Guess what?
It’s not great to lie to dogs AND dogs know when you humans are lying to us!
Let’s break it down on:
THE SUPER AWESOME SCIENCE THREAD!
#TSAST #Science
If you thought you could lie to dogs you’d be forgetting that we can SMELL your emotions.
Humans give of Volatile Organic Compounds when they are happy, sad, or stressed. We can smell them. The best of us are trained to react to them as therapy/service dogs.
@sampson_dog
Researchers in Japan asked the question- will a dog be skeptical of an untrustworthy human, or blindly follow commands.
They had 34 dogs in this study and in the first round, a human truthfully pointed at where a favourite toy or treat was.
The dogs obviously loved this round.
In the second round, they lied to the dogs. They pointed out the wrong location. Dogs were perplexed, confused, and hurt.
This round wasn’t as fun.
In the third round the humans truthfully pointed out where treats were and here is the interesting part for science.
In the third round, the dogs were all done believing the stupid, lying human. A huge majority didn’t seek out the treats. To see if the dog’s trust was ruined, a new human came in and repeated just the first round. Thankfully, the dogs trusted the new human.
In another study dogs were shown two cups with food under them. After being trained to follow the point to the food, the human would occasionally lie to the dog. Initially, the dog blindly trusted the human, but over time there was a chance when the human lied, the dog knew.
So in conclusion:
Don’t trick dogs. While doing a fake out may lead to a funny WHERE THE F IS THE BALL moment, you are damaging their trust in you. Also- there is a good chance when you lie, tiny chemical/body language changes are being picked up and the dog knows!
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