28 July 2010

Pet owners who are training their dogs to 'shake paws' may have noticed that canines are likely to imitate human gestures with their heads or paws.

Now the University of Vienna has revealed that mutts, like humans, are subject to 'automatic imitation', whereby the sight of another person's body movement can cause the observer to engage in an identical action.

In the study, ten dogs were given basic training in how to open a sliding door using either their head or paws.

Half were then instructed to open the door in the same way as their owner, either with their head or paw, while the remaining group had to open it using the alternative method, in order to get a food reward.

The second group of pet dogs took longer to open the door using the 'incompatible' method, the study found.

Dr Friederike Range, who worked on the research, wrote in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B journal: "Dogs are special animals, both in terms of their evolutionary history of domestication and the range and intensity of their developmental training by humans."

He noted that these factors may boost dogs' empathy towards human activity.