By Jennie Viratham Poonsawat
From New Trick: Pups Can Follow Human Voices to Food by Stephanie Pappas,
Senior Writer
Dogs are one of
the smartest animals especially when they are puppies. The puppies know how to
follow their owners' action to get food like the direction of human voices,
pointing finger as well as human gazes, in other words, they understand human
gesture. These little ones become a part of human life, they are like friends to
human. It appears that dogs are more capable of reading human gesture and
feelings when they live with human because the dogs will learn from their
owners, the closer they are, the more things dogs will learn.
In a study by researchers
from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, dogs were
tested on the type of communication. The experimenter used the voice to
indicate food instead of using gesture
or gaze. The researchers placed
two boxes in front of a wooden barrier, one with food and one without, and the
experimenter stood behind the barrier and turned the face towards the food-filled
box, saying, "Oh, look, look there, this is great!" It appeared that more than half of the dogs chose
the correct box which contained food even they could not smell the food in
those boxes. The researchers
conducted another study to see if this smartness of dogs are innate or learned,
the study included 16 puppies of 8-14
weeks. The puppies went through the same test in the first study and the result
showed that these young ones performed better than adult dogs, they found the food at an average of 8.1 out of
every 12 tries. Although, puppies made mistakes at the first times, they
learned and could catch on very fast especially for dogs who have good interactions
with human.
This article
shows how smart dogs especially puppies can be. Normally, dogs are considered very
important in human life like a friend and they are also loyal to their owners.
I have two dogs in my house, one Chihuahua and one Pomeranian so when I read
this article, I kind of understand this smartness. Dogs are clever and learn very
fast, sometimes, it takes only a few days to train or to teach a dog. Now, I
realize how dogs are capable of understanding human emotions when their owners
are happy, sad or angry because they can listen to the tone of voice, look at
the gesture as well as the gaze.
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