The facial muscle anatomy of dogs has evolved in a way that improves communication with humans. Photo: 123RF
Many dog owners will tell you they can read how their dogs are feeling - but can they? Do our canine friends really feel guilty when they're caught eating the cat's food?
Researcher Dr Juliane Kaminski, associate professor of comparative psychology at the University of Portsmouth, has shown that the facial muscle anatomy of dogs has evolved in a way that improves communication with humans.
"We do think that they have evolved muscles that create facial movements that are especially appealing to humans," she told RNZ's Sunday Morning - for example, the 'puppy dog' look.
"There's a certain specific eyebrow movement that dogs produce, which to us looks a bit like sadness… We find it very cute, we find it very attractive, and we nurture the dog even more if they sort of produce that movement.
"But we don't necessarily think that dogs are sad in that moment. It's just simply a movement that has evolved because we pretty much respond to it. We find it attractive and we have probably unconsciously selected for it, so preferred dogs that have that movement, produce that movement…
"It's that puppy dog look where they sort of raise their eyebrows,and we just can't resist it."
One study she was involved in found "dogs that produce that movement more are adopted quicker".
"We looked at the behavior of dogs when they meet a potential adopter, and we analysed everything, and we wanted to see how long do the dogs stay in the shelter? And does that in any way depend on the behavior that they produce when they're meeting a person?
"And what we found is that really, nothing matters. So it doesn't matter how much they bark, how much they whine or anything like that. All that mattered was how often they produce this eyebrow movement."
Wolves, dogs' close relatives, do not have the ability to produce this look, she said.
Humans were otherwise pretty poor at determining a dog's state of mind.
"I think we are just falling into traps, where we simply apply things that are working for our own species, and we simply apply them to a different species."
Distressed dogs, for example, were often seen as happy - especially by children.
"That's a really important reminder for all the parents out there [with] a dog at home. Especially young children are really not very good at reading dog facial expressions, so they make quite significant mistakes.
"There's research out there showing that they interpret a picture presenting a dog growling, like really showing its teeth and everything, and, they respond to that by saying, 'Oh, I want to hug that dog because it looks so happy.' And that, of course, can really lead to quite serious accidents and problems."
Another common gesture humans misinterpret is the wagging tail, Kaminski said.
Juliane Kaminski. Photo: University of Portsmouth
"There's this idea that a dog that wags its tail is always happy and always friendly… and that's just wrong, so it's just incorrect. So we have to interpret the whole body to some extent, and we have to interpret the posture of the tail and whether it is relaxed or, or stiff, et cetera.
"In its essence, wagging tail just simply means that the dog is aroused about something that can be positive or negative."
One way to get a better sense of the dog's intention is whether the tail is stiff (probably not happy) or relaxed (possibly happy).
Dog attacks, Kaminski said, often come with warnings ahead of time that humans simply do not notice.
"Very, very often there are subtle signs that the dog is trying to give to indicate that it needs more space or that it's not comfortable in the situation, or that it's stressed - and those signs are simply overlooked.
"Like avoiding gazes, for example, is a very typical one - trying to create distance with their body posture, all these kinds of things, are then overlooked - and then for people who are being attacked, this attack can then suddenly come out of nowhere because they've not seen all the little signs that the dog was trying to give."
What about when a dog looks guilty? Kaminski said they are just trying to avoid their owner's gaze.
"What we do think is really happening is that the dog either has experienced beforehand, has been scolded for things that happened - was yelled at for whatever reason - so the dog is not interpreting the situation [and] thinking, 'Oh, I've done something, I'm guilty of something, but is reading the owner's body posture.
"So when the dog steals the cat's food and gets scolded and slinks away looking guilty, the dog isn't feeling guilty - [it] just doesn't want to be punished. So the dog will quite happily eat the cat's food next time when you're not there, basically."
As for how the average dog owner can improve communication with their pet, Kaminski said it was to "simply accept that dogs are different species and to really learn their language".
"There's quite a lot of dog literature out there. There's websites that are describing and explaining dog behavior, dog communication, all these kinds of things."
But avoid social media, she said.
"What, what is happening at the moment with social media, I think that's in some sense really problematic because it keeps sort of emphasising this idea that dogs are pretty much like little children, and they do the same things, they feel the same feelings and we have to treat them like little children, - and that's just wrong.
"We have to sort of get back to really understanding that dogs are a different species with different needs and a different way to communicate."
One day she hoped AI would be able to tell owners just what their pets are thinking. But until then, she agreed it would probably be right to say dogs read us better than we read them.
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