Dog Logic: Behave Now, Think Later

Oct. 9, 2007 — Ever wonder what your dog does when you aren't around? The answer might surprise you, suggests a new study that found our canine companions behave more logically in our absence.

People exert a strong influence on canine choices, it seems, and not always for the better. Dogs are so attuned to our actions, in fact, that they will sometimes abandon logic entirely to please us. But abandoning reason for obedience may serve our pets well in the end.

"I do not think that domestication made dogs less intelligent," lead author Anes Erdohegyi told Discovery News. "On the contrary, dogs seem to show special sophistication in understanding social situations."

"However," she added, "it is true that focusing on the human...sometimes leads to erroneous behavior."

Erdohegyi is a researcher in the Department of Ethology at Budapest's Eotvos Lorand University. She and her colleagues recruited 42 adult pet dogs and their owners for the study, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Animal Behavior. The only criterion for selection was that the dogs had to be "highly motivated to play with a toy."

The first experiment was like the old carnival trick where a person hides a card under one of two or three hats. In this case, the researchers placed a ball under a small plastic flowerpot. They then put a larger flowerpot over the smaller one. An identical flowerpot set, minus the ball, was also used.

A researcher lifted the various pots in front of the dog. At times, the experimenter also gazed at the ball-less flowerpot set, or moved it, and then made eye contact with the dog. While the dogs coveted the ball toy, they usually chose the set without the ball, simply because the experimenter showed interest in it.

The researchers repeated the experiment, the next time using flowerpots or containers that could be lifted remotely with strings without any perceivable human cues. When shown the set without the ball, the dogs immediately made the right choice by going for the other set since, by process of elimination, it had to contain the ball.