Key findings: The study, conducted by researchers in Britain who closely monitored dogs’ facial expressions, found that dogs were much more expressive when a person was paying attention to them as opposed to when they were turned away. The presence of food didn’t make a difference in the dogs’ reactions.

Why it matters: “This study is the first to show evidence that dogs adjust their facial expressions when humans are looking at them,” Angie Johnston, a graduate student at Yale university working in the Psychology Department’s Canine Cognition Center, told Axios. “This suggests that the methods dogs use to communicate with us may be more nuanced than we previously thought.”