Can Your Dog Really Be as Socially Perceptive as Your Toddler? This Study Says Yes

If you’re a parent to a toddler and a dog, you may have noticed some striking similarities between the two: selective hearing, a taste for food (or dust or rocks) fresh off the ground and an uncontrollable desire to unspool all the toilet paper. You may have also heard — and believe from experience — that 2-year-olds and dogs have similar levels of intelligence. Now a new study, published in the journal Animal Behaviour, seems to support that theory…at least in terms of social intelligence.

What the study looked at

Psychologists have long theorized that what sets people apart from animals is our social skills, which we start to develop around 9 months of age. Chimps, for example, are considered our closest relatives; while they are better than most animals at some cognitive tasks, they aren’t nearly as socially apt as people. But dogs might be.

Researchers at the University of Arizona studied a total of 443 dogs from a variety of breeds. They used 25 different tests to quantify skills for reasoning about the social and physical world and general cognitive processes. Tests to judge communication skills involved hiding a treat or toy and then pointing or looking in its direction to see if the dogs could figure out its location. They gave similar tests to 105 2-year-olds and 106 chimpanzees.

What the researchers found

While the chimps performed poorly on communication tests, dogs had similar social skills to your average toddler. The researchers chalk the dogs’ advanced social skills up to “survival of the friendliest” — i.e., being cooperative with people (or other dogs) gets you farther in the long run.

“Our working hypothesis is that dogs and humans probably evolved some of these skills as a result of similar evolutionary processes, so probably some things that happened in human evolution were very similar to processes that happened in dog domestication,” said study author Evan MacLean, director of the Arizona Canine Cognition Center at the University of Arizona.

But the researchers stress that just because your dog might possibly be as socially savvy as your tot doesn’t mean the two are equally smart.

“There are different kinds of intelligence, and the kind of intelligence that we think is very important to humans is social in nature, and that’s the kind of intelligence that dogs have to an incredible extent,” MacLean said. “But there are other aspects of cognition, like the way we reason about physical problems, where dogs are totally dissimilar to us.”

What this means for parents

Taking care of a dog certainly pales in comparison to caring for a tiny human. That said, maybe there are some important takeaways from this study:

Sometimes less is more. This study seems to suggest that your toddler and your dog totally get body language. So when your toddler draws on the wall or your dog rips apart a shoe, you don’t always have to lose your sh*t. Raising your blood pressure isn’t good for anyone. A long, disapproving look paired with the cold shoulder can be quite effective (and possibly even ward off a tantrum).
That goes for words, too. Toddler eat all her peas? Dog pee outside and not on the carpet? The more straightforward you sound as you reinforce said behavior, the better. They might be socially smart, but not that socially smart...
You have the best cuddle buddies. Whatever the research proves (or doesn’t) about our social habits, you don’t have to be a scientist to notice that your toddler and your dog would do almost anything for a cuddle any time of the day. So double-task and make it a spooning party this Friday night. And there, everyone’s happy.