The Traits that Draw Humans to Dogs

We all know that dogs and humans are a match made in heaven, so they must have some things in common, right? But up until recently, we underestimated how much dogs actually act like us. As it turns out, man’s best friend acts more similar to us than we thought. Read on to learn more about what traits dogs and humans share that make us love them even more.

Emotional Intelligence

Evidence has shown that dogs are capable of reading facial expressions, communicating jealousy, and displaying empathy. When dogs originally became domesticated, they began to pick up on people-like traits that enable them to understand our emotions and mimic them. Adaptively, this makes sense. Dogs need to be able to assess threats and get help, and their understanding of our emotions allows them to do exactly this. This quality of theirs also makes us like them a lot more!

Gaze Following

Another adaptive skill that dogs have is gaze following. This means that when you glance somewhere, your dog looks there, too. Even if you’re not looking at something of interest to them, dogs will follow your gaze and stare where you’re staring. While you may not even notice this, it helps us feel more connected to our dogs. Even something as simple as looking at the same thing makes it feel like we’re sharing something special with our dogs. We feel understood and cared about by our furry friends.

Social Eavesdropping

We watch and listen to other people to gain insight into their preferences and behaviors. As it turns out, so do our dogs. A recent study tested dogs that watched their owners struggle to complete a task. In one variation of the study, another person helped the owner with the task. In another variation, the person turned his or her back when the owner asked for help. In the control group, the person just turned their back without being asked for help. Dogs more frequently shunned the non-helper when the person refused to help the owner, suggesting that they may be in touch with our feelings of rejection or contempt.

While research hasn’t given us completely conclusive results, we do know that our dogs act in certain ways that make us love them more. There’s just something about the human-dog bond that makes it special and unbreakable. So the next time that your dog follows your gaze or seems to empathize with you, give them a little extra thank you!