Entirely too many people (idiots) think Disney movies are nature documentaries. Animals (including your pet dog) are NOT furry people and cannot be reasoned with nor can their behavior be fully predicted. That’s partially why I gag when I see some nitwit (like my neighbor) holding a conversation with her dog. “Now don’t you do (whatever).” The dog doesn’t understand words. They can understand pain/reward to be conditioned to do or not do things (sometimes), but you can’t convince them to do something by reasoning with them.
I wouldn’t underestimate dogs.
Cats and just about any other animal, that’s true, but dogs occupy an interesting place in human existence.
I read a study a while back where they had people wear special glasses that could track the movements of their eyes precisely, and they found that when two people encounter each other, both eyes of each person simultaneously scan one eye of the other person (I think they said the left eye)
It happens so quickly that we don’t know we do it, and it isn’t noticeable, but the instruments picked it up.
They ended up testing a bunch of other animals of all sizes, and they only found one other creature that does that exact same thing: You guessed it...dogs.
Additionally, they found that dogs are cued into humans in ways no other animal is. They did an experiment where they would put a treat under an upturned bucket, and have a little shell game with two identical, empty upturned buckets.
A human would gesture towards the bucket with the treat, and try to get the animal to go to it and get the invisible treat by overturning the bucket. They tried it with chimps, birds, cats, etc.
None of them would take the cue of the human pointing to the bucket with the treat under it. Except for dogs.
They took a little puppy, and the puppy picked it up immediately when the person pointed at it, literally on the first try.
Further, the person didn’t even have to point, they could simply look. More remarkable, they didn’t even have to linger with the look. They could just flash their eyes for a split second at the bucket with the treat, and the puppy would go unerringly to it.
Dogs have lived around humans so long that they are tuned into us, emotionally and physically. So they are a little bit different than other animals in this respect.