Attentive Friends

Why do people lavish so much care on a member of an alien species? A short answer is that on an emotional plane, families do not see the dog as alien. According to John Archer (1) of the University of Central Lancashire, who has conducted a detailed study of dog-human relations from an evolutionary perspective, about 40% of owners identify their dog as a family member reflecting social compatibility between our two species.

Dogs are extraordinarily attentive and have an uncanny ability to predict what their owners will do, whether getting the dog a meal or preparing to go on a walk. Experiments show that dogs and wolves can be astute readers of human body language using the direction of our gaze to locate hidden food (2) a problem that is beyond chimps.
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