If you’ve ever felt like your dog just KNOWS you and knows what you’re thinking, you’re right, but probably not in the way you think. Those puppy-dog eyes she gives you? It turns out that might not be affection in those eyes, but something akin to pity and confusion for what a fool you’re being!

That’s according to a study that found female dogs actually judge their humans’ actions. And when you’re being a bonehead? Well, suffice to say, they know it, and they’re watching you with the same kind of “what are you doing?!” confusion as your human friends are.

Girl dogs can judge human competence better than boy dogs, according to a study.

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The study, released in 2022, was performed at Kyoto University in Japan and looked at how 30 different dogs responded to humans’ mistakes by placing them in front of actors who pretended to get caught up in human foibles.

The results? Female dogs noticed far more than the male ones, paying much more attention and staring longer at the humans than the boys did. But it went far beyond mere noticing to actual preference.

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The female dogs were not only able to understand but also preferred human competence.

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In one exercise in the experiment, the humans were asked to open a tightly shut jar. We’ve all been down this road before, where we feel like a total fool for not being able to get the lid to budge, or inevitably spilling the contents everywhere once it does finally give.

Well, it turns out female dogs agree with you that you’re a fool in this instance! When the study subjects struggled to open the jar, the female dogs watched them for much longer than the male dogs did. But they also showed a preference for the people who could get the jar open. Researchers found they were much more likely to approach a human who got the lid open without any issues.

And just to keep the results clean, they performed the experiment with jars that were both full of food and empty, just to ensure the dogs weren’t responding to the food inside (because you know how they are!). The results were consistent regardless of the jar’s contents.

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Researchers say the findings further underline just how much dogs notice about us humans.

“Dogs are highly sensitive to human behavior, and they evaluate us using both their direct experiences and from a third-party perspective,” the researchers wrote in their report, which was published in the journal Behavioural Processes.

“Dogs pay attention to various aspects of our actions and make judgments about, for example, social vs. selfish acts,” they went on to say. But not only that, this research shows they actually have PREFERENCES for competence when it comes to their human companions.

Much like us, they prefer the company of people at their own intelligence level! And, of course, it will likely be no surprise to many that the female of the species seems to be a lot more observant and discerning than the male. Dogs, it seems, are a lot more like us than we realize!

Researchers said they hope their study will be the basis for digging even deeper into the difference between male and female dogs. But in the meantime, one thing is definitely certain: If you feel like your dog is judging you sometimes, they probably are! It turns out we can’t even hide our human foibles from our non-human companions. But at least they love us anyway.

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John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.