Dog people know this: Dogs figure stuff out. They figure us out. That's kind of their whole existence— we are their whole existence. Our behavior, our comings and goings, our habits. Dogs learn to communicate and they learn to manipulate. I like to say that my dog is a scientist of me. I'm his subject.What, exactly, dogs know is the subject of much debate. We are easier for dogs to study than dogs are for us to study. My own anecdotal experience as a dog owner is a bit biased, obviously. Dogs are also easy to project onto, to imagine as furry four-legged people. But dogs are just dogs, and the essence of dogginess, what it is to be and feel as a dog, is elusive. Try as we might.A team of researchers at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna has a new paper out in the journal Animal Cognition offering evidence that dogs are able to interpret human behavior for the purposes of uncovering hidden information. They can read us in a way that approaches "theory of mind," the ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires—to oneself and to others. Having a theory of mind means understanding that others have their own motivations and understandings and that intuiting those motivations and understandings means being able to predict the behavior of those others.Read the rest of this article on MOTHERBOARD.