Research suggests dogs can replay what they've seen

A study undertaken at a university in Hungary has revealed that dogs can store human actions in their memory and imitate them at a later time.

Scientists Claudia Fugazza and Adám Miklósi used eight adult pet dogs and their owners for the study. The dogs were trained by their owners using the "do as I do" method.

After intervals between five and 30 seconds long, the dogs were able to copy the human action, for example, ringing a bell or walking around a bucket.

Fugazza explained how the tests went for one owner, Valentina, and her dog, Adila.

She said three randomly chosen objects were set down at an equal distance from Adila, who watched as Valentina demonstrated an action with one of them.

The pair would then take a short break behind a screen to hide the objects, while Adila's mind was put to something else, such as playing with a ball or practicing another training activity.

When the break was over, Adila was taken back to the starting position and given the command, "do it".

"In a control condition, the 'do it' command was given by someone other than Valentina, who did not know what action had previously been demonstrated," said Fugazza.

"After the 'do it' command, Adila typically performed the action that was previously demonstrated."

The tests were able to prove that dogs are able to learn, retain and replay actions taught by humans after a short delay – the first evidence of dogs' cognitive ability to both encode and recall actions.

"This ability implies that the dogs have a mental representation of the human demonstration," concluded the authors.

"In addition, the ability to imitate a novel action after a delay without previous practice suggests the presence of a specific type of long-term memory in dogs."

The study has been published in the journal Animal Cognition.

Image courtesy of Animal Cognition/Claudia Fugazza