“Humans may not be the only animals to experience jealousy. A new study published in the online scientific journal PLOS ONE lends support to the theory that dogs get jealous too.

“The idea for the research came when a University of California, San Diego psychology professor saw her family’s border collies exhibit some intriguing behavior.

“‘As I was petting the dogs, what happened is that one dog would push the other dog’s head from out underneath my hand so that both hands were on him, and it wasn’t just one dog who did this,’ Dr. Christine Harris told NBC News. ‘They were not content to be sharing attention and resources. There was something about this exclusivity that made me think I was seeing a basic jealous behavior.’

“To conduct the study, Harris adapted a model used in studies designed to analyze emotion in infants. Thirty-six dogs were observed as their owners ignored them and focused their attention instead upon either a realistic stuffed dog, a plastic jack-o’-lantern pail or a children’s pop-up book. The dogs were then evaluated for aggressiveness, attention-seeking behavior and interest in the owner and object.

“The dogs showed more interest in the faux dog, which could bark and wag its tail, than in the pail or book. All of the dogs nudged their owners when they played with the stuffed animal, and 86 percent tried to push the fake dog during that stage of interaction.” *

In this clip The Young Turks’ Ana Kasparian (http://twitter.com/anakasparian) and John Iadarola (http://twitter.com/jiadarola) break down the story.

* For more, read the entire Huffington Post article here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/24/dogs-feel-jealous-human-emotion_n_5614592.html