Dog Is Love: Why and How Your Dog Loves You | Clive Wynne

For thousands of years, people have noticed there is something truly remarkable about dogs, yet scientists still struggle to pin down the essence of our relationship with them. At the end of the last century, claims started appearing in the scientific literature that dogs have forms of human-like social cognition not seen in any other non-human species. I will critically evaluate the new field of dog cognition and conclude that there is nothing to dog behavior that would surprise Pavlov or Skinner. Dogs do, however, possess a remarkable and possibly unique ability to form strong cross-species emotional bonds. It is this emotional capacity, rather than any exceptional form of intelligence, that has made them so successful
in the modern world.