Companion animal behaviour

Research on the behaviour and cognition of dogs has revealed that they are extremely skillful in understanding humans. They understand simple gestures even when they are not/minimally socialized. Dogs have also shown to understand our attentive states (what and when do we see something) and perspectives. Moreover, they have been shown to pay attention to humans and copy their actions to reach a goal. Yet, the way in which dogs perceive us, other dogs, and their environment has plenty of open questions.

Most people think of dogs as the ones they see walking on the leash with their owners, or that sleep on their sofas. But what if you knew that more than 80% of the dogs in the world live as free-ranging, meaning not owned by people? Surprisingly we still know very little about how these dogs live, what type of social relationship they form and how they navigate their environment. At the Behavioural Ecology group we also conduct research on a population of free-ranging dogs, living on the streets of Morocco, where we investigate the social behaviour, cognition, and ecology of free-ranging dogs.

Cats have been studied to a lesser extent than dogs, although they represent the most common pet in our households, and they have been going through a complex process of domestication. Despite their ancestor was a solitary hunter, domesticated cats are sociable towards humans and other cats (e.g. they can live in big colonies where cats have preferential and complex relationships), yet their social cognition and behaviour is yet to be fully understood.

At the Behavioural Ecology Group we investigate topics such as social learning, communication, perspective taking, knowledge attribution, personality, cooperation, inequity aversion, pro-sociality, and many more.