Doggy Empathy
Another reason to consider a dog a man’s best friend! British scientists believe that dogs have demonstrated a capacity for human empathy because dogs find human yawns contagious! This was a trait (the contagious yawn phenomena) that was previously only attributed to humans and chimpanzees, according to MSNBC. Dogs are apparently highly sensitive to human yawns.
Writing in the journal Biology Letters, Atsushi Senju and colleagues at London’s Birkbeck College said this behavior showed dogs were skilled at reading human social cues and “may relate to their capacity for empathy.”
Posted by Erin | Aug 7th, 2008 | in On the Web
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