Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

Puppies Understand You Even at a Young Age

We like to think our puppies can follow what we're telling them. Well, to some degree they can, even when they're . We have known for a long time that adult dogs are especially in understanding cooperative communication from humans. They can spontaneously follow a human pointing gesture. They're even better at it than apes, which are much more closely related to us, speaking.

But is it a skill dogs pick up simply by spending time with people? Or is it a trait that was  for when dogs first became domesticated?

To find out, Bray and her colleagues  time with 375 puppies that were going to be trained to be service dogs. By working with pups that had spent most of their young lives with their owners, Bray could figure out whether dogs had to learn to  human communications -or if it's something they were born with.

The pups participated in tests designed to assess dogs1 social smarts. In one experiment, a researcher would hide food under one of two cups - and then call to the puppy and point toward the cup that held the . They found puppies were able to use this social signal to choose the correct location.

In another experiment, a researcher would talk to a puppy. "Hi pup. Are you a good puppy? Yes, you are! What a good puppy! "This goes on for about 30 seconds. During this interaction, the researcher would record how much time the pup spent gazing at her with sight.

They found that puppies would respond to human social gaze and could successfully use information given by a human in social context from a very young age. "It seems likely that puppies really are starting the (ask with the communicative ability necessary to be successful rather than just quickly learning a(n) over the course of the task." Bray added. All these findings suggest that dogs are biologically prepared for communication with humans.