Can Dogs Read Minds? Not Exactly

Dogs often seem to be psychic, anticipating what we're going to say or do, and now research reveals one secret behind this canine. "Dogs intensely track our eye movements, which can be tied to intent." 

Human babies also possess the ability, described in the latest Current Biology.

"They (dogs) read our intention to communicate in a preverbal, infant-like (human baby) manner," said co-author Jozaf Topal, who works in the Institute for Psychological Research at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

The careful watch of a dogs' eyes help the animal figure out what we're up to

In a separate new study published in the journal Animal Behaviour, researchers discovered that dogs communicate with humans to request, but not to inform. Nevertheless, the process is still very focused and intense.

We show "how much dogs are tuned into the intentional dimension of human communication and how important certain signals are for them to know when communication is relevant and directed at them," said Juliane Kaminski, lead author of the paper and a researcher in the Evolutionary Roots of Human Social Interaction group at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

Topal thinks it's possible that dogs are even sometimes better than adults are at reading human intent, given that they are so attuned to smells, sounds, and other cues.
"They can easily learn to associate even unconscious behavioral cues of their owner with particular consequences," he said. "This way, a dog can acquire an ability to anticipate the owner's behavior, and this may give a false impression of mind-reading."