[DSRP Evidence](https://dsrpevidence.org/)

# Canine perspective taking: Anticipating the behavior of an unseen human

## Details

**Authors** Huber et al.

**Year** 2025

**Publisher** iScience

**Discipline** Biology

[Read it at the publisher](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2025.111811) 
10.1016/j.isci.2025.111811

## In authors' words

### Abstract

Although dogs exhibit remarkable capabilities for interacting with humans, the underlying cognitive mechanisms remain insufficiently understood. Here, we investigated canine perspective taking by challenging dogs to decide whether and where to steal food in the absence of a human who had prohibited them from doing so. The dogs could only infer the experimenter's presence through a sound (carrot chopping) they had perceived during a prior exploration phase, in which they also had the opportunity to observe from which locations in the room the human was visible. In the test, the majority of dogs preferred to steal from a plate that was not visible from the location where the human had chopped carrots before when they heard a playback of the chopping sound but not when they heard a control sound (street noise). These findings provide evidence that dogs anticipate the behavior of humans without relying on observable visual cues.

### What they set out to do (purpose)

To test whether dogs represent another's viewpoint from an inferred spatial position rather than observed gaze.

### What they found (results)

Given only an auditory cue marking a human's prior location, most dogs preferentially took food that had been out of sight from that inferred vantage point, modeling another agent's line of sight without concurrent visual access.

## Commentary

### In short

A dog infers what was visible from a location it cannot see — building a view from an inferred point.

### In more detail

A perspective is a point plus the view available from it: dogs reconstructed where an unseen human had been and inferred what was visible from there, then acted only on what fell outside that view. Purpose: To test whether dogs represent another's viewpoint from an inferred spatial position rather than observed gaze. Finding: Given only an auditory cue marking a human's prior location, most dogs preferentially took food that had been out of sight from that inferred vantage point, modeling another agent's line of sight without concurrent visual access. [Added 2026-07-30 as new evidence beyond the original 109. DSRP structural basis: P (Point and View): the view (v) is constructed relative to an inferred point (ṗ).]

**Patterns it shows** P

**Added** 2026-07-30

**How to cite this** Huber et al. (2025). Canine perspective taking: Anticipating the behavior of an unseen human. iScience.