To investigate the ability for animals to understand human communication signals and the communication between animals and humans, scientists often investigate the understanding of human gestural cues. Dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) which have a long history of co-evolution with humans have been shown to make good use of human gestural cues. In the present study I investigated whether dogs in general understand a human pointing gesture and if there are differences between sex, age or breeds. In total 46 dogs of different breeds participated in the study. The study was carried out in a dog center in Linköping, Hundens och djurens beteendecenter. To test if dogs understand human pointing gestures, a two-way object choice test were used, where an experimenter pointed at a baited bowl at a distance of three meter from the dog. The results showed that dogs in general can understand human pointing gestures. However, no significant differences were found for sex, age or breeds. As a conclusion, I found that dogs in general can understand human pointing gestures, but sex, age or breed did not affect the ability.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T15:36:54Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 SilviaBFM.pdf: 183510 bytes, checksum: 25d17456b26e665dea3d1b33500465c1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-11-07 / The cats (Felis catus) were domesticated about 9,500 years ago due to the advent of agriculture, being used to control the pests that devastated the food harvested. These animals went through an artificial selection and over generations and millennia had their behavior and morphology changed by humans. This process of domestication by man gave rise to a special ability, the understanding of human pointing gestures, clearly noticed while we feed our pets. Our goal in this study was to assess the comprehension of pointing gestures by cats and also verify the influence that social interactions exerts on the development of this ability. We found that experimental subjects from both groups, solitary animals and social animals, were able to follow human indication in order to find hidden food. However, social interaction had no effect on cats performances. The ability tested here probably evolved during the process of domestication of this species, and social interaction seems to exert little or no influence upon its expression / AOs gatos (Felis catus) foram domesticados h? cerca de 9.500 anos devido ? agricultura, onde eram utilizados no combate ?s pragas que assolavam os alimentos colhidos. Esses animais passaram por uma sele??o artificial e ao longo das gera??es e mil?nios tiveram seus comportamentos e morfologia modificadas pelos humanos. O processo de domestica??o pelo homem fez surgir uma habilidade em especial, a compreens?o de sinais gestuais humanos, que ? bem observada nos momentos em que alimentamos nossos animais. Nosso objetivo neste estudo foi testar a resposta ? sinaliza??o gestual (comportamento de apontar) em gatos, emitida por humanos e tamb?m verificar a influ?ncia do conv?vio social sobre o desenvolvimento desta habilidade. Observamos que os sujeitos experimentais de ambos os grupos, animais solit?rios e de conv?vio em grupo, foram capazes de seguir os sinais de indica??o humana para localizar o alimento escondido. Por?m, a forma de conv?vio social n?o influenciou no desempenho dos gatos. A habilidade aqui testada, possivelmente evoluiu durante o processo de domestica??o dessa esp?cie, e a intera??o social parece exercer pouca ou nenhuma influ?ncia sobre a sua express?o