Most dogs respond to their owners’ commands and hand signals. But is that just because they’re trained to? Or could a dog’s ability to understand human hand gestures be partially innate?

To find out, a team of researchers in India conducted a study to find whether untrained, stray dogs can understand human pointing gestures without having met the signaling person previously.

The team, led by Anindita Bhadra, PhD, a behavioral biologist at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Kolkata, worked with homeless dogs in several Indian cities.

The researchers approached 160 strays and placed two covered bowls, one containing food and the other empty, on the ground near them. One researcher then pointed randomly to one of the two bowls, either momentarily or repeatedly, and observed whether or not the dog approached the indicated bowl.

About half of the dogs didn’t approach either bowl, although the researchers noted that these dogs appeared anxious and may have had bad experiences with unfamiliar humans before.

The dogs who did approach the bowls appeared less anxious and friendlier.

Approximately 80% of those dogs successfully interpreted the human’s pointing gestures and went to the indicated bowl, despite having never received prior training from a human, or previously seen the human in question. The findings suggest that dogs may be able to understand complex gestures by simply watching humans, which could have implications in reducing conflict between stray dogs and humans, especially in countries with large populations of free-ranging, stray dogs such as India.

Bhadra, who works exclusively with strays, spoke with NEWStat about her research.

NEWStat: What does it say about dogs and their ability to communicate with humans that even many stray dogs encountering someone for the first time are able to interpret an abstract gesture such as pointing?

Anindita Bhadra: We feel that this suggests [that] the stray dogs are observing us closely, [that] they learn from their experiences of living around humans and don’t need training for learning the meaning of gestures like pointing, [and that] they might have an innate tendency to understand humans.

NEWStat: What implications does your work have for human-canine relationships?

AB: In countries like India, where dogs live in a human-dominated environment, the dog-human relationship is dynamic and complex. Studies like this can help us to understand exactly how much dogs on [the] streets understand our gestures, and thereby, we can address issues of dog-human conflict arising from human behavior on the streets. 

NEWStat: How could your findings impact the way veterinary health professionals treat canine patients?

AB: I feel that understanding what is innate in dogs is necessary for not only veterinary practitioners, but also for dog trainers, consultants, and counsellors. I would like to stress that I work only on free-ranging dogs, and this work is a small piece in the larger jigsaw [puzzle] of dog behavior, ecology, and cognition that we are trying to understand. We are interested in addressing the evolutionary question of how dogs became dogs and for this, free-ranging dogs are an excellent model system. They live among humans, interact with our species in the urban ecosystem, and are yet free animals with their social lives. In India, dogs have existed in similar conditions for centuries, and hence they are ideal for understanding which of the behavioral adaptations might have been early transitions that would have helped them to bond better with humans.

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