Dogs may innately understand humans’ social cues

Some very young puppies reciprocate the human gaze and take social cues from human eye contact and gestures, says Emily Bray, a postdoctoral researcher at the Canine Cognition Center at the University of Arizona. She led a study published in Current Biology that found some 8-week-old puppies were willing to make eye contact with strangers and follow their command cues, though not all the puppies did equally well.