研究人员测试了17只不同品种的成年犬，以了解它们是否能识别人类及其它狗的面部和声音情感表达——这种能力被认为是一种较高层次的认知天赋，因为两种不同的感官都要参与其中。每只狗参加了两个测试阶段共10次试验。它们一只接着一只站到两个屏幕前，研究人员将陌生但快乐/调皮的人脸或狗脸照片投射到其中一块屏幕，并在另一块上播放同样的面孔但带着愤怒/侵略性的表情的照片(如上图所示)。同时，科学家们播放出一种声音：狗叫声，或是陌生人说着葡萄牙语(没有一只参与的狗以前听过这种语言)，或者是一种不表达喜恶的声音。科学家们今天在《生物学快报》网络版上报告说，当屏幕上的表情同声音的语调相匹配时，这些狗会盯着那张脸(狗或人)看得更久，这种测试方法一直也被用来评估其他哺乳动物的各种认知能力。狗儿们的这种能力在看着同类时表现得尤为突出，这也印证了另一项研究的结果，即狗儿们首先寻找其它狗的样子，而不是人。这是第一次人类以外的物种表现出能够理解另一个完全不同的物种的声音和面部表情，这个天赋必将有助于狗狗们在其生态位——人类家园大丛林中——存活下来。

 

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Dogs can read human emotions

 

原文摘要：

 

Dog owners often say they “know” that their dog understands what they’re feeling. Now, scientists have the evidence to back this up. Researchers tested 17 adult dogs of various breeds to see whether they could recognize emotional expressions in the faces and voices of humans and other dogs—an ability that’s considered a higher cognitive talent because two different senses are involved. Each dog took part in two test sessions with 10 trials. One by one, they stood facing two screens on which the researchers projected photos of unfamiliar but happy/playful human or dog faces versus the same faces with angry/aggressive expressions (as in the photo above). At the same time, the scientists played a single vocalization—either a dog bark, or an unfamiliar human speaking in Portuguese, a language none of the dogs had previously heard, or a neutral sound.The dogs looked much longer at a face (dog or human) when the expression matched the tone of the voice, a measure that’s also been used to assess various cognitive abilities of other mammals, the scientists report online today in Biology Letters. The dogs were best at this when looking at a fellow dog, which supports another study showing that dogs preferred looking at images of other dogs rather than those of humans. It’s the first time that a species, other than humans, has been shown to be capable of interpreting the vocal and facial expressions of an entirely different species of animal—a talent that surely helps Fido survive in its ecological niche: the jungle of the human home.