Dogs Help Humans Like Toddlers Do, While Cats Usually Watch

A study found that over 75% of dogs and toddlers helped a searching adult, while cats usually watched unless the hidden object interested them.

Medicine

Details

A 2026 study compared untrained companion dogs, companion cats, and toddlers aged 16 to 24 months in a simple helping situation. A familiar adult searched for an object that had been hidden nearby without directly asking the child or animal for help. Researchers watched for behaviors such as indicating where the object was, approaching it, or bringing it to the adult. More than 75% of the dogs and toddlers either indicated the hidden object or retrieved it, even though the dogs had no special training, received no reward, and the neutral object was not something they wanted. Cats paid attention to the situation too, but they were much less likely to help when the object had no personal value. When the hidden item was a favorite treat or toy, cats became more likely to get involved. The researchers describe this as a comparison of spontaneous prosocial behavior, meaning behavior that can benefit another individual without an obvious immediate reward. The findings do not show that dogs are more empathetic than cats, because empathy itself was not directly measured. Instead, the results suggest that dogs and toddlers displayed similar patterns in this particular helping task. The researchers argue that dogs social cooperation and long history of interaction and selection alongside humans may help explain their tendency to respond to human situations, while cats have a different evolutionary history and may be more selective about when they get involved.

More videos

Up nextThe Chimpanzee That Prepared Rocks for a Future Outburst