Woman’s best friend! Our dogs can tell when we’re happy or sad

We know diamonds are a girl's best friend, but we think that our dogs might just come above the sparkly stones.

Researchers have found that our pet dogs can sense what we're feeling by combining information from different senses. 

Animal behaviour specialists and psychologists carried out a number of studies to suggest that dogs can tell the difference between positive and negative emotions, and apart from humans, they are the only other animals to possess such a trait.

As part of the research, seventeen dogs were shown two different pictures. One was of a happy human and the other was of an angry human. 

Various sounds were then played to the dogs of a person's voice – again, one happy tone, and one angry tone.

The researchers found that most dogs matched the happy human with the happy tone of voice, and did the same for the angry picture and voice.

"Our study shows that dogs have the ability to integrate two different sources of sensory information into a coherent perception of emotion in both humans and dogs," said Dr Kun Guo from the University of Lincoln's School of Psychology.

"Our findings are the first to show that dogs truly recognise emotions in humans and other dogs."