The experiment suggests that dogs can put themselves inside the head of another dog -- and perhaps people -- to make relatively complex decisions.
"This suggests they can actually think about your intention -- they can look for explanations of your behavior and make inferences about what you are thinking," Hare said.
Others go even further, suggesting the findings indicate that dogs have a sense of awareness. [emph. mine]
"It really shows a higher level of consciousness," said Stanley Coren at the University of British Columbia, who studies how dogs think. "This takes a real degree of consciousness."
These attitudes seem to discredit dogs completely at the outset..
I'm not a "dog person" but our dog Oscar is quite capable of intuiting intent and making decisions for himself that go beyond "normal" dog behavior. When he sees us getting dressed he knows we are going out, and he goes to the window to watch us leave, rather than trying to rush out the door.
Because we feed him (raw food) on a rug/mat in the kitchen.. he keeps the food on the mat. If he's left with a bone, we started realizing he'll take the bone to another (closer to us) "mat" for further chewing. This could be the little rug at the kitchen entry OR the trailing part of a non-fitted slipcover for "his" chair in the LR. I wondered, "why the heck is he chewing that bone near the corners of the chair all the time?" Assumed reason: on the tile floor, the trailing cloth = "mat".
He could easily reach any food whether on the kitchen table or the coffee table where we often eat. But he doesn't. It's "ours". Even if I happen to put a dog toy on the coffee table he almost always considers it off limits though it's right in front of his nose. We didn't have to "teach" him this particularly.
I also noticed yesterday when we accompanied people into the street where their cars were parked, he lay down right at the gateway and didn't try to leave the property or follow us. Again, we've never "trained" him to do this in general nor gave him any signal to do so at that time.
It doesn't seem to me that it's going so far out on a limb to say "dogs have a sense of awareness"!
Fun w/Oscar is giving him a snack of egg (whole, raw) and watching him roll it around the mat and recover it if it rolls off. After a couple minutes of mouthing and delicate teeth-testing he finally makes a little opening and slowly sips, licks, and nibbles until he gets the goods.