Yawn Game

In this game, you yawned and recorded whether Cyra yawned in response. Yawning in dogs can be an indicator of stress, but we were measuring something different - social yawning. The rationale behind this game is that even as young children, we laugh when we see someone laughing, and we cry when we see someone in distress. Our ability to "catch" the emotions of others is called emotional contagion. A common form of emotional contagion is yawning. If you see, hear or even think about someone yawning, you will probably feel an irresistible urge to yawn.

Cyra did not yawn in response to your yawn, but this is not surprising. Although dogs are one of the few species besides humans that contagiously yawn, there is variation among dogs. Data from several research groups shows differing results, but our preliminary data shows that only 20% of dogs yawn contagiously.

Eye Contact Game

In this game, you timed how long Cyra held your eye contact. Before babies can hug or speak, they use eye gaze to bond with their mothers. Research with dogs has shown that a similar phenomenon may happen with owners and dogs. Owners whose dogs stared at them for longer had significant increases in the hormone oxytocin. Oxytocin, also known as the "hug hormone," is related to feelings of bonding, pleasure and affection.

Judging by the extraordinary length of time Cyra spent gazing soulfully into your eyes, you probably often find her staring at you for no reason. You might wonder if Cyra is trying to tell you something, like she is hungry, needs to go to the bathroom or has an opinion on what to do over the weekend. But Cyra may not want or need anything - she may be just hugging you with her eyes.

Arm Pointing

Although the pointing game may have seemed simple, the skills it required are quite specialized. Dogs are one of the only animals to rely on human gestures - but even among dogs there is variation. Compared to other dogs, on this scale Cyra was more like a chimpanzee. Although chimpanzees are extremely intelligent in other areas, when they play a similar game they do not use a human point to find the food. Instead, they tend to use more self-reliant strategies. This does not mean that Cyra is not communicative. She may be more responsive to other signals, such as your voice. Or, because she didn't need your help to find the treats, Cyra decided to solve this problem on her own. Cyra might depend on you more in situations where the solution is not as obvious.

Foot Pointing

You probably don't usually point things out with your foot, so this was one way to see if Cyra could read a gesture she has seen infrequently or not at all. If Cyra is good at solving a problem but can't solve a new version of it, then she probably learned to solve the original problem through lots of practice. For example, perhaps in the previous game she was just following the motion of your hand without understanding your communicative intentions. If Cyra can also solve the new problem, then she probably understands enough to spontaneously solve a range of related problems.

Cyra's performance in the foot pointing game was interesting because she did not tend to follow you when you pointed with your hand, which we think of as a more familiar cue. But when you gestured with your foot she followed you almost every time. Perhaps you regularly point out bits of food on the floor with your foot. Or perhaps, because Cyra could see food in both places, she didn't feel the need to follow your hand point. But when you did something unusual - pointing with your foot - Cyra thought she had better pay attention.

Memory versus Pointing

In this game, Cyra saw you put the treat under one cup, but point to the other cup. Cyra preferred to rely on the information in her working memory rather than what you pointed to. Even though you gave Cyra misleading information, she remembered where the treat was and chose to ignore you. This shows an independent thinker; you should be aware that in other situations Cyra might not listen to you if she thinks you are wrong.

Memory versus Smell

Since dogs have such a keen sense of smell, you may have been surprised that after you switched the cups, Cyra used her memory over her sense of smell. She went to where she remembered seeing the treat hidden, rather than sniffing out where the treat was.

Because a dog's nose can sniff everything from narcotics to cancer, whenever we run a study where we hide a treat under one of two cups, the first question people always ask is, "Can't my dog just smell the food under the cup?" It was certainly our first question, but extensive research by half a dozen independent research groups has concluded that dogs do not rely on their sense of smell to find the food in these games.

If dogs were using smell, they would go directly to the cup with the hidden food. In fact, these studies found that dogs only choose the correct cup around half the time - which means they are guessing. Dogs do have an excellent sense of smell and can probably detect food if allowed to sniff both cups before choosing. But when you study their first choice, they cannot localize the food to a specific cup from a distance of six feet away.

Delayed Cup Game

This game was a perfect demonstration of Cyra's excellent working memory. After you hid the treat Cyra had to retain the information for up to two and a half minutes before making a choice.

This skill comes in handy in the wild. Feral dogs tend to be endurance hunters, slowly wearing down their prey. During the chase, the prey may not always be in direct sight, and feral dogs have to remember where their prey was last seen and predict where they might reappear.

Inferential Reasoning Game

In this game, you presented Cyra with a problem and provided some, but not all of the information needed to solve it. When you showed Cyra the empty cup she had to infer that the treat must be in the other cup.

This is not as easy as it sounds because Cyra was also attracted to the empty cup, for the simple reason that you touched it. It looks like Cyra switched back and forth between strategies in this game, sometimes making an inference and choosing the correct cup, and sometimes relying on your social cues. Either way, this shows impressive flexibility.

By no means did Cyra do badly on this game; in fact, she developed quite a clever strategy. She developed a right or left side bias, meaning when she didn't know which side was correct, she went to one side every time. This is pretty clever, because 50% of the time she was correct.

Physical Reasoning Game

In this game, Cyra demonstrated an excellent understanding of a fundamental property of the physical world - that one solid object cannot pass through another solid object.

Cyra had to infer that a piece of paper on an angle meant that a treat was hidden behind it. This talent would come in handy in the wild, since animals often have to keep track of objects that become hidden. To find these objects, animals have to maintain a representation of the object and predict where it might appear.

Humans intuitively understand basic physical phenomena like the solidity principle - it looks like Cyra does too.