do dogs understand that they're being used for nefarious purposes?

like a drug sniffing dog for example. do they have enough awareness and empathy to say "yeah, i smell it on this person, but they seem cool so i'm not going to draw attention to it.".

well, we know that dogs are very good at sensing personalities. they seem to react differently depending on your emotional state. so, it's not pure fantasy.

i don't think i'd want to be the one that tests that idea....

you have to wonder if wolves have similar capacities. i mean, they're pack animals. it makes sense that some kind of concept of emotion would develop out of that. but, i would think that contact with humans would be a driving force in evolving that trait. knowing which humans are cool and which humans are assholes is something a semi-wild dog needs to be able to do on a day-to-day basis in order to survive.

you can see something similar in elephants. apparently, they react negatively to people who speak certain languages, because they associate poaching behaviour with those languages. that's something of value to pass on to future generations, even if it's kind of racist.

but what i'm thinking of is pretty sneaky. i think dogs may need at least a few more centuries before they can do sneaky things like that...