Evolutionary approach to communication between humans and dogs.

Dogs and humans have been sharing a common environment for a long time. Some aspects of their social interaction are described as communication in which members of both species influence each other's behaviour by special behaviour signals. Recent research is aimed at providing an evolutionary account for the emergence of communicative interactions between dogs and people. The present review summarizes how carefully applied experimental methods can be utilised to answer such research questions, in order to separate different processes that may underlie the mental abilities in dogs.