To anyone who is familiar with the eerily human-like qualities of man's best friend, the new that dogs can read your mind shouldn't come as any surprise.

The latest research adds to growing evidence that dogs can interpret both human body language and general behavior, and use it to their advantage. "Dogs and (human-raised) wolves are capable of distinguishing between a person looking at them, someone who's paying attention and someone who's not," said Monique Udell, lead author of a study published recently in thye journal Learning & Behavior. "They're more likely to beg from someone paying attention to them."

Researchers have been learning more and more about the surprising capabilities and intelligence of the domestic dog. One recent study found that dogs have the developmental abilities of a human 2-year old, with the average dog capable of learning the meanings of 165 words.

"Over the last five years, we've been trying to understand how dogs and relatives of dogs such as wolves respond to social companions," explained Udell, who was a researcher at the University of Florida when the study was conducted. "The idea behind this particular study was to try to understand how it is, for example, that dogs can use cues of attention to predict what we're going to do next and use that information to decide to beg for food from one individual and not another? How is it that dogs make us feel that they know what we're thinking?"

The study involved groups of pet dogs, stray dogs from a shelter and hand-raised wolves who were comfortable around humans. Two people stood 6 meters apart, one of them looking directly and continuously at the dog or wolf. The other person had their vision blocked, either with a bucket over their head, a book obscurring their face or because their back was turned. Both humans held a piece of food. "On average, both dogs and wolves were significantly more likely to be begging from the person looking at them when the other person's back was turned," said Udell.

But levels of sensitivity did vary by how domesticated the dog or wolf was. "Domesticated dogs were more likely to beg from someone paying attention to them, but shelter dogs and wolves who don't often see a person reading a book were not likely to get that cue. So it does seem like specific life experiences really do matter in this context."

The findings are important "because previous research suggested that something happened to dogs during genetic domestication that made them begin to think like humans. This also shows that wolves, if reared by humans, of picking up human cues."

"Animal people in the scientific community have known for some thime that dogs are pretty smart and very good at reading our body language," said Adam Goldfarb, director of the Pets At Risk Program of the Humane Society of the U.S. "This shows that something about dogs or wolves inherently allows them to read humans far better than other animals can."