Experts say that the dogs involved in the research remembered what they had seen humans doing, even though there was no particular reason for them to remember it.
A new study suggests that if you ever look at your dog and wonder what it might be thinking, the answer could be quite surprising. According to the research, dogs remember past events far better than previously believed.
The study, published in the scientific journal “Current Biology,” reports that a group of researchers in Hungary found that, like humans, dogs can recall past events and bring them back to mind—even if those events were not particularly important at the time they occurred.
One of the authors of the research, Claudia Fugazza, said that dogs are among the animals considered intelligent. However, it was surprising to discover that despite differences in species, dogs share some mental abilities with their human owners.
She explained that studying a dog’s memory is quite difficult because dogs cannot speak. Therefore, researchers used a special method and asked the dogs to do the same things that humans did. For example, if a human jumped, the dog was encouraged to jump as well.
One group of dogs was trained to imitate human actions, while another group was trained not to copy what humans did.
After the training, the experts were surprised to find that when the second group was later asked to do what the human had done, they performed the same actions—even though they had been trained not to imitate them.
According to the researchers, this shows that the dogs had remembered what they had seen the humans doing, even though there was no specific reason for them to remember it.
The experts also noted in their research that memories remain in the mind for some time, but gradually they begin to fade and are eventually forgotten.