Without a doubt, anyone who has ever owned a dog is familiar with this scenario: you’re cooking, reading a book, or engaged in other activities, and suddenly you notice your pup staring intently at you from across the room. This common behavior has long puzzled experts, although scientists have proposed various plausible explanations over the years. It turns out that researchers began studying the reasons behind this phenomenon several decades ago. “One of the first discoveries in the study of dogs’ cognitive abilities was that they look us in the eye and at our faces in a way that is quite unusual for animals,” noted Alexandra Horowitz, a professor of canine cognition at Columbia University in New York.
It’s not to say that no other animals do this, but most tend to use intense gazing in response to threats, the researcher explained. For instance, a wolf will closely observe an unfamiliar wolf to avoid conflict. So why does my dog look at me? The simplest explanation for why your four-legged friend gazes into your face is that he’s waiting for you, as his owner, to provide guidance on how he should behave and what he should do. “You control their world. Dogs, and I don’t want to get into too many details, are mostly in our captivity,” Professor Horowitz remarked.
We determine when they can eat, go for walks, socialize, sniff their surroundings, and even relieve themselves, the scholar reminded us. In other words, we control every aspect of their lives. However, researchers have recently reached a rather different conclusion. They believe that this behavior is tied to somewhat deeper motivations. Dogs’ ability to interpret our feelings and desires is so finely tuned that they can distinguish between emotional facial expressions and neutral ones, as well as happy expressions from angry ones—even from photographs!
This trait is likely a result of the close bond that has developed between humans and dogs over thousands of years of coexistence. “Humans use intense gazing as an intimate gesture, as well as when they want to attract someone’s attention,” the professor explained. For dogs, it’s different. Their penetrating gazes indicate that they find us interesting and that they understand us. In this way, they read our emotions and await information from us. So, the next time your pup stares deeply into your eyes, don’t worry. He just needs to know what you’re doing to be part of the process, as reported by Science Focus.