It doesn’t take a genius to realize that dogs are some pretty intelligent creatures. Sure, it may not always seem like it when they’re trying to eat their own poo or tripping over their own two feet. Clumsiness and offputting eating habits aside, though, they know a lot more than some people tend to realize. Now there’s a study to prove it.

Research undertaken by Akiko Takaoka and others at Japan’s Kyoto University suggests that our dogs know when they’re being lied to.

It turns out that, not only do our dogs know how to determine if a person is untrustworthy, but they will also stop following their social cues.

Takaoka and her team were able to display this social intelligence in dogs by carrying out a couple of very simple pointing experiments.

In order to determine whether dogs know when they’re being lied to, scientists set up an experiment where they had a stranger point out a hidden treat.

In phase 1, a treat was hidden beneath one of two containers. The stranger points out the correct container in the first phase, and the dog deems them a reliable food source. Then, in phase two, the dogs were shown the contents of both containers before the stranger points again. The scientists are pulling a fast one on them in this round, though. When they point and the dogs go to seek the treat, they find the container empty.

Finally, in phase 3, the person points to the container again, which has been refilled with treats, but the outcome is far different from phase one.

The dogs know the scientists have lied to them.

Out of the 34 dogs this experiment was exercised with, far less of them responded to the person pointing in phase 3. Apparently, the dogs have already deemed them to be untrustworthy from a single instance of failing to point out a treat.

Wanting to delve a little deeper into understanding the dogs’ behavior, Takakoa implemented the next step of the experiment; switching pointers.

After many of the dogs failed to respond to the first pointer in the experiments, the team of scientists switched them out for a new person and repeated the experiment all over again.

Interestingly, even though the first pointer had lied to them, all of the dogs were more than willing to give this second pointer a chance.

Takaoka believes this indicates that dogs will stop valuing the social cues they receive from someone they know has lied to them before. According to BBC Earth, Takaoka was:

“surprised that the dogs ‘devalued the reliability of a human’ so quickly. ‘Dogs have more sophisticated social intelligence than we thought. This social intelligence evolved selectively in their long life history with humans.’“

Takaoka and her team conclude the study by saying that, in addition to understanding pointing cues from humans, dogs also make accurate judgments in assessing the reliability of the person giving said cues.

“This ruled out the possibility that dogs simply lost motivation to participate in the task in later phases. These results suggest that not only dogs are highly skilled at understanding human pointing gestures, but also they make inferences about the reliability of a human who presents cues and consequently modify their behavior flexibly depending on the inference,” the study conclusion reads.

So, not that you needed scientific proof that your pup is smarter than he looks when it comes to judging the trustworthiness of others, but now you can add it to your arsenal of “Why Dogs Are Awesome” info anyway.

To see just why dogs don’t trust liars, or magicians, for yourself, watch the hilarious video below.

Please SHARE this with your friends and family.

Source: Science Alert/Jose Ahonen/Animal Cognition/BBC Earth