Your Dog Understands You More Than You Think

Untrained stray dogs can understand human cues

- Therese Tan

Untrained stray dogs respond to gestures from people, suggesting that understanding between humans and dogs transcends training.

The findings from a study published in Frontiers in Psychology shows that untrained stray dogs respond to gestures from people, suggesting that understanding between humans and dogs transcends training.

Human Gestures

Dogs were domesticated 10,000 – 15,000 years ago, likely making them the oldest domesticated animals on the planet. Humans then bred dogs with the most desirable and useful traits leading to domesticated dogs that are highly receptive to human commands and gestures.

To find out if these abilities innate or are they exclusively learned through training, researchers investigated whether untrained stray dogs could understand human pointing gestures.