Dogs Save Us From Bad Friends
Dogs are said to be the best friendship we can build. When we begin this “relationship” with them, we will have someone next to us willing to sacrifice themselves for us. This is why it is not strange to think that they have the ability to save us from “bad friends”. It is not an act of jealousy, but of pure love that only they can offer. Find out more in this article.
Dogs detect what their friends’ intentions are
Our beloved four-legged friends protect us from all danger and evil. If you are not convinced, then pay attention to the research recently carried out and published in the journal Current Biology. According to scientists, dogs have the ability to anticipate people’s actions.
The study found that furry people who had made eye contact with a person (the owner or not) were more likely to follow their movements in a room. These same “abilities” have six-month-old babies until they start talking.
Dogs are sensitive to the signals or clues that humans offer and this has at least one reason: when they were domesticated with the aim of working with people, an effective means of communication was sought between two species that did not express themselves in the same way.
How did they do it? Through the looks. Although dogs were initially used as shepherds or for hunting and later became pets, this tool has continued to work.
Another older research, published in the journal Learning & Behavior, found that domesticated dogs ask for food from people who watch them and not from those who don’t pay attention to them. These animals can learn the meaning of around 165 words (like two-year-olds).
Another research compared the attitudes of two groups of dogs. In the first one a person would say “Hello” looking at them in the face. In the second case, the greeting did not include eye contact. The latter showed less interest in humans.
Dogs can recognize untrustworthy people
Even if we sometimes don’t realize it, dogs are very intelligent and above all intuitive. They notice things that maybe we humans don’t pay attention to. They can tell when we are happy, angry or even jealous.
But they also have the ability to recognize if someone is not entirely trustworthy. When this happens, they do not follow his instructions, but pay more attention to it (to anticipate any bad deeds).
An experiment done at Kyoto University, Japan, and published in the animal journal Cognition, showed that dogs know when someone is trustworthy. To carry out this experiment, 34 dogs were tested.
They participated in three different phases where they were shown objects: food hidden in a container, an empty container and a package of food. The dogs used their experience to gauge whether a person was trustworthy or not.
After the three phases, the animals continued to follow the instructions of the person considered reliable. According to Akiko Takaoka, in charge of the research, dogs rated trust in humans, as they have a sophisticated and more developed social intelligence than ours.
How do dogs save us from bad friends?
Based on these studies, we can understand why our animals can help us avoid certain “toxic” people. For example, if we bring a new “friend” home and the animal gets agitated, barks, growls or stares at him… pay attention.
Our dog’s reaction is something we shouldn’t take lightly. Pay close attention to his behavior when you are around other people. If, on the other hand, he is calm and relaxed or sleeping, there is no problem… it means that he has accepted the other person and there is nothing to fear.
