Studies have already shown that dogs can understand human emotions. But now, new research suggests that these four-legged friends can even decipher their owners' facial expressions.
According to a study published in Current Biology, dogs are able to tell the difference between a human’s happy and sad expressions.
Scientists from the Messerli Research Institute's Clever Dog Lab in Vienna, Austria took 11 dogs of several sizes and breeds and showed them photos of faces through a touch-screen computer. Some dogs were asked to choose the happy face, while others were expected to spot the sad face for a treat. However, only the upper or lower half of the face was visible.
In a subsequent test, the dogs were shown new photos with different parts of the face. This proved to not be much of a challenge for the dogs, since they were still able to differentiate between the happy and sad expressions.
It was also much faster for the dogs to learn to select the happy face as opposed to the sad one.
"It seems as if they don't like to touch an angry face," Ludwig Huber, the study’s co-author, told the BBC. "So here we have some suggestive evidence that they interpret those pictures, and maybe they really understand an angry face to be something they don't like."
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