With those mournful puppy-dog eyes, man's best friend may be conveying more than just a desire for table scraps. As it turns out, Sparky could be empathizing with you.
A new study suggests that domestic dogs are capable of understanding a human's perspective. Researchers found that when a human forbids a dog from taking food, the canine is four times more likely to disobey in a dark room than in a well-lit room; this suggests dogs "take into account what the human can or cannot see," according to Science Daily.
"That's incredible because it implies dogs understand the human can't see them, meaning they might understand the human perspective," said Juliane Kaminski, one of the study's authors and lecturer at University of Portsmouth's psychology department.
Called "Dogs steal in the dark," the study is in the November 2012 edition of Animal Cognition. Check out the video above for more; then, give us your thoughts on the findings in the comments.