Point towards one of two objects and many dogs will use your gesture to guide their choice. It seems unremarkable, yet in laboratory tests dogs often outperform chimpanzees at this particular task.

That does not mean dogs are more intelligent than chimpanzees, which surpass them in many other cognitive tests. What it reveals is something more specific: dogs are unusually good at reading the ways in which humans communicate.

We tend to take this ability for granted. Yet research suggests that dogs possess a very impressive collection of social skills shaped by thousands of years of living alongside us, as well as by their own lifetime of watching, learning from and interacting with people.

The pointing test that can stump a chimpanzee

The classic experiment is simple. A researcher hides a treat beneath one of two containers, then points towards the correct one. Dogs will often follow the gesture and choose the container holding the food. Human toddlers can do this too.

Chimpanzees frequently struggle in the standard version of the test, despite being one of our closest living relatives and outperforming dogs in many other areas. Their performance varies according to their experience and the context, however, and studies have shown that chimpanzees can follow human pointing successfully in some co-operative situations.

What is striking is that many dogs appear to treat a point as communicative information. They understand that the person is directing their attention towards something, rather than merely moving an arm.

Dogs can respond to less familiar gestures too, including certain points made with a foot. Research also suggests that they can adjust how much they rely on someone whose information has repeatedly proved inaccurate. They are not simply following every movement blindly: they are sensitive to the person, the situation and what has happened before.

A muscle made for puppy-dog eyes

In 2019, a team led by Dr Juliane Kaminski at the University of Portsmouth compared the facial anatomy of domestic dogs and grey wolves.

In the animals studied, dogs possessed a well-developed muscle above the eye called the levator anguli oculi medialis. This enables them to raise their inner eyebrows and produce the wide-eyed expression commonly known as “puppy-dog eyes”. In the wolves examined, the muscle was absent or represented only by a few fibres.

The movement makes a dog’s eyes appear larger and more infant-like. It also resembles an expression humans make when sad, which may help to attract our attention and encourage a nurturing response.

The researchers proposed that, over generations, humans may have favoured dogs whose eyebrow movements made them appear more appealing. Behavioural tests also found that dogs produced more intense inner-eyebrow movements than wolves when people were present.

The evolutionary story is not quite settled, however. More recent research found a similarly developed muscle in coyotes, suggesting it may be an ancestral feature reduced or lost in grey wolves rather than something created entirely through dog domestication.

Even so, dogs have become particularly adept at using facial movement when interacting with us, and humans are exceptionally receptive to it.

“Dogs are not mind-readers, but they are exceptionally alert to the ways in which humans communicate.”

The look of love, chemically speaking

Another intriguing discovery concerns what happens when dogs and their owners look into one another’s eyes.

Oxytocin is involved in social attachment, including the bond between human caregivers and babies. In 2015, researchers in Japan, including Miho Nagasawa and Takefumi Kikusui, studied whether a similar process might occur between dogs and people.

They found that longer periods of mutual gaze were associated with increases in urinary oxytocin in both dogs and their owners. The researchers proposed a positive feedback loop in which a dog’s gaze encouraged interaction from the owner, which in turn encouraged further attention from the dog.

The same gaze-related pattern was not found among the study’s hand-reared wolves and their carers. Wolves, even when raised closely by people, generally spent far less time holding human eye contact.

Later studies have painted a more complicated picture. Findings concerning oxytocin and human–dog interaction have not always been consistent, and socialisation, individual experience and the strength of the relationship may all play a part.

The 2015 research nevertheless provided fascinating evidence that mutual gaze can be part of the biological processes supporting the bond between dogs and their people.

Written into the relationship

Dogs’ sensitivity to us did not appear overnight. It developed through a relationship stretching back many thousands of years, as the ancient wolves from which dogs descended gradually became part of human lives.

Over time, dogs with traits that helped them live and communicate successfully with people were more likely to thrive alongside us. That evolutionary history is only part of the explanation, though. Dogs also spend their lives learning about individual people: our routines, voices, gestures and moods.

The result is an animal unusually attentive to human behaviour – a companion that watches our faces, follows our movements and learns what particular actions and words are likely to mean.

It is the deep history of our oldest friendship, shaped by both evolution and everyday experience.

So, the next time your dog follows your gesture, watches your face or fixes you with those impossible eyes, the connection is not imaginary. Dogs are not mind-readers, but thousands of years alongside humans – combined with a lifetime of observing the people around them – have made them extraordinarily sensitive to what we do and how we communicate.

Frequently asked questions

Do dogs really understand humans better than chimpanzees?

Dogs often outperform chimpanzees in standard tests involving human communicative gestures such as pointing. This does not mean dogs are more intelligent overall. Chimpanzees excel at many other cognitive tasks and can follow human gestures successfully in certain contexts.

What are “puppy-dog eyes”, scientifically?

Dogs have a muscle above the eye called the levator anguli oculi medialis, which allows them to raise their inner eyebrows. In the animals examined in a 2019 study, this muscle was well developed in dogs but absent or represented only by sparse fibres in grey wolves. Coyotes have since been found to possess a similar muscle.

Is it true that dogs and their owners share a bonding hormone?

A 2015 study found that longer mutual gazing between dogs and their owners was associated with increased urinary oxytocin in both. Oxytocin plays a part in social bonding, although the wider scientific evidence is complex and not every study has produced the same results.

Why are dogs so responsive to people?

Domestication is an important part of the explanation. Over many generations, dogs developed traits that helped them live successfully alongside humans. Early socialisation, individual experience and the relationship between a dog and a particular person are also extremely important.

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