Human's inclination to invest dogs with human-like states of mind isn't as unscientific as it might appear for scientists have now suggested that canines are becoming more intelligent and are even learning morals.
Studies presented at the first Canine Science Forum in Budapest, Hungary, backs the idea that the descendants of grey wolves have become more intelligent, and even learnt a sense of right and wrong, the New Scientist journal reported.
"Dogs show a strong aversion to inequity. I would prefer not to call it a sense of fairness, but others might," said Dr Friederike Range, of the University of Vienna, who led the study.
Through experiments done with children and dogs, Prof Ludwig Huber and colleagues at the university supported the idea that dogs have a rudimentary "theory of mind."
Scientists argue that the fact that rough-and-tumble dog play rarely escalates into full-blown fighting shows that the animals abide by social rules and expect others to do the same. In other words, they know right from wrong.
They possess a moral compass too, in order to negotiate the complex social world of people, adds Prof Marc Bekoff from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
According to the journal, Dr Peter Pongracz from Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, and colleagues have produced evidence that dog barks contain information which people can understand.
They found each of the different types of bark has distinct patterns of frequency, tonality and pulsing, and that an artificial neural network can use these features to correctly identify a bark it has never encountered before.
It shows that barking conveys information about a dog's mental state, reports New Scientist magazine.
