Beware of Dog (silently judging you)

Many will insist it's unfair to feed one dog and not the others looking on, even if it's your dog and your aunt has brought her smelly unruly doggy brood over for a visit. But however smelly they are, her dogs may in fact be indignant at your invidious gesture, at least judging from a study by the University of Vienna's Clever Dog Lab, out last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Here," says the abstract, "we investigated whether domestic dogs show sensitivity toward the inequity of rewards received for giving the paw [that's British for "Shake!"] to an experimenter on command in pairs of dogs." They showed that when one dog was rewarded for shaking, and the other wasn't, the neglected one would soon resist the command.


"Our results suggest that species other than primates show at least a primitive version of inequity aversion, which may be a precursor of a more sophisticated sensitivity to efforts and payoffs of joint interactions."

Detractor Clive Wynne, an associate professor in the psychology department of the University of Florida, told AP, "What it means is individuals are responding negatively to being treated less well."

They are, agrees evolutionary biologist Marc Bekoff, co-author of the forthcoming book Wild Justice, "but it also means they are picking up on what being treated less well means, and that's really important. The animals are aware of being treated less well." No sources care to explain how those two interpretations differ.

"Until recently, psychologists believed most animals lacked the 'sense of self' needed to experience so-called secondary emotions such as jealousy, embarrassment, empathy or guilt," says the Times (UK).

Indeed, studies like this may be closing the gap we tend to think separates us from animals. "In two areas, we're unique," says Bekoff. "We're the only species I know of that cooks food and [we have an] incredible propensity for evil."



Meet the clever dogs of the Clever Dog Lab.

In related news, Florida animal welfare officials are warning against giving pets for the holidays, as returning such unwanted "gifts" after they become attached can be detrimental to their health.

"Animals can go through the same emotions people do," says one official.