You can’t outsmart your paw pals!

Next time you try to deceive your dog with treats, think twice. A recent report published in the journal ‘Behavioral Processes’ indicates that dogs can perceive the presence of food even when you are trying to hide it from him.

It says they can identify food even without sniffing it. But that’s not all. A renowned psychologist William Roberts of Canada’s Dalhousie University said their evolution took place almost hand in hand with humans. So, dogs can understand our body language quite easily.

But how did the researchers come to this conclusion? They conducted 2 experiments on 16 dogs in London and Ontario. What the researcher and his colleagues did was they kept 2 buckets, one empty and the other containing treats. They assigned a person with the responsibility of diverting the attention of the dogs to the empty bucket. It was found that initially the dogs lunged at the empty one. But in about 5 attempts they spotted the loaded bucket and that too in less than half of the allotted time. This is amazing. Right?

In a bid to test their skills further, the researchers replaced the human testers with black and white boxes. They placed these boxes behind the buckets. The dogs were indeed very quick to find out the one containing treats.

From these experiments it becomes clear that our paw pals are no less intelligent than us.