(Credit: Daz Stock/Shutterstock) A new study from researchers at the University of Lincoln in the United Kingdom suggests that dogs do a better job of recognizing when we’re happy or angry than previously thought. While everyone knows we can teach Rover to play fetch or roll over, these findings show that dogs have an innate ability to understand how we feel, likely a result of thousands of years of symbiotic living.
In the study, published Wednesday in Biology Letters, the researchers showed 17 domesticated dogs of various breeds a screen showing two faces: one happy and one angry. At the same time, the dogs heard a human speaking in an unfamiliar language and voicing either a positive or negative emotion. The experiment was then repeated with dog expressions and happy and angry barks. In both cases, the dogs looked significantly longer at the facial expressions that matched the emotional content ...
