Few studies have investigated biological motion perception in dogs and it remains unknown whether dogs recognise the biological identity of two-dimensional animations of human motion cues. To test this, we assessed the dogs’ (N = 32) responses to point-light displays of a human performing a pointing gesture towards one of two pots. At the start of the experiment the demonstrator was a real-life person, but over the course of the test dogs were presented with two-dimensional figurative representations of pointing gestures in which visual information was progressively removed until only the isolated motion cues remained. Dogs’ accuracy was above chance level only with real-life and black-and-white videos, but not with the silhouette or the point-light figure. Dogs’ accuracy during these conditions was significantly lower than in the real-life condition. This result could not be explained by trial order since dogs’ performance was still not higher than chance when only the point-light figure condition was presented after the initial demonstration. The results imply that dogs are unable to recognise humans in two-dimensional depictions of human motion cues only. In spite of extensive exposure to human movement, dogs need more perceptual cues to detect equivalence between human two-dimensional animations and the represented living entity.

很少有研究调查狗的生物运动知觉，并且狗是否能够识别人类运动线索的二维动画的生物学特性仍是未知的。为了测试这一点，我们评估了狗对人的点光显示（N = 32）的反应，该点向两个锅中的一个做出了指向手势。在实验开始时，演示者是一个真实的人，但是在测试过程中，向狗展示了指向手势的二维图形表示，其中逐步删除了视觉信息，直到只保留了孤立的运动提示。狗的准确度仅在真实生活和黑白视频中高于偶然水平，而在轮廓或点光源图中则没有。在这些条件下，狗的准确性明显低于现实生活中的条件。该结果不能用试验命令来解释，因为当在最初的演示之后只显示点状光的情况时，狗的表现仍不高于偶然性。结果表明，狗仅在人的运动线索的二维描述中无法识别人。尽管人体运动受到广泛影响，但狗仍需要更多的感知线索来检测人类二维动画与所表示的生命实体之间的等效性。结果表明，狗仅在人的运动线索的二维描述中无法识别人。尽管人体运动受到广泛影响，但狗仍需要更多的感知线索来检测人类二维动画与所表示的生命实体之间的等效性。结果表明，狗仅在人的运动线索的二维描述中无法识别人。尽管人体运动受到广泛影响，但狗仍需要更多的感知线索来检测人类二维动画与所表示的生命实体之间的等效性。