Dogs can copy their pal’s expressions

London: Researchers have found that dogs are capable of imitating their playmates’ expression, which could point to them demonstrating basic levels of empathy,.

For humans, copying each other’s facial expressions is important as it aids social bonding.

Now, researchers from University of Pisa, Italy, have found dogs do the same — a behaviour that researchers believe emerged during domestication.

Previously, the capacity to copy behaviour was detected only in humans and non-human primates such as chimpanzees and orangutans.

For the latest study, researchers tested for body and facial rapid mimicry in domestic dogs.

“We demonstrated that rapid mimicry is present in dogs and it is an involuntary, automatic and split-second mirroring of other dogs,” lead researcher Elisabetta Palagi was quoted as saying by telegraph.co.uk.

Moreover, the distribution of rapid mimicry was strongly affected by the familiarity linking the subjects involved — the stronger the social bonding, the higher the level of rapid mimicry.

“In conclusion, our results demonstrate the presence of rapid mimicry in dogs, the involvement of mimicry in sharing playful motivation and the social modulation of the phenomenon,” the researchers wrote.

All these findings support the idea that a possible linkage between rapid mimicry and emotional contagion — a building-block of empathy — exists in dogs, the study said.

The findings appeared in the journal Open Science.