Are dogs intelligent? Do they have emotions? So many experiments say "Yes!" to both questions.

For the intellectual abilities of dogs, there is one thing very special about dogs. The dog is the only species that can understand and act according to human gestures and facial expressions. There is a famous study about dogs’ understanding about human gestures. Researchers hide a treat in one of two locations and point at one of the directions. Children older than one year old will get this gesture and go to claim it. Interestingly, chimpanzees, a species that is seen as has similar genetic makeup as human beings and very intelligent, fail to recognize gestures in this study; dogs, amazingly, succeed in understanding human gestures and go to claim the trait. It is not so clear that why only dogs can understand human gestures, but a common belief is that they understand human communicative cues due to a “special adaptation to life with humans” and the selection pressures in the process of domestication. This specific intellectual capability is believed to be critical for dogs’ survival because it assists greatly in activities like herding and hunting and makes human beings more likely to keep dogs as companions throughout the history (which greatly increases their chances of survival).

Here’s a video that explains the experiment discussed above: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ryxZibkJlo.

Another intellectual ability is the ability to learn and remember. Rico, a border collie, exhibited a process that was only seen in human beings before called “fast mapping”, which is forming “quick and rough hypotheses about the meaning of a new word after only a single exposure”. Rico could remember the names of over 200 items for up to four weeks after the initial exposure, and was able to infer the names of new items by “exclusion learning. 

A video about Rico’s fast mapping is provided here.

 Another border collie, Betsy, learned over 340 words and was able to associate objects with their photographic images. Chaser, another border collie, is even more amazing. She can identify more than 1000 toys by their names and recognize new items by exclusion learning. 

A video about Betsy can be found here.

A video about Chaser is here: 

Learning and memory are both important for dogs’ survival because such capabilities help them know where and how they can get food sources and shelters. They also help dogs generalize from past mistakes and experiences to avoid dangers and solve problems better in the future.

When it comes to emotions, firstly, dogs have the ability to express primary emotions.  Primary emotions are direct reactions to an external event, which are induced by physiological changes and important for making flight or fight decisions. Primary emotions generally include anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise. Studies have shown that dogs have “the same brain structures that produce emotions in humans”. They also have the same hormones and experience the same chemical changes as humans do “during emotional states”. Besides evidence from neurological studies, an interesting study has shown that dogs express happiness when they see their owners. Researchers used high-speed video cameras to capture the facial expressions of dogs when they saw their owners and they found that the dogs’ left eyebrows moved more when they saw their owners but not when they saw unfamiliar people, indicating that the left facial lateralization is a sign of expressing happiness of seeing their owners. Primary emotions are important for dogs’ survival because they help dogs differentiate pleasant/unpleasant stimuli and seek for rewarding sources (for example, food). They are also important in terms of sensing danger—if dogs can’t feel fear, they can’t make the right choice in fight or flight situations.

See pictures of dogs with various expressions of emotions,

And a video of happy dogs welcoming soldiers home: 

This is a video of a happy dog who is enjoying music: 

As for secondary emotions, studies have shown that dogs are fully capable of expressing complex secondary emotions like jealousy and love. In one study, dogs learned the trick of “shaking hands” and were then arranged in pairs. Both dogs in every pair were instructed to shake hands while only one of them got a reward. The dogs that were not getting rewards stopped performing the trick soon and showed signs of stress or annoyance when their partners got the rewards. Another study has proved that dogs can express and feel love. Researchers have found that dogs were more likely to have physical contact with their owners and less likely to play independently if their owners reported a high level of interaction with their dogs. From the above information, we can see that dogs have the ability to feel unfairness and express jealousy, and to feel and express love. Dogs are social animals and secondary emotions, as seen above, are critical elements in social relationships. Their abilities to feel and express secondary emotions help them form fair and healthy social bonds, which are essential for their survivals.

Watch this video to find out how jealous dogs act: 

This is a video that describes neurological evidence that dogs love their owners:

Sources used:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2013/sep/23/dogs-uncomplicated-relationship-research

http://news.discovery.com/animals/zoo-animals/dogs-humans-120208.htm

http://www.emotions-r-us.com/

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_intelligence

Kaminski, J., Call, J., & Fischer, J. (2004). Word Learning in a Domestic Dog: Evidence for "Fast Mapping". Science, 304(5677), 1682-1683.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaser_(dog)

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/canine-corner/201303/which-emotions-do-dogs-actually-experience

http://cornercanyoncounseling.com/PDFs/patientEducation/Emotional%20Competence/Primary%20and%20Secondary%20Emotions.pdf

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/pets/10211660/Is-your-dog-happy-to-see-you-Look-at-its-eyebrows-to-find-out.html

Nagasawa, M., Kawai, E., Mogi, K., & Kikusui, T. (2013). Dogs show left facial lateralization upon reunion with their owners. Behavioural Processes, 98112-116.

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