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    Humans have a special affinity for dogs, as we have evolved along with them for 100,000 years, developing a natural empathy for man's best friend. Many dog owners would assure you that they can read their dogs' emotions right on their furry faces. Now science has gone and proven it. A new study has shown that humans are able to read a range of emotions from slight movements in canine facial expressions, according to the Daily Mail U.K.

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    NEUTRAL

    For the study, published in the journal Behavioral Processes, researchers took photographs of one police dog, a Belgian Shepherd named Mal, under various stimuli. Mal sat quietly for three minutes to elicit a neutral response before being shown a ball to elicit a happy response. He was reprimanded to make him look sad and shameful, while a jack-in-the-box instilled a genuine look of surprise on his face.

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    ANGER

    A dose of yucky medicine brought about a look of disgust from Mal. Researchers then brandished the dreaded toenail trimmer to put fear in his eyes, and one researcher posed as a criminal to make the police dog angry and aggressive.

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    SAD/SHAMED

    Once the photos were taken, 50 volunteer humans were asked to look at them. The 50 people were divided into two groups: those with a lot of experience with dogs and those with little dog experience.

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    DISGUST

    Researchers asked the volunteers to identify Mal's emotion in each photo. Happiness was most easily identified, with 88 percent of the volunteers correctly reading Mal's happy expressions. Seventy percent correctly identified anger, followed by 45 percent recognizing Mal's fright and 37 percent reading his sadness.

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    SURPRISE

    Interestingly, the volunteers with dog experience were less likely to identify Mal's angry expressions correctly. Those with less experience were sharper about reading negative emotions. Dr. Tina Bloom, an animal psychologist who led the research, suggested this might be because dog owners were more likely to convince themselves that a dog isn't being truly aggressive, but just playful.

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    FEAR

    "There is no doubt that humans have the ability to recognize emotional states in other humans and accurately read other humans' facial expressions," Dr. Bloom said. "We have shown humans are also able to accurately -- if not perfectly -- identify at least one dog's facial expressions."

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    Next: Dog Watches Over Owner's Grave for 6 Years

    Dr. Bloom hopes to continue this research and will study whether the apparently natural empathy that humans share with dogs is something we share with all mammals.