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Child with puppy
Photo: Tamara Lackey / fStop Images / imago images
Anyone who listens to dog owners in conversation with their four-legged friends will sometimes witness such or similar sentences uttered: “Yeah, fine, my little one.
You understand me very well «.
We then also find out that this is not always the case.
Namely, when the dog runs off and simply ignores the calls of masters and women.
But a new study now shows that communication between humans and dogs is actually quite good - and that dog owners are not completely wrong with their emotional whispering.
Because even young puppies understand looks and gestures of people and can react to them.
At the tip of a finger, for example, they can find hidden food - without any prior training.
How well they can communicate with humans is influenced by genes, report US researchers in the journal Current Biology.
"All of the results suggest that dogs are biologically prepared to communicate with humans," says study director Emily Bray of the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Bray's team has long been researching the social skills of dogs. The scientists cooperate with an organization that trains assistance dogs for people with physical disabilities. In their experiments, the researchers tested a total of 375 eight-week-old puppies. They spent most of their lives with their siblings and had little experience with people.
In a series of experiments, the researchers hid a treat under one of two upturned cups. They shouted to arouse the puppies' interest, then they pointed a finger at the cup with the reward or just looked in the direction. To rule out that the puppies were simply following their noses, they performed the same experiments without any clues and checked how often the puppies each found the reward.
The result: gestures and looks put the puppies on the right path, they discovered the treat much more often than by chance.
In the control experiments, however, they only achieved random hits.
Early on in their development and before extensive socialization with humans, dogs show a high level of sensitivity for human communication via gestures that is not based on learning, the researchers conclude.
In another experiment, the scientists presented the puppies with an impossible task: They hid the reward in a tightly closed container that the animals could not open.
Then they observed whether the dogs turned to people for help, for example by looking.
This rarely happened.
Puppies understand, but cannot yet implement it themselves
With adult dogs, on the other hand - unlike wolves, for example - there is a tendency to ask people for help in difficult situations, explains Bray. "In puppies, this behavior in search of help doesn't really seem to be part of their repertoire." This is comparable to children who can understand language for a long time before they can speak for themselves. "It may be similar with puppies: They understand what is being communicated to them socially, but the implementation on their part will probably take a little longer due to their development."
Since the researchers knew the family trees and were thus able to trace the relationship of the puppies over a long period of time, they also learned something about the genetic basis of communication skills.
About 40 percent of the differences in the understanding of gestures found in the puppies could therefore be explained by genetic factors.
There has been a long discussion about whether communication skills lie in the biology of dogs or something they learn by romping around with people, said co-author Evan MacLean of the University of Arizona.
"We found out that there is definitely a strong genetic component, and they definitely do it from the start." This may also have influenced the domestication of the dogs.
joe / dpa
