toward the full containers of food. According to Takota, this demonstrates that dogs are ready to devalue the dependability of a person.
The experiment will be repeated, but this time the dogs will be replaced by wolves, a near related of the species. The research article says, "These results suggest that not only dogs are highly skilled at understanding human pointing gestures, but also they make inferences about the reliability of a human who presents cues and consequently modify their behavior flexibly depending on the inference." In conclusion, dogs are friendly animals but they can sense their surroundings and decide who they can trust or not based on their experiences.