Dog puppies understand humans in a way that their relatives like wolves just don't thanks to undergoing some 14,000 years of domestication, a study has concluded. Researchers from Duke University tested both dog and wolf puppies in a series of tests that involved locating hidden food by picking up on human clues. They found that dog puppies have similar social cognition abilities as human babies -- and are able, for example, to instinctively recognise pointing as communication. This superficially simple understanding is, in fact, rare in the animal kingdom. Not only did the wolf pups in the study lack it, but so do chimps, our closest relatives.