Dogs CAN read our minds, study finds

Dogs really can read our minds and have an innate understanding of what we are going through, researchers say.

Dogs really can read our minds and have an innate understanding of what we are going through, researchers say.

Published Jun 11, 2011

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For anybody who has watched Lassie, this will come as no surprise.

Dogs really can read our minds and have an innate understanding of what we are going through, researchers say.

So-called “canine telepathy” has developed after dogs accepted humans as “social companions” and learned to understand them. The longer a dog spends time with its owner the better he gets to know them, the researchers discovered.

But they also concluded that the ability to read a human is something a dog is born with, even if it lives in the wild. The University of Florida researchers came to their conclusions after an experiment involving wolves, shelter dogs and domestic dogs.

The animals were given the chance to beg for food from a responsive owner or somebody who could not see them.

As had been hoped, the shelter dogs and the domestic dogs successfully begged the attentive owner for the food. But in an interesting twist, the wolves also behaved in the same way, suggesting they had the same ability too even though they were not at all domesticated.

Researcher Monique Udell said: “Just like we learn to read each other, our family for example, the more dogs are around people the more sensitive they are going to be.”

What am I thinking, boy? - Daily Mail

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