Your Dog Imitates Others

Studies carried out have concluded that dogs imitate human gestures and expressions, including character. It is very common for people who have dogs at home or live with them to say that dogs reproduce not only facial expressions, but also behavioral details.

Why does your dog imitate others?

It must be taken into account that adaptation to the environment is very important for the survival of an animal and, as they depend on humans to cover their basic needs, both in food, shelter and affection, they develop their skills in terms of sociability and imitation. , in order to please their owners.

Differences with people

If we think about it, there are not so many differences between people and animals. The ability to imitate is similar. It has been proven by science that dogs imitate and remember gestures and actions of their owners and the people around them. Among other advantages, with imitation animals can perform their tasks in a simpler way.

Research carried out in all countries with a significant presence of dogs, have yielded very similar data, in the sense that dogs have a kind of memory to remember actions they have seen, or gestures, and then have the ability to reproduce them in their own way .

Tests performed

Many tests have been done to demonstrate this capacity for imitation, that dogs have a specific type of long-term memory, and that when they see new actions, they can emulate them. If it is about familiar gestures and actions, with which they habitually coexist, dogs can repeat them up to ten minutes after they saw them performed for the last time.

Domestic dogs are more likely to reproduce human gestures and communication. They assimilate expressions and can reproduce them. This stems from the continuous attention they have on humans, and the influence they absorb from them. These animals have a great capacity for learning.

This ability to encode, assimilate and remember a human action after a shorter or longer period of time, implies that dogs have a mental representation of the human demonstration, as well as the possibility of generating a process of emotional imitation, as a consequence of which they repeat human and other dog gestures.

Learning capacity

In all of the above it is also influenced by the fact that the owners choose a breed or a specific animal that has similarities with their character, and is more dynamic, passive, calm, active, nervous, sleepy, sedentary, moderate or greedy, shy, daring or daring. Although this choice is important, it is not the only cause.

Living with human social groups has enhanced the ability of dogs to learn from humans. Studies have been conducted in which dogs mimicked human actions with delays from half a minute to ten minutes, periods in which the researchers distracted the animals’ minds with other activities.

Tests and videos

In one of the tests, the owners of 8 adult dogs were trained to repeat what their monitors and handlers did. Before doing the imitation, they had to wait about a minute.

The actions were of all kinds, jumping, dancing, walking around a hoop, etc. The results of these tests were positive. The animals repeated both the actions that were most familiar and familiar to them, and those that were new to them.

A well-known video, in high demand on the networks, is that of two Siberian huskies imitating a baby crawling down the hall ; the two dogs perfectly mimic the crawling baby crawling down the hall. The video has been so famous that it has millions of views on social networks, in addition to being broadcast on television.