Inside the science of how dogs think

Randi Kaye
AC360° Correspondent

Editor's note: Learn some surprising things about what your dog might be thinking on AC360's series "Animal Intelligence" tonight, 10pm ET.

(CNN) - Sit! Shake! Quit barking! Get off the couch! Go find your toy!

Ever wonder what your dog is thinking as it gazes at you while you are giving it commands?

Duke University's Canine Cognition Center in Durham, North Carolina, is one of the few labs in the country focused on how dogs think.

"We're excited about describing the psychology of our dogs," says professor Brian Hare, the lab's director. "Different dogs solve different problems differently. And what we want to understand is: What is it that either makes dogs remarkable as a species or what is it that constrains the ability of dogs to solve problems?"

To test the dogs' ability, Hare and a team of graduate students put dogs through a variety of games similar to those you might play with young children.

"We don't want to look at cute pet tricks. What we want to know is, what does the dog understand about its world?" Hare said.

Hare has been analyzing our four-legged friends for about 15 years. He says dogs have figured out how to read human behavior and human gestures better than any other species has, even chimpanzees.

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