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"Head tilts in dogs are a fairly known behavior, but the most surprising thing for me was that no one before us investigated it," study lead author Andrea Sommese, an ethologist at Etvs Lornd University in Budapest, told Live Science.

For a first study, Sommese and his colleagues analyzed 40 videos in which dog owners asked their pets to fetch them a toy by saying its name and noticed that all 40 of the dogs cocked their heads after the requests were made.

The researchers further noticed that there were gifted dogs who could find the right toys and others who could not. In the second study, the scientists found that the gifted dogs tilted their heads 43 percent of the time during the exercise while other pooches tilted their heads in only 2 percent of the cases.

"We are not claiming that only gifted dogs tilt their heads while typical dogs never do it," Sommese said.

"Typical dogs also do that, some more often than others, but in this specific situation, when the owner asks for a toy by its name, only the gifted dogs show a nice tilt."

The researchers therefore concluded that dog head-tilts could be related to sounds that both interest and confuse them.

"Dogs tilt their heads in a number of situations, but it seems that they do this only when they hear something that is very relevant to them," Sommese said.

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Dogs tilt their heads when they are 'confused,' study finds - Interesting Engineering