We, dog-lovers, are already familiar with the fact that dogs can detect our facial expressions, react to our eye movement and even decipher our thoughts using these abilities, but now a new study shows that your pooch can even recognize you, simply by looking at your picture.
The study entitled “How dogs scan familiar and inverted faces: an eye movement study” was conducted in Helsinki, Finland, and the scientists are determined that facial recognition among dogs is more than probable.
The researchers examined 23 pet dogs and 8 kennel dogs for their experiment.
They applied a method called ‘facial inversion effect’, which means they took the images of their masters and turned them upside down.
This method should cause the deficit of image processing in examined dogs. They observed responses to personal familiarity by tracking the eye movement of the dogs in both cases, with inverted images and with the images that were not inverted.
The study has shown that all the dogs focused more on the eye areas of the images that were projected upright than images projected upside down.
What they also noticed is that pet dogs focused more on the images depicting the face of their owner, rather than images of random strangers.
The scientists concluded that dogs’ face scanning doesn’t focus only on the physical properties of the images shown.
The collection of data from their living memory, also determines the amount of attention a dog will visually fixate on a photographic image.
So, next time you go to work leaving your dog alone, place a picture of yourself somewhere visible by your ball of fur. He just might miss you a bit less.