- [Man] What if I told you dogs don't care about us at all?
- That would make me so sad. What?
(upbeat music)
- Before I got Murphy, I talked about getting a dog
for two years straight.
- I decided to just walk into the animal shelter one day.
- Louis was the only one next to the mom
so I could tell he was the youngest and the shyest.
- And within five minutes we saw Marty
and we signed the papers.
- I think I remember one time I just had a breakdown
and she just walked over and kissed my face
and I was like, "You know, this is okay."
(laughs)
- We call him the joy of our lives.
- I was in a wheel chair for a little bit
and having her sit with me in my bed every day
when I was in recovery was the greatest comfort.
- Everyone I was really close
with started moving away one by one.
I never had a chance to be really lonely
because I always had Louis with me.
- [Man] So would you say that you love Murphy?
- Yeah.
- Yes. I love Ella.
- [Man] And do you feel like Ella loves you?
- Yeah definitely.
- I think Louis loves me, yeah.
- [Man] What if I told you that there was a lot
of scientific thought that dogs
don't actually care about us at all?
- Uh.
- What? What are the details?
- [Man] Well we can get to those.
(upbeat music)
- They're little bone shaped.
Bad news comes in cute packages, apparently.
(laughs)
- So it says in the 19th century,
naturalist Charles Darwin traveled the world
on the HMS Beagle, leading to the formulation
of his theory of evolution.
- Darwin leader wrote extensively about the possibility
that dogs have rich emotional lives, but couldn't prove it.
- The true modern era of dog research began
with scientist, Ivan Pavlov.
Pavlov is most famous for his discovery
that dogs who had heard a bell and were given food
eventually began to salivate merely at the sound of the bell
even when no food was present.
- This gave rise to behaviorism
- And the belief among the scientific community
that dogs are merely robotic creatures
- Who give us affection not because they love us
but because they know it will lead us to giving them food.
- Marty, do you love me?
Looks away.
- And so for a century, this view held.
Dogs were not our best friends,
they were just what one science writer called,
"Con artist at the very top of profession."
Simply put, dogs did not and could not love us.
That makes me really sad because I love you so much.
- Murphy you're a liar?
- I'm hoping this is not true though.
- I feel like something is coming.
(upbeat music)
(clicks)
- Hi this is Dr. Gregory Berns, I'm a neuroscientist
in Atlanta, Georgia and I always wanted to know
whether dogs love us like the way we love them.
But of course they can't tell us
so I had to figure out a different way to do it.
I used MRI and trained my dog to go in an MRI
so I could look at her brain and see what she's thinking
and feeling while she interacted with me.
And pretty soon we had a group of a dozen dogs doing MRI's.
And one of the things that we found
was that the reward center of a dog's brain
responds to the sound of the human's voice
praising them as much
and in many cases more than food itself.
And what this shows is that dogs really do care
about the social bond as much
and in many cases more than just the provision of food.
I think like many dog owners realize
is that they're amazing creatures with kind of
the depth of emotion that goes beyond
what scientists used to think
in that they are very much capable of love.
It's certainly in their way and very much like
we humans love each other too.
- Awe. I'm gonna cry.
- Oh.
You do love me Murph?
- Marty, did you hear that?
- That makes me really happy.
- I feel like I can sort of more freely say
that she is also my best friend now.
I'm sorry boyfriend but my best friend's my dog.
(laughing)
- I'm really glad that our feelings are mutual
and I hope Louis loves me forever.
(happy music plays)
(whooshing)