TORONTO: A new study suggests that dogs, like humans, are self-aware and probably understand the consequences of their actions.
The findings, published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports, say dogs can show “body awareness,” a manifestation of self-representation.
Self-representation is a concept that describes how you see yourself and the image you have in your mind: a construction of your own identity.
Part of this concept is physical “body consciousness” or “self-awareness”: a recognition of how your body physically relates to a space. The study said babies up to five months old are able to recognize their moving legs as an example.
“Body consciousness, which is ‘the ability to consider information about one’s own body, as an explicit object, in relation to other objects in the world,’ can be regarded as one of the fundamental blocks of personal representation.” says the study.
And while it is generally accepted that most species have a basic sense of self-perception, “body consciousness” is a trait that is clearly applied to humans and scientists have been trying to find out if animals also possess.
Dogs have a “well-proven account of complex cognitive abilities,” such as empathy and social learning, that make them an ideal topic for research, according to the study.
The scientists tested 54 dogs by placing them on a small mat and giving them orders to pick up and give an object to its owner. Objects were attached to the mat or floor under the mat under test conditions.
In the first test, investigators fixed a ball to the mat and asked the dog to give it to its owner. Since the ball was fixed to the mat, the dog would be unable to carry the ball to its owner unless they first came down from the carpet.
Many of the dogs became aware of the problem and got off the carpet to complete the task, showing the feeling of being “body conscious,” the study says.
In the second test, the investigators fixed the ball to the ground under the mat and gave orders for the dog to give the ball to its owner. It was about checking if the dogs understood the difference between “there is an obstacle” and “the body is the obstacle”.
When the ball landed on the ground, the dogs left the carpet less frequently, which the study suggests dogs recognize when their body is or is not an obstacle to the order given to them.
The researchers say the dogs showed “the first convincing evidence of body awareness by understanding the consequence of their own actions in a species where no higher-order self-representation capacity was previously found.”
The researchers said the study also showed that dogs could record their own action and consequences, and separate them from other external stimuli.
Researchers believe their findings will help them test “body consciousness” in other advancing animal species.