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.
Yes, with dogs that was an adaptation to living with humans. The wild canines that studied our faces to “read” our emotions would respond to us better, so we bred them until all dogs had that trait, because it was very advantageous. Wild canines have a completely different set of “signals” and looking each other in the face is a signal all its own!
I don’t know if he does it with other people, but my cat definitely looks me in the eye sometimes. His feeding station is on the steps to the basement, which is also the way to my laundry room. If he hears me on the steps, he often comes running. As I am returning upstairs he crosses back in forth in my path, ascending to the appropriate level while trying to look up into my face.