Owner behavior affects effort and accuracy in dogs' communications

Human communication has evolved mechanisms that can be observed across all cultures and languages, including the use of communication history and the principle of least effort. These two factors enable us to use shared information about the past and present and to conserve energy, making communications as effective and efficient as possible. Given the remarkable sensitivity of dogs to human vocalizations, gestures and gazes, researchers have suggested that 30,000 years of domestication and co-evolution with humans may have caused dogs to develop similar principles of communication—a theory known as the domestication hypothesis.