Dogs' emotions are plain to see, scientists say. Photo: Getty Images
Any dog owner will claim they can tell exactly what their pet is feeling just by looking at it. Scientists now say they may well be right.
A study has shown that people are able to identify precisely a range of emotions in dogs from changes in their facial expressions.
The research shows that volunteers could correctly spot when a dog was happy, sad, angry, scared, surprised and disgusted when shown only a picture of the animal's face, suggesting that humans are naturally attuned to detecting how animals feel.
Sad: Emotional communication. Photo: Getty Images
Research leader and psychologist Tina Bloom said: ''There is no doubt that humans have the ability to recognise emotional states in other humans and accurately read other humans' facial expressions.
''We have shown that humans are also able to accurately - if not perfectly - identify at least one dog's facial expressions.
''Although humans often think of themselves as disconnected or even isolated from nature, our study suggests that there are patterns that connect, and one of these is in the form of emotional communication,'' Dr Bloom said.
Endearing: Dogs can express guilt. Photo: Getty Images
The study, published in the journal Behavioural Processes, used photographs of a police dog as it experienced different emotions, which were shown to 50
volunteers. By far the easiest emotion they recognised was happiness, with 88 per cent correctly identifying it. Anger was identified by 70 per cent of participants.
About 45 per cent spotted when the dog was frightened, while 37 per cent could identify the relatively subtle emotion of sadness. The expressions that were hardest for humans to identify were surprise and disgust.
The researchers at Walden University in Minneapolis found that people with minimal experience of dogs were better at identifying disgust and anger, perhaps because dog owners convinced themselves that their dog was not aggressive and so the associated facial expression was just playing.
''I am not at all surprised that science has finally accepted what we knew all along,'' Dogs Today editor Beverley Cuddy said. ''Dog and owner communicate perfectly well without words.''