I saw a special on this. The domestic dogs would quickly go to their owner and stare at them for help. On the other hand dogs were the only species to understand pointing. Wolves did not understand it, and even primates did not.
Mine loves pears. If I put the ladder under the tree and he doesn’t see me do it, he still comes running when he notices the ladder because he knows I picked a pear.
That’s some fairly complex thinking.
Right. It boils down to the fact that dogs and humans have spent enough time together that they are well tuned into us.
There was something else...when people meet another person, eye movement studies showed that for a split second, a nearly invisible flicker of time, each person zeroes in on the other person’s eye. (I can’t remember which eye, but it is the same one for everyone, as I recall.) You can’t see it unless you have special devices that measure eye movement.
They have found there is only one other animal in the animal kingdom that does this. You guessed it...
Dogs.