There's an old Jerry Seinfeld joke about dogs. He says, "Dogs are the leaders of the planet. If you see two life forms, one of them's making a poop, the other one's carrying it for him, who would you assume is in charge?” Sure, dogs may not be the leaders of the planet - yet - but we love them. We take them for walks in the park, train them to do tricks and dress them up in humiliating Halloween costumes. We even made a movie about them called All Dogs To Heaven. (All cats, of course, go straight to Hell). But did you know people love dogs more than humans? I guess that shouldn't be totally surprising, since dogs always show you love, and people can often be jerks. It's just a bummer to think that if you were on a sinking ship, and there was only spot left on the life raft, they'd give it to your dog, Chewie, and leave you to be eaten by sharks. You just can't compete with this face: In a study published in the Society & Animals Journal, researchers measured peoples' levels of empathy. A team from Northeastern University Boston and the University of Colorado Boulder gathered 256 undergraduate students together - probably by putting up a sign that said "Free Pizza." Then they presented the students with fictitious news reports of attacks with a baseball bat on a 1-year-old baby, a 30-year-old adult, a young puppy, or a 6-year-old dog. Wow, what a fun study! I love thinking about babies and puppies attacked with baseball bats. Especially puppies. After being presented these horrific stories, the students were asked to report their level of empathy for the victims. The amount of empathy for the baby, puppy and dog victims were roughly the same. But the amount of empathy for the adult victim was to a much lesser degree. Unfortunately, they didn't measure the level of empathy if the victim was Snoop Dogg. But I'm sure it would be through the roof, because he's a national treasure. The researchers found that the more vulnerable the victim is, the more empathy. Also, people see dogs as "fur babies." “Respondents were significantly less distressed when adult humans were victimised, in comparison with human babies, puppies and adult dogs. Only relative to the infant victim did the adult dog receive lower scores of empathy. Subjects did not view their dogs as animals, but rather as ‘fur babies’, or family members alongside human children." That's right, they're not dogs. They're "fur babies." And this fur baby couldn't be happier: The researchers also noticed that gender had an effect on empathy: "Female participants were significantly more empathic toward all victims than were their male counterparts." Of course women are more empathic than men. Men have no feelings. The Y chromosome beats up all the feelings with a baseball bat before they can be registered by the brain. And then the dead feelings are released through burps and farts. That's just science. Congratulations, dogs! We officially love you more than humans. I've always suspected that, though. Whenever I poop outside, nobody picks it up and puts it in a bag. They just call the police, and now I'm not allowed at the park anymore.

No matter how great we consider our human buddies to be, the title of 'man's best friend' will always belong to dogs. Yeah, they might not be able to hold a decent conversation, and, no, they probably won't help you move house - but they're loyal, and they're adorable, and they're more selfless than any person you'll ever meet. It turns out, though, that the love we have for dogs goes beyond that of a simple friendship. A recent study by Professor Jack Levin and Professor Arnold Arluke from Northeastern University in Boston tested how empathetic people were to dogs in comparison to humans, and the results were pretty eye-opening. During the experiment, 240 participants were given one of four newspaper articles, each describing a vicious attack "with a baseball bat by an unknown assailant". The police report included in the articles was almost exactly the same every time: "Arriving on the scene a few minutes after the attack, a police officer found the victim with one broken leg, multiple lacerations, and unconscious," it said. "No arrests have been made in the case." However, one change was made between the four: the identity of the victim. In the first article, the subject of the attack was a 30-year-old person, in the second it was an infant child, and in the other two, the victim was a defenceless six-year-old dog or a young puppy. But which victim did people feel most sorry for? Well, dog-lovers, it'll probably come as no surprise to you, but the dog received more empathy than the human. In fact, the poor 30-year-old came last out of all four victims, with the human baby and the puppy pretty much tied in first place in terms of who received the most empathy. “Respondents were significantly less distressed when adult humans were victimized, in comparison with human babies, puppies and adult dogs,” the study concluded. “Only relative to the infant victim did the adult dog receive lower scores of empathy.” It added that, "Subjects did not view their dogs as animals, but rather as 'fur babies,' or family members alongside human children." In a way, this makes sense. An adult human being should be far more capable of fending off another human attacker than a dog or a baby would be, so it's natural to show more concern for the weaker victims. And people have known this for a while. In a 2015 UK campaign, one charity distributed two sets of images: one of a young child, and one of a really sad-looking little puppy. Each set of pictures had the same copy on them - "Would you give £5 to save Harrison from a slow, painful death?" As you may have guessed, the downtrodden doggy received more attention than the person.

"The fact adult human crime victims receive less empathy than do child, puppy, and full-grown dog victims suggests adult dogs are regarded as dependent and vulnerable not unlike their younger canine counterparts and kids," said professor Levin.

"In addition, it appears that adult humans are viewed as capable of protecting themselves while full-grown dogs are just seen as larger puppies."

The researchers also believe that results would be similar for cats, as, "These are animals to which many individuals attribute human characteristics." As fascinating as these results may be, we've got to admit that we always knew it to some extent. After all, there's no better person than a dog.        

For those that have never owned a dog, or spent much time at all with them, it can be a bit strange to see how crazy the rest of us are over them. Without having your own relationship with one, it can look like a big, hairy, messy, slobbering, expensive creature running around the house, chewing on furniture and walking mud in on the brand new carpets.

But once you get to know one, you can see that they're not just mindless animals, but sweet things that have distinctive personalities. On top of that, you get what you give with dogs - if you treat them with kindness, they'll do the same (except for some occasional misbehaviour); if you treat them badly, they won't be so nice when they grow up.

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It's a long-held trope in horror movies that the empathy present in dogs is so strong that they can sense something is off, whether it's a dog growling at Jason Voorhees or a puppy staring at a ghost that no one else in the room can see. Now while there's not exactly a sense of 'evil' with dogs, research has brought to light that they do take note of how humans behave to one another, and judge us depending on how we act.

A Kyoto University team, lead by psychologist James Anderson, published a paper titled 'Third-party social evaluations of humans by monkeys and dogs' in the journal Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews last November. "Nonhuman species can engage in third-party based social evaluations," was their statement to prove, and it looks like they did with the help of various animals.

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Their study revealed that dogs negatively evaluate people who refuse to help other humans, potentially sensing whether someone is being nice or rude, before using that information to decide on how they interact. That's a lot of mental processing for an animal that is known for acting kind of dumb.

“Dogs are known to consistently follow human pointing gestures," they wrote. "In this study, we asked whether dogs ‘automatically’ do this or whether they flexibly adjust their behavior depending upon the reliability of the pointer.”

In this test, the dogs watched humans interact, before they were offered a treat from the different individuals. They saw their owner try to open a container, at which point another person would either help them or refuse. When these actors offered the dogs a reward, each dog showed a preference to accept a treat from those that helped their owner, while avoiding and ignoring those that refused to help.

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Essentially - you don't have to physically struggle with a dog's owner for them to understand that something is wrong. “If somebody is behaving antisocially,” said Anderson, “they probably end up with some sort of emotional reaction to it.”

“These results suggest that not only dogs are highly skilled at understanding human pointing gestures, but also they make inferences about the reliability of a human who presents cues and consequently modify their behavior flexibly depending on the inference.”

These same conditions were used on Capuchin monkeys, with no ties to the humans taking part in the test. They responded similarly to the dogs - showing that there are various species that can judge how we act in this way.

So next time you're rude to a dog owner - know that their pet is onto you.

When it comes to our pets, we like to think that they're beyond criticism and that they're the best and brightest animals in the world ... despite all evidence to the contrary. Take my own dog for example. I know that the little guy has roughly the same IQ as a parsnip. If you take his ball and hide it under the rug, then he'll be completely bamboozled and assume it's disappeared. He's not bright - but woe betides anyone else who suggests that he's stupid. That's guaranteed to get me mad.

However, this week canine lovers on social media were outraged, by a new scientific study which claims that the intelligence of dogs is "not exceptional" and that the cognition of your average doggo is much the as many other species. The study was published in the scientific journal Learning and Behaviour, and was titled: "In What Sense are Dogs Special? Canine Cognition in Comparative Context.

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Authors Stephen Lea and Britta Osthaus noted: "Considering the social hunters, again it does not appear that dogs are exceptional. As noted above, among the noncarnivoran social hunters we find two taxonomic groups, the chimpanzees and bonobos, and the bottlenose dolphins, whose cognitive capacities are clearly superior to those of dogs on some tests (e.g., in self-consciousness); and although dogs do better than chimpanzees at others (e.g., using the behaviour of other animals, especially a human, as a cue), this ability seems to be widespread among carnivorans, and some other carnivorans perform better in these tasks than dogs."

They added: "In the present state of our knowledge, we are led to a simple conclusion: When a broad-enough set of comparison species is considered, there is no current case for canine exceptionalism ... On the basis of the evidence we have reviewed here, those circumstances are sufficient to account for the nature of dog cognition: It is what we would expect of cognition in a domesticated socially hunting carnivoran."

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However, dog lovers were quick to defend their pooches, and when social media users shared the study, they were hit with significant backlash. For example, one Twitter user wrote: "As several have noted: only one species has trained another to supply its food, housing, health care, transportation, breeding, exercise, family and affection needs, be its Gigantor The Space Age Robot and PICK UP ITS POOP. Dogs are not just geniuses they are THE geniuses. [sic]"

However, others seemed more supportive of the study. One person added: "There's a lot of outrage in the replies to this tweet. But not from me. My dog is so dumb, if brains were dynamite, he wouldn't have enough to blow his nose. But he's cute, so I keep him around ..."

So what do you guys think? Personally, I think that people are overreacting. The study didn't say that dogs are dumb; just that, comparatively, they're not exceptional.

A woman has sparked an outcry online after she recalled forcing her husband to ditch his cat in favor of her dog.

Taking to Reddit's Am I The A**hole forum, the woman, who goes by the username 'Both_Refrigerator239' on the site, said that when she and her husband moved in together about a year ago, his cat and her dog had a very strained relationship - which she blamed on the feline.

In order to "resolve" the issue, she asked her husband to get rid of the cat.

She wrote: "Me and my husband have been living together for 1 year. When we moved in together, I brought my 3 year old American Bully, while he brought his 18 year old cat.

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"We tried to introduce them to one another by initially separating them, then by introducing them to each other’s smells, followed by letting them see each other whilst at a safe distance. They appeared to get along, but after a day, the cat began making its dislike for the dog VERY clear."

When it became evident that the two animals weren't going to get along, u/Both_Refrigerator239 and her husband tried to keep them separate. The spouses also stepped in whenever their respective animals fought, to no avail.

Eventually, they took the cat to the vet to determine whether it had any issues, however, the vet said the animal was "perfectly healthy".

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When she fell pregnant, the Redditor began to worry even more.

She said: "While I’m not saying that the cat would definitely be nasty towards my baby, the way it has acted towards my dog has caused me to worry."

Family members refused to take the "troublesome" cat off their hands, supposedly leaving them with no choice but to take it to a "cat sanctuary, where it would hopefully be able to find a new home, in a relaxing environment and without fear of being euthanized."

She said she and her husband "argued virtually nonstop about this for days, until my husband finally agreed to take his cat to said cat sanctuary. However, he is still pretty upset with me."

The woman added: "I feel really bad for my husband, however, I do feel like it was the right decision, not only for the dog, but our future baby."

Reddit users were appalled by the story, with many sharing their despair for the cat.

One said: "It's an 18 year old cat. Not only is it incredibly unlikely to find a new home, but think about how stressful that would be for the poor thing. Please go back and save his cat. I'd honestly never forgive you if I was in his shoes."

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Another agreed: "I honestly would have left the marriage over this. Not even sorry. She should know how much that cat means to him. With her selfish self."

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A third commented: "Anyone so heartless that they think that a cat with probably less than a year to live should be rehomed, isn't somebody that should be trusted with love."

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Let us know your thoughts in the comments section!

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