Dogs can sense a 'bad person' by the way they interact with others, study finds

Researchers from Kyoto University and the Medical University of Vienna have studied how dogs protect strangers from their owners - and s they can sense if a person is "good". ' or 'bad'

Dogs can understand human emotions, gestures and actions (

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Most owners trust their dog's instincts around strangers - and it seems they're right.

Dogs have been known to bark at complete strangers when out with their owners, which leaves them perplexed by their animal's sudden outburst.

While some owners simply ignore their behavior and forget about it, others are convinced that their dog knows something they don't.

A study, led by comparative psychologist James Anderson of Kyoto University, Japan, explored how dogs perceive strangers who interact with or reject their owners.

In the study, a group of dogs watched their owners struggle to open a container.

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Dogs have an aversion to humans who reject their owners (

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Unable to open it, their owners passed it to an actor who would help them before repeating the experiment with an actor who would refuse to help them.

Mr. Anderson and his colleagues found that the dogs formed an almost instantaneous dislike for the actor who refused to help their owner when needed.

He wrote, "If someone behaves in an antisocial way, they probably end up with some sort of emotional reaction. Chances are, if these animals can detect cooperative tendencies in human actors."

They concluded, "Dogs negatively evaluate people who refuse to help their owners, and non-human species may engage in third party-based social evaluations."

This comes after researchers conducted a study on dogs' understanding of human behavior.

Researchers Judith Benz-Schwarzburg, Susan Monso and Ludwig Huber from the Medical University of Vienna in Austria studied how dogs perceive humans in relation to cognition and ethics.

The team learned how dogs pay attention to a person's tone of voice and body language to determine whether they are a "good person or a bad person".

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They said, "Dogs indeed have special skills to understand and interact with humans due to the evolutionary history and domestication of...