How Much Do Our Dogs Care About Us?

Sometimes dogs seem to be sent from heaven to be our friends, but is their empathy with us all in OUR minds?

Dogs and man have evolved together for the past 15,000 years. Researcher Deborah Custance wanted find out how much they can really read our emotions, so she studied the response of nearby dogs when someone near them began to cry or hum. When dogs sense human distress, we know that they often do things like whine, nuzzle or lick the person, fetch toys for them or lay their heads in their laps. But these actions don’t necessarily indicate empathy–they could merely indicate confusion or curiosity on the dog’s part.

While "human oriented behavior" did sometimes take place among dogs when a person hummed, it was twice as likely to happen when they cried, indicating that the dogs WERE differentiating odd behavior and sadness.

So go ahead and tell your troubles to the dog who’s waiting so patiently for you at home. While not all PEOPLE will sympathize with you, your dog definitely will.

All of us love our dogs, but some of us love our cats too (NOTE: Subscribers can still listen to this interview). So many people tell us how much they love the great edge news on our website, we can’t figure out why so few of them SUPPORT us! We can’t be here for you tomorrow if we don’t get more help from readers like you today, so please subscribe today, and click on the "donate" tab on our homepage too!