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u/BiBoFieTo Feb 23 '26
Point at the ball? Nothin'.
Side eye glance at the leash? OHHH IT'S WALK TIME!
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u/heyyou11 Feb 23 '26
Eye glances are how mine “points” to the treat jar... Might as well speak the language he knows.
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u/TheFuckinEaglesMan Feb 23 '26
I of course won’t verify this because I’m a redditor, but I read somewhere that dogs are the only animals besides humans that have white sclera (the white part of our eyes), which is how we/they can tell where someone is looking just by seeing the eyeball. So that makes sense! I’m sure we bred it into them or something
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u/RealityinRuin Feb 23 '26 edited Feb 23 '26
Pig eyes are nearly human. Pretty sure they have shite sclera.
Edit: white. Shite. Ugh....
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u/Glittering_knave Feb 23 '26
Dogs are not nearly the only animals with white sclera. Horses and most other primates do, too.
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u/Spyd3rs Feb 23 '26
I don't know about that sclera part, but I read somewhere that dogs are the only animals that can be taught the meaning of pointing with relative ease, but then again, that might also have something to do with their eyes and ours.
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u/Trips-Over-Tail Feb 23 '26
Loads of animals have white sclera. Many have eyes that don't expose it except in the most extreme expressions.
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u/RTalons Feb 23 '26
On a walk, my hound will give a quick hand boop to get my attention and then point with his eyes. Usually it's because he spotted a dog and is asking to go say hi.
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u/freshpairofayes Feb 23 '26
I love dog language.
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u/FatFaceFaster Feb 23 '26
My idiot lazy
doesn’t even like walks. She gets tired half way and I basically drag her home. beagle And yet still if my coat should brush against the leash hanging in the closet and cause it to sway ever so slightly, that little beagle launches from a comatose state an stands on two legs spinning like some kind of possessed Dobby.
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u/SappySoulTaker Feb 23 '26
Sounds like a lot of short walks is the way
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u/FatFaceFaster Feb 23 '26
I take her to the golf course with me (I’m a superintendent) and she gets lots of good little runs in. But she is just a lazy girl… always has been.
Her younger sister keeps her active when they go outside together too.
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u/DefStones123 Feb 23 '26
Sounds like my buddy's beagle! We'd go out for a hike, my lab would love it, and he'd be carrying his beagle back to the car. But he KNEW when we'd get close to a Sonic restaurant
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u/tlcoles Feb 23 '26
not too long ago I was reading Reddit chat on doggy strollers. Verdict: win win for owner-companions who want longer walks and doggies who want to go out but can’t also manage the distance back.
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u/D0las Feb 23 '26
I mean, no dog cares about getting their steps in. They are just as interested in living healthy as we are, so not a whole lot. The walk is all about social life, which dogs experience mostly through their noses.
Where I live, they say you can’t out walk a dog but you tire them out by letting them use their nose. Or bore them out with uninteresting smellscape.
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u/---E Feb 23 '26
Wow, I've done 25 km walks with my Beagle and after a quick nap he'd be ready to go again
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u/dlpfc123 Feb 23 '26
I have a dog that gets so excited for walks that sound in circles and runs about the house when she sees the leash. I am convinced the happy dance just wears her out so that she is too tired to actually get much of a walk.
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u/Hananners Feb 24 '26
Haha, that's the complete opposite of the dog I had as a kid. He hated going on walks so much that I'd have to drag him on his back until he begrudgingly walked at my side with the mopiest exoression, but as soon as I turned to head home he would suddenly be full of energy and try to run all the way back while straining on the leash. I miss that little fluffball.
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u/qinghairpins Feb 23 '26
Meanwhile my cat:
hears the slightest sound of that one specific drawer opening where the nail clippers are stored, gone ☠️
How does he know?? It sounds the same as any other drawer….
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u/slimejumper Feb 23 '26
has probably developed a sophisticated probabilistic and temporal model of your clipper-based behaviours. Mixed in some Bayesian reasoning to incorporate known priors and their own cat organic neural network and they got you sorted.
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u/throwaway8594732 Feb 23 '26
My cat tries to get out a lot, we've managed to stop her at the front door, but we bring out the rubbish bin every week on Wednesdays. Every Wednesday she will loiter about near the backgate, waiting for us to take out the bin so she can try to run out.
We've had to trick her or grab her and place her into a room and close door for 2 mins so can we open the gate.
Somehow she knows it's Wednesday everytime.
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u/GrumpyCloud93 Feb 23 '26
My stepsister's cats would launch across the house from anywhere when they heard the electric can opener. ( "food! ... FOOD!!!")
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u/jasta85 Feb 23 '26
Star storing the clippers in the same drawer as your can opener or measuring cup you use for his food.
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u/articulateantagonist Feb 23 '26
I recently got a Brittany dog, typically called a Brittany Spaniel.
They're not spaniels, though, and the AKC dropped the "spaniel" from the name of the breed because they're actually more closely related to pointers.
So when I throw the ball, he points at it. And that's it.
I'm like "Go get it!" and he's like "But it's right there, ma! See? Right there. I'm pointing right at it!"
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u/Elegant-Aide-8850 Feb 23 '26
To be fair, if a giant hand was pointing a finger directly at my face, my first instinct would also be to prepare for an incoming snoot boop
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u/evasandor Feb 23 '26
Fun fact I heard: only dogs and some parrots understand pointing.
So, we had a wonderful and very smart horse. But of course, not being a dog, she didn't understand pointing... at first. I decided to teach her.
I began each training by holding up my index finger and saying "look!". When she looked at my finger, I gave her a grape. Pretty soon this was a little highlight of her day.
Then I began putting the grape on various surfaces about an inch from my finger. The "look" game soon became "ahhh, the grape will always be within an inch of the human's weird microscopic 1/5 of a hoof".
As it went on, I would hide the grape further and further away. She caught on that an imaginary line from my hand, down my finger and out into space would lead to the grape. Soon I was hiding it all the way across the stall, in places like behind the feed tub and stuck in the window frame.
So it can be taught. But for some reason, dogs understand it naturally (heck, they point stuff out to us)!
Not sure why parrots know it, though. Any ideas?
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u/LumberjackPreacher Feb 23 '26
Because birds aren’t real, and the human pilot of the bird drone gives themselves away when they understand why someone is pointing.
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u/JoelStrega Feb 23 '26
I find it hard that human pilot parrot. I think the fact that dog AND parrot understand pointing proves that it's actually dogs that pilot parrots.
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u/GameOfThrownaws Feb 23 '26
Parrots are just really fucking smart, like way smarter than dogs or horses, especially the larger ones. African greys, for example, are said to have roughly the cognitive ability of a five year old child, which is absolutely insane. So they understand a much wider breadth of concepts and just have far greater general cognition. As a flock animal (and also just extremely social animals in general), one such concept that they seem to just get is the idea of "group attention". I think there's a term for it that I can't remember, but basically the idea of taking signals from other flock members who are essentially pointing something out, like danger or food or whatever.
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u/makethislifecount Feb 23 '26
Yup. Generally only beaten in intelligence by crows, who are at the equivalent of a mind blowing 7 year old human.
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u/Defiant-Tea3747 Feb 23 '26
I don't know if this is that impressive, but reading this made me realise something.
When I was a baby, I would sleep In the backyard in my pram/stroller thing, and at certain times of year, the crows would sit in the trees behind the yard and make so much noise that I couldn't sleep.
So my father would run out and throw something at them, so they all flew away. Except he never actually threw anything, he just made the motion of chucking something into the trees.
So they recognised: Man is making a motion > This is a throwing motion > He is directing it at us > This means something will potentially hit us > We must fly away to not get hit.
I think that's pretty cool actually.
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u/greentrafficcone Feb 23 '26
For some reason I read yours, and the previous comment, as “cows” so I was very confused when you we’re talking about them sitting in the trees making noise
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u/UnknownAdmiralBlu Feb 23 '26
Which I find really fucking impressive and weird cause, correct me but, they need to fit all that brain in while being able to fly?!
Really just an armchair comment but in my mind this is something that seems very hard to balance from a weight and energy standpoint. Flying seems energy intensive already with all the muscles needed to flap the wings so hard and often and the oxygen that is subsequently needed, for which I'd imagine you'd need fairly big and also energy intensive lungs. And I'm sure there is more to a Parrots physiology that I'm missing.
But maybe this is not as crazy as I think, I'd really like to hear an opinion on this
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Feb 23 '26
This is very cool. My dog generally picks up stuff pretty well, but she just doesn’t get pointing. I was wondering about something like this and am going to use the same method (though of course with something other than a grape).
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u/plonkydonkey Feb 23 '26
My dog is brilliant (service dog, can get me home by train and bus when I've lost vision due to migraine etc) but pointing just gets her trying to eat my fingers 😂.
I'm gonna try this too!
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u/Jonthrei Feb 23 '26
A potential problem would be them smelling the reward, is there anything your dog loves that she probably can't sniff out easily?
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u/captainfarthing Feb 23 '26 edited Feb 23 '26
Doesn't matter if they can smell it, they learn to associate finger pointing towards the spot they should go for something they want. The scent helps IMO because it's a clue they're getting hotter when they go where the finger points. I taught my lab puppy this with biscuits on the floor, then tossed in grass, then generalised to things that aren't food.
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u/AmputeeBall Feb 23 '26
I’ve had several dogs, all have understood pointing, and now I have 2 that don’t seem to understand it at all. They are super sweet but there are also other indicators that they aren’t the brightest little dogs lol.
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u/therift289 Feb 23 '26
Elephants understand pointing too. They naturally do it with their trunks to communicate with each other.
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u/evasandor Feb 23 '26
lol the trunk can probably reach a lot of the things they’d point at.
“mama where’s the… oh. thanks.”
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u/ZealousidealLettuce6 Feb 23 '26
Farther and farther away.
Physical distance is farther....
Figurative distance is further.
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u/niccolonocciolo Feb 24 '26
Eh, that's just an arbitrary distinction that some style guides like to make. In reality they've been used interchangeably for centuries
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u/Titariia Feb 23 '26
When my cat doesn't know what dorection to go while on a walk I'll give the leash a little tuck and say his name to get his attention and then point in a direction and say our language equivalent to "That way" He understands it better than the dogs sometimes but that's the same with cats and dogs sometimes. They'll only hear what they want to hear.
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u/kthxb Feb 23 '26
All social animals understand pointing. Other animals do not understand the gesture because they have no concept of "helping eachother". They don't know why you would help them because they would not help you.
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u/Fire_on_Bunn Feb 23 '26
I actually managed to teach it to one of my cats. How? Well, he’s very food motivated.
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u/BaronAaldwin Feb 23 '26
I managed to teach one of my hamsters to understand pointing, pretty much by the same method you used. Admittedly I was usually pointing to something pretty close to my fingertip because hamster eyesight sucks, but I could point to a certain area of her cage and she'd go there!
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u/SAMERXLE Feb 23 '26
I think cats also understand as one time I pointed to one, and it actually looked at the direction
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u/manrata Feb 23 '26
Other animals also understand pointing, some cats, some horses, and also dolphins, but for all it's a learned behaviour, or rarely picked up by being close to humans.
Some understand it without context, that includes some primates, and elephants, elephants are freaking smart, some postulation goes as to they point themselves using their trunk.
Raven and crows, ie. covids, also seem to follow the parrots in understanding pointing.Maybe not odd, but octopuses do not understand pointing, but they are solitary creatures, so don't communicate very well in a way we understand.
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u/SlippyIsDead Feb 23 '26
My cats understands pointing about 50 percent of the time. I mean, it knows it means I gave them something and they need to find it. Idk if they understand that my finger is showing them were it is. I've switched to tapping near the thing.
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u/CatalyticDragon Feb 23 '26
Funny thing is dogs are one of the only animals we know of that can understand the
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u/Kamakaziturtle Feb 23 '26
One of the few animals that can understand human facial expressions as well. It's actually kinda fascinating,
long enough that they've actively started to evolve in ways that allow them to better interact with humans. Dogs have been domesticated 1.3k
u/old_righty Feb 23 '26
Dogs also understand that sofas, beds and pillows are super comfortable.
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u/TeaBurntMyTongue Feb 23 '26
Yeah it's wild how dogs can even take ownership of the sofa while posessing no currency
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u/counterfitster Feb 23 '26
Cats seem to understand that part
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u/SuperBackup9000 Feb 23 '26
One of mind figured out how to achieve maximum comfort, and it’s the most annoying thing in the world because she insists on sleeping under the blanket and her dumb little cat paws can’t help with that so she’ll just start scratching me until I wake up and let her under.
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u/hauttdawg13 Feb 23 '26
Also seem to understand that the bit of food I’m currently eating is far tastier then the exact same thing that I am offering to him.
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u/Cobalt_Toffee1994 Feb 23 '26
Although that’s not a very high bar to cross. Other mammals both domesticated and not as well as Reptiles and birds also enjoy comfy beds, pillows, sofas, etc.
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u/sheezy520 Feb 23 '26
I wish I could obtain the level of comfort it looks like my dog has while laying on a pillow.
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u/GoodBrotherGrimm Feb 23 '26
Aren't they the only animal that we can "infect" with a yawn too? Like when someone else yawning triggers one in you too?
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u/RealityOk5471 Feb 23 '26
Nah I used to infect my ringneck with yawns all the time. Once I was worried I broke her because she wouldn't stop for over a minute of continuous yawns. I miss that little shit...
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u/nohopeforhomosapiens Feb 24 '26
Parrots are very bright and responsive socially. I miss my alexandrine. That bird was so fucking amazing. Would steal my keys and laugh about it and play peek-a-boo. Talked up a storm. I now have a toddler and there are a lot of similarities between a human 2-3 year old and a parrot.
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u/EnSebastif Feb 23 '26
I think pretty much any species can be infected with yawns from one to another. Fishes yawning in videos have made me yawn. Hell, even the word "yawn" in your comment made me yawn.
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u/thatshygirl06 Feb 23 '26
Nope. Just the other day I yawned at my cat and he immediately yawned back
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u/Vroomped Feb 24 '26
I heard any animal with empathy can catch a "yawn" or anatomically similar thing from anatomy they relate to. For example octopus but they don't empathizes with whatever the fuck our face is. Weird, solid, hairy, top appendage ass faces.
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u/necropuddi Feb 23 '26
Cats probably understand as well, they just don't give a shit.
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u/brickmaster32000 Feb 23 '26
Cats absolutely know. I remember I walked into a room once and saw a glass on the edge of the table with the cat sitting next to it. I immediately thought, "well that's an accident waiting to happen", at which point the cat looked at me, turned to look at the glass and then looked back at me and while maintaining eye contact pushed the glass off the table.
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u/MoeSzyslakMonobrow Feb 23 '26
Not my dumbass dog.
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u/Gayforjamesfranco Feb 23 '26
Its okay some people cant understand it either.
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u/Western-Internal-751 Feb 23 '26
When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger
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u/sitefall Feb 23 '26
You may have to teach it to them.
Sometimes it just happens automatically because dogs are good at reading body language and to some degree inference and pattern recognition. So someone might have taught them to fetch a ball or go to their dog bed, and at some point they started to point to it, dog did the 2+2 and figured that the point means dog bed, and the point means get ball, and in a round about way inferred that point means "over there".
But if this didn't happen, you can simply teach it to them. Use whatever tricks/commands they already know, or teach them some simple new things, and do it up close. Pick up your ball for example while you're sitting right there with the ball in front of you. When they're good at picking up the ball, get further and further away. Once you're 100% sure dog understands pick up the ball in any orientation/location of the ball (within reason), play some easy hide and seek with the ball. Then make it harder but in a place not so hard they give up, but hard enough they have to do some thinking and looking about it, then you assist them with the point. They will quickly figure it out.
Do it with other things like going to a specific place, finding food on the ground, going to someone else "go get mommy (point)" (while she simultaneously calls dog at first, then reward, then phase out the call), and they will master pointing.
Source: me, I teach dogs to do stuff for pro dog sports.
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u/nitid_name Feb 23 '26
For some reason, my dog seemed to intrinsically understand pointing if I used my whole hand. So I have to knife hand at things for her to understand to follow where it's leading.
I think it must have looked like I'm throwing something when I first did it, so she followed the trajectory of where my fingers. What's funny is that if I switch my hand back to just a point, she looks right back at my finger.
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u/misterrandom1 Feb 23 '26
I can't tell if mine can't understand pointing, or is using fake ignorance as a power play to force me to fetch. I mean for fuck's sake, he can tell if there is a toy stuck between the couch cushions because he can smell it, yet he wants me to believe that he can't use his nose to find his toy that takes a funny bounce.
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u/KeenanAXQuinn Feb 23 '26
Mine does every thrid finger point so can confirm its teachable...but was it worth it....no, no it wasnt
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u/uberduck999 Feb 24 '26
What breed is it? I've got a Basenji that doesn't understand pointing whatsoever. He will just walk up to me and look straight at the tip of my finger, or lick it. But pointing means nothing to him.
I've heard that Basenjis are one of the least domesticated breeds of dog, which might explain why it doesn't understand some human behaviors that other dogs do.
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u/Geniuskills Feb 23 '26
Fun fact, a bunch of fish and octopus' can too! They'll cooperate in the same way, fish point to smaller fish, and octopus can grab em from the smaller crevices.
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u/Arstulex Feb 23 '26
We've all seen Finding Nemo bro, we already know fish can point and give directions.
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u/LeoLaDawg Feb 23 '26
I've had dogs that understand and dogs that never could work out what pointing meant.
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u/i_illustrate_stuff Feb 23 '26
Mine only gets it if your finger is literally an inch away from the object of interest. Then he'll finally break eye contact and go "oh, that!"
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u/Hashi856 Feb 23 '26
The infuriating part is that dogs themselves point at things, and yet half of them have no idea what we're doing when we point.
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u/vxsapphire Feb 23 '26
My cat understands but only if I look where I’m pointing and gasp. Anything else? She doesn’t give a shit.
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u/whatintheeverloving Feb 23 '26
This was one of the adjustments I had to make when I went from a lifetime of owning dogs to having two cats. They're clever in other ways, but they do NOT make the finger-to-object connection. If they're struggling to find a treat on the floor or something like that, I've learned to move my finger from their nose to the treat so as to link the two in their little brains.
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u/echochilde Feb 23 '26
I literally scrolled past this as I was telling my dog to get her turtle.
She loves fetch in theory, but in practice, only once or twice.
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u/Meta2048 Feb 23 '26
My dog would fetch something once or twice, but after that she would just look at you like you were an idiot for throwing things away.
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u/echochilde Feb 23 '26
Before this little sausage-shaped terrier mutt I had border collies and heelers. I love that she’s mellow (unless there’s small prey around), but the lack of obsession with fetch is baffling.
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u/Loki-Holmes Feb 23 '26 edited Feb 23 '26
My Aussie is broken and just won’t fetch at all. The closest is that if I throw a toy a little bit away he will take it and run to be chased. If I play tug with a toy or shake it around to play with him and then throw it he gives me looks at me like “Why would you even do that?” and won’t go after it. He has 0 interest in Tennis Balls too.
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u/akatherder Feb 23 '26
Our Jack Russell would fetch 24/7 if you let him. Even when he was old and slowing down he'd bust out 50 wind sprints until he was about to explode and you had to stop him.
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u/miss_tea_morning Feb 23 '26
My corgi is absolutely obsessed with the ball. I can tell her to get her ball and she will. I can point and she looks to try to find it. She'll drop it in my hand if i tell her to, and if she misses she'll keep trying until she gets it right. I have yet to find an amount of fetch that will satisfy her, and i just give up at a certain point because i don't want to hurt her.
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u/Axi0madick Feb 23 '26
You have to pretend to throw something at whatever you're trying to point at.
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u/angrydeuce Feb 23 '26
I mean if I was the dog id be thinking that my snoot was about to receive a boop.
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u/TuzkiPlus Feb 23 '26
Like that art piece of God and Man touching fingers, but Dog and Man booping snoots?
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u/TastyFappuccino Feb 23 '26
that art piece
you mean the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican by Michelangelo?
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u/dashamarie Feb 23 '26
My lab has learnt that if I point at the floor, he will find food. Pointing in any other context does not work.
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u/WarLawck Feb 23 '26 edited Feb 23 '26
"It's like a finger pointing away to the moon. DON'T CONCENTRATE ON THE FINGER! or you will miss all that heavenly glory."
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u/Rev_LoveRevolver Feb 23 '26
Searched for this exact reference, was not disappointed. You're doing heavenly work. All glory to you!
/points
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u/Elegant-Aide-8850 Feb 23 '26
My dog can hear a single slice of cheese being unwrapped from three time zones away while in a dead sleep, but if I point at a tennis ball two feet in front of him, he stares at my index finger like it’s a profound philosophical mystery 🤣
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u/TheMaleBodyPillow Feb 23 '26
Get a blue ball for your dog, their eyes didn't go through the same evolutionary traits that allow them to differentiate shades of green very well or even green mixed with red(fruit on a tree, dog's never needed to see this)
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u/SealedRoute Feb 23 '26
I am but a finger pointing to the moon. Don’t look at me; look at the moon.
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u/SupervillainMustache Feb 23 '26
Or the dog will bring the ball back and want you to throw it, but also doesn't want to let it go.
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u/Lexi_Banner Feb 23 '26
My dog knows I'm pointing at something. He just doesn't feel like going over there himself.
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u/JimmyM0240 Feb 23 '26
Are you sure this isn't about cats?
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u/jeffvillone Feb 23 '26
100% my cat. Who likes to play fetch with those little foam nerf ammo balls.
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u/Druterium Feb 23 '26
Mine too. Any time I point at the window to tell him "Look, there's a birdie!" He's just like "Yes. That is your finger. What of it?"
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u/keyblade_crafter Feb 23 '26
sometimes my cat responds to using both hands' pointer fingers to point
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u/xNocturnalshadow Feb 23 '26
Just remember that dogs have the equivalent intelligence of a 3yo
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u/Brilliant_Chemica Feb 23 '26
I was once walking a family friend's dog and got distracted watching a ferrari drive by. He stopped me from walking into a busy road. Smart kiddo
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u/edamlambert Feb 24 '26
My dog likes to lure me somewhere else and then run to raid anything unattended left in kitchen.
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u/oO0Kat0Oo Feb 24 '26
3yos understand when you point. Hell, my 8 month old understands when you point.
My beautiful rottie is just confused about everything.
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u/kirsion Feb 23 '26
There is a parable of the finger pointing at the moon is a famous Buddhist teaching, often found in Zen and Mahayana traditions, illustrating that scriptures, doctrines, and rituals are merely tools (fingers) to guide followers toward enlightenment (the moon). Clinging to the teachings rather than experiencing the truth they point to causes one to miss the goal
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u/PushPullPoltergeist Feb 23 '26
Showed this to my gf, who isn't wearing her glasses, and she made the same exact face as the dog.
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u/_demello Feb 23 '26
Sometimes I think how much cultural knowledge goesninto the simples communicatikn gestures. It wouldn't be garanteed that an alien would unsderstand pointing. Even nodding yes or no are different on different cultures on earth.
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