Mary Allen
Tricks for your own benefit? Some people are masters in this … But what about our four-legged friends? Can dogs lie to their owners? Swiss researchers want to prove it – at least when it comes to their favorite food.
When we look into the faithful, cute eyes of our dogs, we don’t even want to believe that those eyes can lie. In fact, dogs can also behave deceitfully towards humans. This is what scientists found out in a 2017 study.
Dogs Trick People Into Getting Food
For their research, they brought different dogs along with two people. One of them always treated the animals with a treat, if there was one. Another person chose to keep the treat with them rather than share it with the dogs.
After the animals got to know people and were able to figure out the differences between them, the researchers began to conduct their own experiments.
For this, we have installed several boxes. Some contained sausage, others a less popular food, and still others were empty. The dogs were then allowed to lead two people to any cage. If a “good-natured” person was brought to a box of food, the dog received its contents. They got nothing from the “selfish” person.
Do Dogs Lie – Because They Are Smart?
The dogs realized this pretty quickly – and more often they brought the “egoists” to an empty box than to a full one. On the second day of the experiment, when the dogs knew people even better, this happened even more often. Instead, the “good-natured” were more often taken to the boxes of sausages. For scientists, this is an indicator of “tactical deception”.
And in animals this is relatively rare: until now, behavior has mainly been observed in animals considered intelligent, such as some monkeys, octopuses, crows, or squirrels.
Dogs can manipulate people if they get their favorite sausage for it.
Sounds stingy – but also pretty smart. Speaking of smart, an American psychologist claims to have figured out which dog breeds are the smartest. Border Collies, Poodles, and German Shepherds are at the top of the rankings.