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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 17, 2026

The Other End of the Leash: An Experimental Test to Analyze How Owners Interact with Their Pet Dogs

The Other End of the Leash: An Experimental Test to Analyze How Owners Interact with Their Pet Dogs

Published on: October 13, 2017

Do domestic dogs interpret pointing as a command?

Linda Scheider¹, Juliane Kaminski, Josep Call

¹Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103, Leipzig, Germany. scheider@eva.mpg.de

Animal Cognition

|November 10, 2012

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Dogs flexibly interpret human pointing gestures, prioritizing their own knowledge over authority. They follow pointing based on information, not as commands, regardless of who points or if they are present.

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Last Updated: May 17, 2026

The Other End of the Leash: An Experimental Test to Analyze How Owners Interact with Their Pet Dogs

The Other End of the Leash: An Experimental Test to Analyze How Owners Interact with Their Pet Dogs

Published on: October 13, 2017

Training Dogs for Awake, Unrestrained Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Training Dogs for Awake, Unrestrained Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Published on: October 13, 2019

Area of Science:

Cognitive ethology
Animal behavior
Canine communication

Background:

Domestic dogs demonstrate remarkable flexibility in understanding human gestural communication.
The pointing gesture is a key element in human-animal interaction, but its interpretation by dogs remains debated.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether dogs interpret human pointing as providing information or as a direct command.
To assess the influence of the dog's knowledge and the human's authority on their interpretation of pointing gestures.

Main Methods:

Two studies were conducted involving human pointing gestures towards cups, with manipulations concerning the dog's knowledge of cup contents and the pointing person's authority (adult vs. child).
Dogs' responses to pointing gestures were recorded under conditions of varying information availability and perceived authority.

Main Results:

Dogs ignored pointing gestures when they possessed superior information about the target's contents, irrespective of the human's continued presence.
The perceived authority of the person pointing (adult vs. child) did not influence the dogs' following behavior.
Dogs demonstrated a consistent pattern of ignoring "dishonest" pointing from both adults and children.

Conclusions:

These findings suggest that dogs do not perceive pointing as an imperative command.
Dogs appear to interpret pointing gestures based on the informational content rather than as a directive, indicating a sophisticated understanding of communicative intent.