Jealousy may have evolved to protect valuable social bonds from interlopers, but some researchers have suggested that it is linked to self-awareness and theory of mind, leading to claims that it is unique to humans. We presented dogs (N = 18; 11 females; age: M = 4.6 years, SD = 1.9) with situations in which they could observe an out-of-sight social interaction between their owner and a fake dog or between their owner and a fleece cylinder. We found evidence for three signatures of jealous behavior in dogs: (a) Jealousy emerged only when the dog’s owner interacted with a perceived social rival, (b) it occurred as a consequence of that interaction and not because of the mere presence of a conspecific, and (c) it emerged even for an out-of-sight interaction between the dog’s owner and a social rival. These results support claims that dogs display jealous behavior, and they provide the first evidence that dogs can mentally represent jealousy-inducing social interactions.

嫉妒可能已经演变为保护有价值的社会纽带免受闯入者的侵害，但一些研究人员认为它与自我意识和心理理论有关，导致人们声称它是人类独有的。我们展示了狗（N = 18；11 只雌性；年龄：M = 4.6 岁，SD= 1.9）在他们可以观察到他们的主人和一只假狗之间或他们的主人和羊毛缸之间的视线之外的社交互动的情况下。我们发现了狗嫉妒行为的三个特征的证据：（a）只有当狗的主人与感知到的社会对手互动时才会出现嫉妒，（b）它是这种互动的结果，而不是仅仅因为同种动物的存在，并且（c）它甚至出现在狗的主人和社会竞争对手之间的视线之外的互动中。这些结果支持了狗表现出嫉妒行为的说法，并且它们提供了第一个证据，证明狗可以在心理上表现出引起嫉妒的社交互动。