The debate is recurrent! Many people are convinced that dogs can certainly tell if a person is good or bad, while others claim that this is impossible. Animo Magazine is also curious about the question, so we searched the internet a bit to find a concrete answer, and we found it!

In fact, a behavioral study on the subject was carried out by a woman named Akiko Takaoka, from Kyoto University, Japan. Dogs are said to be more intelligent than we think and are able to distinguish unreliable and bad people from good and trustworthy people.

The experiment conducted by Akiko Takaoka and her team is formal and aimed to find out how a dog would behave when faced with an untrustworthy person who had lied to it. The research, which included 34 participating dogs and their owners, was divided into three parts.

The owner points to a full bowl of food. The dog walks to the bowl without hesitation. Another bowl, this time empty, is placed in the same place. The owner repeats the gesture, pointing to the empty bowl of food. When he reaches the bowl, the dog hesitates and seems to feel trapped, because there is nothing in it.

The dogs all interpreted their owner's gesture well, which suggests that they understand human gestures. However, if these are not based on something certain, then the dog can become anxious and nervous.

In the third part, the dogs no longer followed the handlers' hand instructions. In fact, when the handlers pointed to the bowl, no animals followed the pointing hand.

The study, published in Animal Cognition Journal, concluded that dogs use their previous experiences to interpret situations and decide whether a person is trustworthy or not.

While the study provides incredible insight into dog behavior, it is not the first to do so, and several previous studies have reached somewhat similar conclusions.

Dogs have been proven to be extremely intelligent. They can not only read our facial expressions and gestures, but also decipher them to decide whether they want to follow our social cues.

A study published in the journal Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews revealed how dogs were able to clearly interpret interactions between their owners and strangers. Participating dogs behaved well with “good” strangers and avoided people who had acted rudely toward their owners.

In another interesting experiment, dog owners asked strangers for help, who then tried to give their dog a treat. And the results surprised everyone! None of the participating dogs accepted the treat from the people who had mistreated their owner.

The dogs even accepted treats from strangers who did not respond to their owner's begging, but aggressive and rude people could not gain their trust.

Sources: WorldTruth.TV – BrightSide