They say that children and drunks always tell the truth. To this select group we can now add dogs, because a study has shown that they are able to distinguish if someone is trustworthy or not. Ok, maybe they don’t have the concepts of good and evil instilled in them, but they know how to recognize when a person is a liar.
This is the conclusion of an experiment carried out at the Rissho University of Tokyo, that dogs know when we are lying to them and even they remember who deceived them and are wary of her in the future. To find out, they did a test by offering them food and saw how the animals recognized the human who had given them an empty bowl and ignored him in subsequent interactions.
This concept that dogs know how to recognize liars goes further. Another Finnish study looked at which dogs are the most intelligent and found that the Hovawart breed is able to detect a deception before it occurs. That is, when the bowl is empty he doesn’t bother to check it, he knows it a priori.
If we add to this that our dog pets also recognize when someone is being mean or dangerous to their owners and put themselves in defense mode, we can affirm that they are better at squeezing dodgy people better than most of us. This is confirmed by a Japanese study. Maybe we should take him on our next Tinder date…
Photos | Jamie Street, charlesdeluvio and Carissa Weiser via Unsplash.
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