Dogs are able to understand the consequences of their actions and have some self-awareness

Dogs are able to understand the consequences of their actions and have some self-awareness
Dogs are able to understand the consequences of their actions and have some self-awareness
Anonim

A study by scientists from Hungary showed that dogs are aware of the relationship between their body and the environment, that is, they have a certain self-awareness, and can also "predict" the consequences of their own behavior.

The work was published in Scientific Reports. Self-presentation is the ability to retain knowledge about yourself, the "boundaries" of your body. In humans, it has developed to very complex forms - self-awareness. According to scientists from the University of Eotvos Lorand (Hungary), since dogs share an anthropogenic and social environment with us, they can show qualities similar to us - for example, self-representational abilities.

The experiment involved 32 dogs: they were asked to bring the ball to their owner, standing on a small rug. The ball was attached to the mat on which the dog was sitting. Thus, the rug simply prevented her from executing the command. If the animal did not realize the connection of its body with this fact, but thought that it was a kind of "continuation" of the rug, then it would not have thought to get up from it in order to give the ball to the owner (which had to be carried along with the rug).

In the second, control part of the experiment, the ball was attached to the ground, while the dogs continued to sit on the mats. The experiment showed that when the ball was attached to the mat on which the dogs were sitting, they left it more often and more willingly than when the mat was not an obstacle to passing the ball. Based on this, the experts made the following conclusion: our four-legged friends understand that their body serves as an “obstacle” on the way to passing the ball to the owner.

This means that dogs are able not only to realize the consequences of their actions, but also to understand that they have a certain body, its boundaries. That is, these animals at least partially have a certain self-awareness. Previously, similar studies were conducted only on humans and elephants, which also showed good results in similar tests.

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