Juliane Kaminski, a cognitive psychologist quoted “We think that we are looking at a special adaptation in dogs to be sensitive to human forms of communication.
“There is multiple evidence suggesting that selection pressures during domestication have changed dogs such that they are perfectly adapted to their new niche, the human environment.”
Dogs are probably born with this inherent gift, from birth to maturity with no major training possesses it.
The research of Kaminski and her colleagues likened how well dogs and chimpanzees understood human pointing. The subject pointed to a tangible object out of reach of the human but within reach of the animal subject. If the chimp or dog saved the object, he or she would be remunerated with a tasty food treat. (The dogs got dry dog food while Chimps received fruit juice or peanuts.)
The chimps wrecked, ignoring the human gesticulations, even though they were motivated to get the food prized. The dogs aced the test.
The chimpanzees failed to understand the referential intent of the human in the assignment. They did not see the pointing as imperative to their goal of getting the food, so they simply overlooked the people during the study.
“We know that chimpanzees have a very flexible understanding of others,” Kaminski said. “They know what others can or cannot see, when others can or cannot see them, etc.”
Chimps are consequently not clueless, but they have likely not developed the tendency to pay responsiveness to humans when trying to accomplish goals.
Kaminski clarified that even wolves do not have this skill.
“Wolves, even when raised in a human environment, are not as flexible with human communication as dogs,” she said. “Dogs can read human gestures from very early ages on.”
As for cats, preceding research found that tame felines also pay attention to us and can comprehend human pointing gestures. Kaminski, however, mentioned that “the researchers had to select them out of many hundreds of cats, ” proposing that only house kitties are on par with dogs when it comes to indulging people.