It’s a shame that dogs can’t talk to their owners directly, even though they’re pretty good at communicating non-verbally. You can just tell by their expressions or manners what they mean, or what they need.

A hungry pooch can be easily recognized, and if the tail is wagging you know they’re excited.

Another striking example of a dog communicating with its owners is the well-known phenomenon of ‘puppy eyes’.

It turns out these dogs are actually well aware of what they’re doing.

It’s something that was uncovered in research conducted by the Dog Cognition Center at the University of Portsmouth. The research team, led by Dr. Juliane Kaminski, wanted to see how dogs would react when humans were around, but also when they weren’t.

They set up a few hidden cameras to film the pooches’ facial reactions the entire time, and they’ve come up with some interesting results.

The dogs totally adapted their behavior and emotions when there were humans around.

Showing a sad puppy eyes face, for example, isn’t just an expression of emotion. It’s rather a form of communicating.

“The findings appear to support evidence dogs are sensitive to humans’ attention and that expressions are potentially active attempts to communicate, not simple emotional displays,” the doctor told in an academic statement.

One of the easiest ways to test and study the facial expressions of dogs was to hand them some delicious food treats. You’d expect your dog to be on top of the world with a big smile and tongue hanging out but, apparently, that doesn’t happen at all if there’s no human around.

24 dogs were observed, and not one showed a difference in facial expression when given treats without humans around.

So what about the puppy eyes phenomenon? It’s achieved by raising the eyebrows, and this alone makes the eyes of your furry friend look bigger and more striking. It’s often a face that you truly can’t resist.

The study footage showed that dogs raised their eyes only if they were sure that they could count on human attention. When there was a person around, they were much more likely to show their tongues and be louder.

Of course, this is a study with a rather small sample size, but the research team made sure to include dogs of different breeds and ages to keep it fairly representative for the general dog population.

Aside from observation, the dogs were also tracked with a special system called DogFACS.

These accurately analyze even the smallest movements in facial muscles, including the ones we can’t observe as humans.

“All were family pets. Each dog was tied by a lead a meter away from a person, and the dogs’ faces were filmed throughout a range of exchanges, from the person being oriented towards the dog, to being distracted and with her body turned away from the dog.”

The research team theorizes that an explanation for this change in behavior is thousands of years of evolution and domestication.

It also builds upon previous research.

For instance, dogs have demonstrated they will much more likely steal food when there’s no one around to look and that they value eye contact from humans.

“Domestic dogs have a unique history – they have lived alongside humans for 30,000 years and during that time selection pressures seem to have acted on dogs’ ability to communicate with us. We knew domestic dogs paid attention to how attentive a human is – in a previous study we found, for example, that dogs stole food more often when the human’s eyes were closed or they had their back turned. In another study, we found dogs follow the gaze of a human if the human first establishes eye contact with the dog, so the dog knows the gaze-shift is directed at them. This study moves forward what we understand about dog cognition. We now know dogs make more facial expressions when the human is paying attention,” Dr Kaminski concluded.

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Source: Nature.com – Scientific Reports 7 (academic journal), Eurakalert