Apparently dogs are capable of lying...

Source: Mnn.com

Those darn sneaky doggos!

In the most important development of 2018 to date, researchers in Switzerland have discovered that dogs are in fact capable of lying.

It's ok, we're shocked too.

So how was this ground-breaking information uncovered?

Via a study. Which examined clever canines and their ability to deceive we silly humans to get what they want. In this case, a treat.

Twenty-Seven different dogs were trained to tell the difference between between a “cooperative” woman who allowed them to have their favourite treat, and a “competitive” woman, who wouldn't.

The dogs were taught how to lead the two people to three boxes: one containing sausages, their favourite treat, second contained dog biscuits, and a third containing nothing.

When the dogs were asked "show me the food," they would lead their partner to one of the three boxes.

The cooperative partner rewarded dogs with whatever was inside.

While, as you're probably guessing, the mean competitive partner would give no treats.

Here's where it gets interesting.

The researchers found that after a few trial and error runs, the Dogs were far less likely to lead the competitive partner to their favourite food (the sausages).

This is because they knew they wouldn't receive the treat... Sneaky.

Two of the dogs, Arwen and Nelson, always took the cooperative person to the sausages, but never the competitive one.

The study, which was published in Animal Cognition, said:

''On both test days, the dogs were more likely to lead the cooperative partner than the competitive one to the box containing the preferred food, and this effect was stronger on the second than on the first test day''

There you have it!

Maybe our favourite four-legged pals aren't as honest as their innocent faces would have us believe...