As it turns out, man's best friend is mean to people who are mean to his or her owner, according to research.
Japanese researchers conducted a study showing that dogs will refuse food offered by people who are mean or who have snubbed their master. This means that canines can understand social behaviour and respond to them -a rare ability that only humans and other primates are proven to be able to do.
Kazuo Fujita, a professor of comparative cognition at Kyoto University led a team that tested three groups of 18 dogs. They had a role play wherein the dog owners needed to open a box, and two strangers were with them.
In the first group, the owner asked for help from one of the two strangers, but was refused. In the second group, the owner was given assistance by one person. In both groups, the third person neither helped, nor was asked for it; he remained neutral during the test.
Meanwhile, in the third group, there was no interaction among the three people.
Later, the dog watching the role play was offered food by the two unfamiliar people.
The result: the dogs were more likely to refuse food from the person who didn't help their owners, and instead, chose to accept the food from the person who remained neutral.
"Dogs whose owners were helped and dogs whose owners did not interact with either person showed no marked preference for accepting snacks from the strangers," as reported in AFP.
"We discovered for the first time that dogs make social and emotional evaluations of people regardless of their direct interest," Fujita said.
"This ability is one of the key factors in building a highly collaborative society, and this study shows that dogs share that ability with humans," he added.
This trait is manifested by children at the age of three, according to the research paper.
