Puppies often imitate human actions without any reward, a finding associated with research conducted at a Budapest university.
Across many species, young animals and people learn by copying those around them. The tendency to mimic behavior not only helps acquire new skills and knowledge but also signals belonging to a social group. Compared to dogs and cats, which show different levels of domestication, wolves remain wild, and their learning from humans can differ in meaningful ways.
The study involved forty-two puppies, thirty-nine kittens, and eight wolves living in human households. A new object was placed in their chamber, and each animal reacted to it in some observable way, such as touching the object with a nose or paw. While the host held the animal, the researcher demonstrated another action on the object. For example, after the subject had touched the object with its nose, the researcher touched it with a hand. Researchers then observed whether the animal would perform the same action on the object following the demonstration.
Claudia Fugazza, the primary investigator of the study, explains that attention to the demonstration is crucial for social learning. She notes that puppies typically show interest in people almost immediately, but it required four to five times longer to capture the attention of puppies and kittens. This attention gap matters because it influences whether the animals will imitate the demonstrated action.
Results showed that puppies and dogs imitated the demonstrated actions twice as often as kittens did in about seven in ten trials. More strikingly, only the puppies tended to copy the action using a body part that corresponds to the human demonstrator, such as a forepaw, leg, or hind paw. This alignment indicates an intuitive interpretation of the human action by the animals and reflects a meaningful link between early social experience and the capacity to understand and reproduce human-directed actions. The researchers concluded that dogs appear to be better equipped to engage with humans from birth, a conclusion that underscores the deep bond formed during early development.