ohmidog!

Dogs know when they’re not getting a fair shake, and react accordingly, according to a new study out of the University of Vienna.

In a series of “reward” experiments reported in Tuesday’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, dogs that understood the command “paw” sat side-by-side with an experimenter in front of them.

In front of the experimenter was a divided food bowl with pieces of sausage on one side and brown bread on the other. The dogs were asked to shake hands and each could see what reward the other received.

When one dog got a reward and the other didn’t, the unrewarded animal stopped playing, showing that dogs, like people and monkeys, seem to have a sense of fairness, the Associated Press reports.

“Animals react to inequity,” said Friederike Range of the University of Vienna in Austria, who led a team of researchers testing animals at the school’s Clever Dog Lab. “To avoid stress, we should try to avoid treating them differently.”

The results won’t surprise any dog owner — or anyone who knows anything about wolves, who are known to cooperate with one another and appear to be sensitive to each other.

One thing that did surprise the researchers was that — unlike primates (and unlike my dog) — the dogs didn’t seem to care whether the reward was sausage or bread.

(Photo from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)