Have you ever turned a glum face to your dog to be comforted by a wagging tail or lick on the hand? This is because dogs can understand when their owner is feeling sad or happy.
But, according to new research from the University of Vienna, our pups' emotional intelligence goes one step further. The scientists suggest that dogs not only understand our emotions, they can also catch them. It is known as "emotional contagion" and basically means that our bad, happy or angry moods are contagious to our dogs.
Previous research has shown that dogs can distinguish between dog and human emotions and can decipher how their owner is feeling from their facial expression, Medical Daily writes. However the new study, published in Animal Contagion, set out to investigate whether dogs showed a change in their behaviour in response to emotional sounds in both humans and dogs.
During the research, 53 dogs listened to negative and positive sounds from both dogs and humans, such as barking, whimpering and laughing, and also neutral sounds, including rain and crickets chirping. The tests were carried out in two sessions with four trials in each.
The results showed that the dogs reacted differently to the emotional sounds as opposed to the neutral ones, by moving towards the speaker or looking at their owner if the noise was positive or negative. They were also able to tell positive and negative emotions apart.
But the most significant finding was that dogs can catch human emotions just as easily as dog emotions. The study states that "dogs recognised the different valences of the emotional sounds, which is a promising finding for future studies on empathy for positive emotional states in dogs."
So you and your dog may be even closer than you think.