Interesting experiment reveals that dogs can detect the reliability of a human

The researchers pointed out that dogs might have higher social intelligence than what we know about.

PUBLISHED MAY 1, 2025

(L) Woman playing fetch with her dog at a park. (R) Woman talking on the phone and holding onto her laptop as her dogs look at her. Representative Cover Image Source: Pexels | Yaroslav Shuraev; Nataliya Vaitkevich

Dogs are known to be a person's most faithful companion. However, their human might have to win their trust, too, according to a study by Kyoto University in Japan. The study revealed that a dog can understand whether a person is reliable or not. The researchers found that a dog may come to know if someone is unreliable and they would even act according to what they know about that particular person. As dogs are known to follow human pointing gestures, the study used that to understand how dogs react to being pointed at by different people and at different objects.

A dog running with a ball in its mouth. Representative Image Source: Pexels | Matthias Zomer

The study conducted by Akiko Takaoka had an aim to find out whether a dog can spot an unreliable person or not and if they would take instructions from them. They worked with 34 dogs to understand their behavior through a pointing experiment. Some people pointed a dog in the direction of a container that had a treat in it. The second time, some people pointed the dogs towards an empty plastic container. So when the people who pointed the dog at an empty container, pointed them in that direction again, they didn't follow the command even though the container had a treat this time. The dogs simply didn't bother looking. But they did follow the command of a person who had pointed them to a treat the first time. From this experiment, the researchers could conclude that dogs hadn't simply lost motivation because it was a repetitive task.

via GIPHY

"These results suggest that not only are dogs highly skilled at understanding human pointing gestures, but they also make inferences about the reliability of a human who presents cues and consequently modify their behavior flexibly depending on the inference," the study explained. Takoka told the BBC that she was surprised at how quickly dogs started considering a person unreliable. "Dogs have more sophisticated social intelligence than we thought. This social intelligence evolved selectively in their long life history with humans," she remarked. John Bradshaw, a professor at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom, did not participate in the study and pointed out that the experiment shows that dogs prefer things to be predictable.

via GIPHY

Consistently not knowing what is going to happen can make a dog feel stressed and aggressive, according to the professor. "Dogs whose owners are inconsistent usually have behavior problems." Even though dogs are more intelligent than we thought, their intelligence is significantly different from ours, according to Bradshaw. "Dogs are sensitive to human behavior but have fewer preconceptions. They live in the present, do not reflect on the past abstractly, or plan for the future."

Two dogs standing close to a house's gate in the garden. Representative Image Source: Pexels | Joshua Köller

Dogs react according to what's there and not by thinking "deeply" about things, the professor further revealed. In another study conducted by the University of Vienna, the researchers tried to gauge whether dogs can tell the change of location. They put two bowls, A and B, where A had food, while B was empty. The study was conducted on 260 dogs and they were pointed at the correct bowl in the first phase. In the second try, the places of the bowls were switched and people pointed the dog to the empty bowl, but most of them simply ignored that instruction. However, the younger dogs followed the command even when it was incorrect, unlike the older dogs.