Your Dog is Definitely Copying You

Have you ever noticed your pup paw at a door handle, as if they might be trying to turn it like you? Sleep in the exact position you sleep in? How about tap at their food bin, almost as if they were trying to turn it? For the dog/cat homes, ever notice your pup trying to get up on the counter or elevated area that your cat usually hangs out in? We’ve all seen the meme of the husky laying on top of the fridge!

You aren’t crazy. Dogs are big ole copy cats! They absolutely mimic the actions of their pet parents and in interspecies homes, the actions of their cat brothers and sisters!

Okay, so that’s not a huge revelation for anyone with a pup in their lives but what IS truly amazing is just how deep that cognitive ability runs. 

Let’s rewind, like, a lot. As early as 1871, THE Charles Darwin (who was a HUGE doggo lover) recorded that dogs sometimes imitated the behaviors of other dogs AND people. He recorded these findings in The Decent of Man. (Cool, right???)

There’s more studies on dogs mimicking than I thought, tbh, and I am so here for these studies. In 2006, József Topál, a behavioral ethologist at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences where he adapted a method (called "Do as I do" that Keith and Catherine Hayes developed in the 1950s for teaching an infant chimpanzee to copy their actions) used to gauge just how long dogs could retain this mimicking behavior.

In 2010 the University of Vienna Department of Cognitive Biology tested 10 adult dogs of various breeds and their owners on opening a sliding door. This study threw a bunch of curve balls (pun intended) at the studied dogs and their pet parents and determined that this mimicking behavior was definitely the result of developmental interactions. Dogs were LEARNING how to mimic their pet parents.

Dogs intuitively share habits with their humans as a way to fit into your life. This behavior may be displayed in how they seem to want dinner around the same time you usually eat dinner, how they share your moods, how they seem to be really active when you are typically active, how they copy our vocalization mouth movements, and will even move like you move, a la dancing!

Just another example of how dogs are the absolute best!