Your Best Friends Will Diss Those Who Snub You, Study

Dogs do not tend to take food from those who don't like their owners, says a Japanese study, according to dailymail.

If you're a dog owner, then you can rest assured that your pet would adopt your friends as well as your enemies. Japanese researchers disclose that dogs do not accept food offered by those who have ignored their master/mistress, and would prefer to accept treats from a neutral, third person.

Hence, your dogs don't like your enemies! This trait, which is found also in primates, puts the dog safely on your side. Canines thus have the capacity to cooperate socially, which is a trait found in few species, including humans and some other primates. In a team led by Kazuo Fujita, a professor of comparative cognition at Kyoto University, scientists probed the effects on three groups of 18 dogs, by employing "role plays", as per theguardian.

In every one of the three groups, a man with a dog was accompanied by two persons the dog did not know. In the first group, the owner took help from one of the people, who actively refused to help.

In the second group, the owner asked for, and received, help from one person.

There was a third person who was neutral and not involved in either helping or refusing to help.

Watching each box-opening scene, a dog was then given food by a couple of unknown people in the room.

Dogs who saw their master being snubbed by one of the persons tended to accept food from a neutral observer, ignoring a person who refused to help.

Hence, dogs whose owners were helped and dogs whose owners did not interact with any of the persons did not like to take snacks from the strangers.

Interestingly, the dogs were not acting out of self-interest, but were dictated by the owners' preferences.

"We discovered for the first time that dogs make social and emotional evaluations of people regardless of their direct interest," Professor Fujita said. "This ability is one of key factors in building a highly collaborative society and this study shows that dogs share that ability with humans."

Earlier studies showed that this characteristic is present in children as young as three years.

Professor Fujita added that not all primates show cooperative behaviour.

"There is a similar study that showed tufted capuchins (a monkey native to South America) have this ability, but there is no evidence that chimpanzees demonstrate a preference unless there is a direct benefit to them," he told AFP.