据外媒报道，狗被称为人类的最佳朋友，但原来未必只对人类忠心。
《动物认知》期刊刊登的研究报告指，若机器人表现友善，并成功帮助狗只找出隐藏的食物，它们会将机器人当真人看待，证明只要有食物，狗能效忠任何有人类特征的东西。
实验中，一部看似健身仪器，但两边支架戴上白色手套的机器人，用“手”指向收藏食物的地方，研究员则在旁记录狗只的反应。机器人最初只发出哔哔声与狗儿沟通，后来计算机屏幕显示出人脸，结果狗儿会跟从指示找到食物的成功率较高。
其后，狗主入房与机器人握手谈话，机器人再播出预录的人声说出狗狗的名称，指向食物。结果狗狗不但服从指示，更上前嗅机器人的手套，凝视屏幕上的人脸，当它是个奇怪的“人类”。 （生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推荐的英文摘要
Animal Cognition doi：10.1007/s10071-013-0670-7
Sensing sociality in dogs： what may make an interactive robot social？
Gabriella Lakatos， Mariusz Janiak， Lukasz Malek， Robert Muszynski， Veronika Konok， Krzysztof Tchon， á. Miklósi
This study investigated whether dogs would engage in social interactions with an unfamiliar robot， utilize the communicative signals it provides and to examine whether the level of sociality shown by the robot affects the dogs’ performance. We hypothesized that dogs would react to the communicative signals of a robot more successfully if the robot showed interactive social behaviour in general (towards both humans and dogs) than if it behaved in a machinelike， asocial way. The experiment consisted of an interactive phase followed by a pointing session， both with a human and a robotic experimenter. In the interaction phase， dogs witnessed a 6-min interaction episode between the owner and a human experimenter and another 6-min interaction episode between the owner and the robot. Each interaction episode was followed by the pointing phase in which the human/robot experimenter indicated the location of hidden food by using pointing gestures (two-way choice test). The results showed that in the interaction phase， the dogs’ behaviour towards the robot was affected by the differential exposure. Dogs spent more time staying near the robot experimenter as compared to the human experimenter， with this difference being even more pronounced when the robot behaved socially. Similarly， dogs spent more time gazing at the head of the robot experimenter when the situation was social. Dogs achieved a significantly lower level of performance (finding the hidden food) with the pointing robot than with the pointing human； however， separate analysis of the robot sessions suggested that gestures of the socially behaving robot were easier for the dogs to comprehend than gestures of the asocially behaving robot. Thus， the level of sociality shown by the robot was not enough to elicit the same set of social behaviours from the dogs as was possible with humans， although sociality had a positive effect on dog–robot interactions.
