If you are a dog owner, you know for sure that your dog can read what you’re feeling. Now a new study shows that dogs are sensitive to even subtle changes in our demeanour.

‘Still Face’ studies were first done with mothers and their babies. In these studies, the mother interacts normally with her baby, but then suddenly switches to holding a still, neutral facial expression, while maintaining eye contact. Unsurprisingly, these studies consistently demonstrated that babies are disconcerted by this behaviour. If the mother maintains that expression, even despite their efforts to get their attention, the baby looks away more and becomes more distressed.

Perhaps reinforcing the fact that many see pets as their children, Molly Byrne and colleagues at Boston College tried a similar experiment with dogs and their owners.

The findings do suggest that pet dogs react to relatively subtle facial signals. In line with what many owners likely suspect, they seem able to read not just strong emotions, but also more subtle signals.

The paper was published in the Journal of Comparative Psychology.