His master’s voice? Maybe. His master’s face? Definitely.
Dogs can spot their owners’ faces not only in person but in photographs, too, according to a new study that scratches another item — photo recognition — off the list of abilities we previously thought only humans have.
Researchers at the University of Helsinki in Finland tested dogs’ reactions to random snaps of their owners, mixed in with mug shots of complete strangers and of other dogs. The test pups consistently gazed longer and more intently at the pictures of people they know, according to findings just published in the journal “Animal Cognition.”
But more than anything, they preferred looking at photos of other dogs, the researchers found.
Past studies have established that dogs distinguish a person in their presence in part by looking directly at the person’s face, and that they also study facial cues — just like humans do — for signs of mood and receptivity.
The Helsinki study took recognition one step further by exposing pooches to multiple photos and measuring the animals’ eye movements as well as the direction and the duration of their focus on each image.
The dogs zeroed in on pictures of familiar faces more decisively, and looked at them longer — even when those pictures were shown upside down, the study found.
But no photographs of humans, however beloved by the test subjects, interested them as much pictures of other dogs, the study found.