Dogs are one of the most interesting creatures on earth. With their big expressive eyes, fluffy fur, and adorable wagging tails, it is no wonder they are so popular. But do dogs think humans are cute? Do dogs know we love them?
What about all those other questions you wanted to ask, but can’t seem to find an answer for? Then, here is where you will stop searching. Just sit back, relax and read on.
Do Dogs Think Humans Are Cute?
In today’s world, it is no secret that humans and dogs have a special relationship. In fact, the bond between humans and canines has been around for thousands of years. Dogs adore their owners and love them unconditionally.
To understand this unique connection between man and canine, we must first explore why dogs are so drawn to people in general. So let’s take a closer look at the relationship between these two species.
Dogs are a human’s best friend, and many people love their canine companions. Dogs have been around for thousands of years and have evolved to be great companions.
They understand our emotions through facial expressions and body language, which is why they can reciprocate our feelings in return.
For example, dogs wag their tails when we greet them or show excitement when we come home from work.
In addition to understanding our emotions, dogs also display behaviors that will make you fall even more in love with them!
Dogs do not know what ‘cute is’ as humans do. But they do love humans as family members and will express this in different ways.
Dogs rely more on their sense of smell than humans do. Dogs have about 200- 300 million olfactory receptors in their noses while humans only have 6 million, which means they can smell up to 20 times better than we can!
This is why dogs are often trained to detect odors such as drugs and bombs by smelling a person’s belongings or the area around them.
Oxytocin is a hormone that is released during positive social interactions between humans amongst other circumstances. This creates feelings of connection and bonding.
Dogs are very sociable creatures that love being around people for obvious reasons. They have evolved to use their noses to detect this hormone and know you are expressing affection and other positive feelings.
Dogs can tell when we’re feeling down and will come up to us for a little extra love and support.
But did you know that dogs can also detect positivity from our voices? It might be difficult to believe at first, but studies have shown that even though dogs don’t understand what we’re saying, they do hear the tone in our voice.
So if we want our dog to be happy with us all day long then we must stay positive! This is so true because I see my Shih Tzu react clearly to my angry voice.
There was this instance when my cocker spaniel stole my banana and she clearly understood I was displeased and put the banana near me.
Later she also understood that I was fine and began to eat the banana after I told her to. This clearly shows that dogs can understand us, and our positive and negative voice tones.
Dogs love humans and understand human emotions but they do not know cuteness.
Dogs have been known to sleep with their owners, cuddle them for warmth, sit in front of doors so that their owners can’t leave the house without them, and even protect their owners from strangers or other animals.
However, dogs don’t experience cuteness as we do. This means they won’t necessarily act like babies when presented with an adorable baby face because it will not elicit the same response as it would if you were talking to another person.
So the end line is that dogs understand our love and love us back, but cannot comprehend cuteness. Even if they do, it hasn’t been scientifically established as yet.
Having said this, although dogs do not understand cuteness, it has been found that humans benefit from watching cute animals both in terms of productivity and emotions.
Here is a link if you would like to read more.
Stress-Relieving Benefits of Watching Cute Animal Videos (verywellmind.com)
Do Dogs Know That Humans Think They Are Cute?
In 2016 the ‘Washington Post’ published an article about dogs understanding what humans say, based on a neuroimaging study that was done in 2015. Here is the link:
Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2016/08/30/confirmed-your-dog-really-does-get-you/
Subsequently, in 2020 another research paper was also published on ‘How dogs perceive humans and how humans should treat their pet dogs: Linking cognition with ethics’.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.584037/full
In this paper, it was found that there is increasing evidence to say dogs can understand human expressions and emotions very well. We have to remember that dogs are intelligent beings and have been living with us for ages.
So dogs are very much capable of understanding that they get special treatment from humans and lots of love too.
Just like when you translate from one language to another, the words aren’t exactly the same, but you still get to convey what you are trying to say, dogs do understand human language but in their own way.
This is endorsed by Dr. Brian Hare who has dedicated himself to studying dog cognition.
In conclusion, although they don’t know ‘cute’, they are capable of understanding we humans adore and love them.
Do Dogs Think Humans Are Dogs?
Dogs know by sheer smell that humans are not dogs. They can tell the difference between a human hand and a dog’s hand, even if they’re covered in peanut butter, just by sniffing them out.
This is because dogs have an incredible sense of smell – even better than ours! Dogs are experts at using their noses to detect the world around them. They can tell when someone has diabetes, and even if you’ve been drinking alcohol!
They can also tell the difference between a human’s scent and theirs. Have you ever noticed your dog sniffing your guests? It is because they remember scents.
This is how they train to become police dogs. So, dogs know the difference between humans and dogs.
ln 2015 a research paper was published under the title “Scent of the familiar: An fMRI study of canine brain responses to familiar and unfamiliar human and dog odors”.
After thorough research and mapping of the brains of dogs as well as other correlative data, it was established that dogs can distinguish between dogs and humans very clearly due to their olfactory power.
Since I found this research paper extremely interesting, I am providing the link for you to do some further reading.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0376635714000473
Do Dogs Think Humans Are Attractive?
Dog owners often find their dogs to be very good at reading human emotions and reacting accordingly. While this is true, it’s also important to remember that dogs are not wired to find human faces attractive.
Dogs focus on the eyes of humans and various other factors like the smell and the voice. They do not have the concept of finding human faces attractive. They do not look at human faces to understand expression but focus on the eyes of the humans.
So this is the basic difference between humans and dogs because humans look at faces and the reactions on the face for almost everything. However, dogs are not wired this way.
In a neuroimaging experiment that was conducted it was clearly established that dogs do not look at human facial expressions or find human faces attractive. A dog only relies on the overall factors to understand humans.
https://www.jneurosci.org/content/40/43/8396#sec-15
This does not mean that dogs do not look at human faces at all. Dogs do look at human faces to gather a lot of things, however, they just don’t find humans attractive in the way we find dogs attractive.
Nevertheless, dogs love us back just as much as we love them, so, dogs not finding us attractive mustn’t be something that should bother us.
Do Dogs Think They Are Human?
Dogs do not think they are human. They differentiate by smell easily and know how to react. To them, we’re just big-sized creatures with different smells. Dogs don’t think they are humans.
However, that doesn’t mean they do not understand us. Dogs have a few similar emotions like joy, fear, and anger to name just a few. They also use the same type of stimulus-response learning process as we do when solving problems or making decisions.
Dogs can learn from their mistakes and develop new skills over time with repeated practice. They may not be able to learn calculus or speak English but there is no doubt dogs are smarter than many people give them credit for!
Although dogs do tend to imitate humans they definitely are not dumb to think that they are humans too.
Wrapping Up:
Do dogs think humans are cute? In short, no. But they love us back in a very special way! Dogs have been domesticated for several years and throughout that time we’ve selectively bred them to become more responsive to our cues and commands
This is why dogs are so good at understanding human gestures, reacting appropriately when their owner pats the couch next to him or them.
Scientific experiments have established this fact that clearly and until it is overturned by new research, we will have to accept that dogs don’t find us cute but do love us back unconditionally. What more do we need.
