Dogs mentally represent jealousy inducing social interactions

Jealousy may have evolved to protect valuable social bonds from interlopers, but some researchers have suggested that it is linked to selfawareness and theory of mind, leading to claims that it is unique to humans. We presented dogs (N 18; 11 females; age: M 4. 6 years, SD 1. 9) with situations in which they could observe an outofsight social interaction between their owner and a fake dog or between their owner and a fleece cylinder. We found evidence for three signatures of jealous behavior in dogs: (a) Jealousy emerged only when the dogs owner interacted with a perceived social rival, (b) it occurred as a consequence of that interaction and not because of the mere presence of a conspecific, and (c) it emerged even for an outofsight interaction between the dogs owner and a social rival. These results support claims that dogs display jealous behavior, and they provide the first evidence that dogs can mentally represent jealousyinducing social interactions. Link to the paper: