How do dogs understand human emotions?

London : Ever wondered how your canine is able to read your facial expressions, understand the tone of your voice? It is because they use different parts of their brains to process negative and positive human emotions, a study says.

According to the study, by living in close contact with humans, dogs have developed specific skills such as picking up on emotional cues contained in a person's voice, body odour and posture, as well as reading faces, that enable them to interact and communicate efficiently with people. The finding showed that dogs tend to turn their heads to the left when they feel human faces expressing anger, fear or happiness. The reverse happened in case surprised expressions, possibly because they view it as a non-threatening, relaxed expression.

In the study, published in the journal Learning and Behavior, the team presented photographs of the same two adults' faces (a man and a woman) to 26 dogs who were being fed. The images were placed strategically to the sides of the animals' line of sight and the photos showed a human face expressing one of the six basic human emotions: anger, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise, disgust or being neutral.